“I want you too,” I say, voice paper-thin.
“Then I’ll wait.”
I close my eyes. Let myself sink.
Wrapped in his arms, held so tightly the pieces stop rattling, I finally fall asleep.
Ten hours pass in a blur of breath and dreams. The deepest sleep I’ve had in months.
When I wake the next morning, the bed is empty. For a moment, panic prickles through me, that old fear of being left behind, of not being goodenough, strong enough, brave enough. But then it fades, replaced by something quieter.
I remember his arms around me, steady and sure. His voice cutting through the chaos in my head.
You’re not broken, Annie. You don’t ruin people.
I start to believe it.
Alex’s voice doesn’t get to be the loudest anymore. I don’t have to keep carrying his definition of me.
It’s time to write my own.
I sit up and glance beside me. On the nightstand sits a vanilla latte, still warm. And beside it, a plastic cup, overflowing with maraschino cherries.
The sight pulls a tear from me, but it’s different this time.
Not grief. Not guilt.
Something closer to hope.
Chapter 41Chase
The music is the only thing louder than the migraine tunneling through me.
Four different pills. Three shots of whiskey. Two energy drinks.
It should have dulled the edges. It didn’t.
I’m blitzed out of my head, running on fumes, on noise, on the energy in the crowd as they scream and dance and sing our lyrics like gospel.
The stage shudders beneath my boots, vibrating with bass, electricity, adrenaline—a tonic of progressive rock. Undergarments fly past my mic stand. Someone flashes me. The lights spin like galaxies, but everything in my head narrows. Tightens.
Sweat pours down my back, my hands shaking as I strum. My voice is raw and blistered, but I don’t stop. I hold the key. Hit every note.
Submit to the beast.
Annie is fire beside me, owning her verses, hair soaked and sticking to her temples. She throws me a smile mid-chorus, and I give her one back, but it’s tight. Forced. My jaw is clenched so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack a molar.
Whatever’s been living inside me, whatever’s crawling through my veins and eating at my brain, it doesn’t feel so silent anymore.
It feels loud. Twisted.
And for the first time, I don’t want to tame it.
I want to let it burn.
The lights shift, strobe patterns exploding across the stage like gunfire. I stagger for half a second. No one notices.
When the final chord crashes over the room, the crowd goes feral. We hold the moment, arms and instruments raised in sweat-slick hands, grinning like lunatics under the glare of spotlights. Annie blows a kiss into the sea of screaming faces. Rock tosses his drumsticks into the crowd.
