“You think I didn’t see that photo from tonight?” Adam asks. “I always knew you were fucking him. He doesn’t deserve you. He never has. He’s no good for you.”
He shoves my face into the ground and moves his knee onto my elbow. My arms are trapped behind my back. I writhe and kick. He has my hands.
I feel him wrapping something thin around my arms, and the absolute wails leaving me don’t sound like they belong to a person.
Zip ties tighten on my wrists.
“And you think tying me up and taking me away somehow makes you better?!” I yell.
“I’ll do what I have to to save you from him,” Adam says.
Maddox.
Maddox.
As if saying his name enough times might make him appear.
Adam’s weight moves off me. I start to scramble my feet, but he grabs me by the hair and my bound wrists. He hauls me to my feet as if I’m an animal he’s just tied up for slaughter. My back arches to his will.
“Walk, Andi,” Adam growls. “I want to know just how wet this scuffle made you.”
Ice water seems to pour over me. I squirm as much as my body will allow. “Don’t you fucking touch me—”
The sharpest pain I’ve ever felt slices through my side. I gasp. My eyes bulge. The pain stuns me. And before I can stop myself, my knees give out. I try to make my body move, try to push away the agony and scream out again.
I can’t let him take me.
I can’t let him take me.
Adam throws me over his shoulder.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - MADDOX
TAKING BOWS AFTER this show feels like we’ve just ended an era.
The crowd is going insane. I’ve never heard screams like this.
The four of us grab one another and take a bow, grinning because there’s nothing like this feeling—the fucking elation and pride of playing three shows back to back in your hometown for fans that have driven across the country and followed us for months now.
I had already changed out of the Bane mask and into my normal mask before our bows. I had to get that damn thing off of me. It was not made for extended wear beneath stage lights.
Bonnie tugs me down in front of her and undoes the braid in my hair, making everyone yell when she drags her hands in it and shakes the messy waves in a ragging manner. Arms in the air, she jumps up and down beside me, her now red hair glimmering in the stage light.
I flip the hair out of my face as she runs to the edge of the stage and starts tossing her broken drumsticks out into the crowd, Zeb does the same with his spare guitar picks.
And as they do that, Reed engulfs me in a hug that sends us both off balance.
“Fucking amazing, man,” I say to him.
“No,you’refucking amazing,” Reed argues.
I glance toward the curtains as we hug again and find Reed’s family in the shadows. I see our manager. The DJ. James. A few other familiar faces.
I don’t see Andi.
It makes my eyes narrow.
She would be here. Iknowshe would be here.
