He’s not fooled, but he lets it go, falling back on his classic dry humor. “Probably the last time I’ll ever eat gas station chicken that looked like it was ten days old too. I only did it because Matt was being such an asshole about it.”
“You should know not to let Matt goad you into things. You almost broke your face that way.”
He sighs, his dark eyes dropping down to the black comforter that Matt haphazardly tugged over the bed. “I thought he’d be like a brother for life. That he, of all people, could never hate me.”
A tiny gasp escapes me. I try to compensate for it by leaning forward, but it still feels like my ribs are digging into my lungs. “No one hates you.”
“That’s not true. They do. Out there.” I know he means on the bus. Namely, Matt, Jameson, and Luke. “They want to keep doing what we’re doing. The same thing. Again and again, year after year, album after album. But it’s not just them. It’s the whole world. I’ve spent fourteen years in the public eye. What if I just want to be me, and that’s not the Wilder they know?”
Wilder is utterly transparent most of the time. You ask him a question, you’re going to get an honest answer. It’s endeared him to so many people, but it’s also caused him some trouble. He’s had to learn how to be open and authentic while shielding himself in some ways. It’s a hard road, one I’d never want to travel. I wouldn’t be able to stand the entire world watching me, scrutinizing my every move, and twisting and breakingmy best intentions, sweetest words, and ideas until they don’t even resemble me anymore. Wilder’s Peril truly does have the best fanbase, but there are plenty of people out there ready to criticize, cut down, and find room for error—ready to take a truth that isn’t theirs and warp it until it’s all wrong.
“You’re thirty. It’s okay to grow and want different things.” Has anyone ever told him that? Truly?
“It’s okay until everyone wants you to stay the same. When you’re in the public eye, you have no privacy. You don’t always get to choose. Sometimes, you have to play the game and keep playing it until you’retired.”
We all know Wilder is human, but it’s easy to forget that when he has the energy, the love, the heart, the passion, and the talent he does. There’s nothing more frightening than finally hitting the wall, reaching the end of a journey, or just burning out completely.
What advice can I give him when our worlds brush up against each other’s, but we’re living totally different lives? The one thing he’s always appreciated is truth. I can’t give himmytruth, but I can give him an honest opinion.
“Then change. Do what you’ve always done and say fuck it. You don’t have to play that game anymore. Reinvent yourself. Try what you want to try. Take some time off. Takeforeveroff. Be a solo artist. Make your own label. Buy a little witchy style cottage in the heart of a woods no one knows about and live there with eighteen cats, a dog, a skunk, and three raccoons for the rest of your life.”
I’m met with silence.
Total. Immediate. Crushing. Painful. Silence.
There was no right thing to say in this situation, but I’ve probably just gone and said the worst thing I possibly could. That scenario I just painted? It’s Wilder all alone, without the band. Fourteen years. If he’s not a part of Wilder’s Perilanymore, then who even is he? Now isn’t the right time to be asking him that question.
This.
This is why I’d never want to be famous. Saying and doing the wrong thing and having someone else pick that apart, or worse, be hurt by it, would truly devastate me.
This kills me.
It’s been killing me for years.
If I were honest about it, there’s no way I should have kept my job.
Even if the band miraculously pulls through this and stays together, I know it’stime. All things, good or not, have a natural ending. I need to take the advice I just gave Wilder and reinvent myself somehow. Find my own little cottage in the woods. If this is it, and it has to be, no matter how much it hurts, I have something for him. I didn’t think it would see the light of day, but this is right. I don’t know anything right now, exceptthat.
Chapter three
Wilder
Of all the times I’ve been sick, I now understand why people say you don’t want to get food poisoning. At least when you have the flu and you yak, you get some relief after, but this is like getting clubbed over the head, run over by a bus, and having your midsection used by yellowjacket wasps as the new best building ground for a record-breaking-size nest.
There’s not a part of me that doesn’t ache and throb. I’m one big twisted, terrible, wretched cramp.
Now that the bus is moving, it’s both soothing and nauseating.
But it’s not just my body that I’m sick in.
Carissa just dropped the fact that sheknowsthis is the last show, but it’s so obvious that’s not how she meant it, especially not when she just followed up with that last statement. If she knows, then does everyone on this tour know? She’s sensitive, quiet, and perceptive. I know she sees things that other people miss. That’s her gift.
Right now, it appears to be more like her curse.
She’s clearly appalled at herself, sitting on the edge of the bed, frozen and stiff, worried I’m going to take her head off. Have I ever done anything like that to anyone? It’s not in me to react that way. I’m not conventional in any sense.
Sure, I’ve been splashed on all sorts of magazine covers, articles, billboards, and other fucking media, and a big part of that is sex appeal. I do a lot of work to keep my body in good shape, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand that most of our fanbase is women. I’ve seen the thirsty comments that get bantered about. It used to be overwhelming, and it reached a point where I was almost afraid of getting torn apart in a crowd. Then came Alicia. She took a lot of heat for dating me, but she stuck with it. She thought it was worth the boost it would give her own career, and when we got together and talked it out, we knew if the world thought we were dating, it would give us a level of freedom to focus on what we really wanted to focus on.
