Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
When I got to my room, I swapped my dress for an old t-shirt and sleep shorts, washed my face, and sat on the edge of the twin bed. That room had never felt so small. The farm was like that at night. The stillness in the air finally allowed the thoughts I’d been outrunning all evening to catch up with me.
The unease of stepping back out into a world that had already proven itself unsafe.
Devon’s booming voice caused a wave of fear that nearly leveled me.
The flash of white light across the street rendered me immobile.
The fact that even now, safe inside a home with more cameras than a movie set, my hands trembled.
I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my back against the headboard, desperately fighting a losing battle with my emotions.
I was so damn tired of being scared.
But, if I were being honest, fear was just the most recent layer of my exhaustion. And it wasn’t even the heaviest one.
I hadn’t truly rested since the morning Jenn called me two years earlier; her guttural screams telling me that Mom was gone had altered my life forever. I’d sat on the floor of my trailer between takes, in full hair, makeup, and costume, while my world ended on the other side of the country.
After that, while still reeling from Sebastian’s betrayal, my father declined rapidly. I spent countless nights, plagued with insomnia, scouring the internet desperately trying to find a treatment that would keep me from losing him too. But all the money and fame in the world couldn’t cure him.
I filled my days with scripts and early call times. The relentless forward motion of a career that didn’t know how to pause for grief. Denial was easier.
Though sitting in my childhood bedroom, one I’d left at only sixteen, I realized the layers of my exhaustion went back even further than the tragedies of my life.
I’d been so busy building something extraordinary that I hadn’t noticed when ordinary had slipped through my fingers entirely. The quiet Sunday mornings. The ability to go to the grocery store without a plan. Dinner with friends that didn’t require background checks and rented out restaurants. The simple, unremarkable comfort of feeling like nobody was watching.
I’d spent years chasing a life of glitter and grandeur, convincing myself that the shine was worth the cost. And it had been for a long time.
But I missed the ordinary.
Closing my eyes, I pulled the zebra-print comforter up to my chin. A tear slipped down my cheek, and I wiped it away fast. It was a worthless effort because another one followed it, and then another, until I gave up wiping and just sat there furious at myself because I was sick of crying too.
A soft knock came at the door, snapping me out of my pity party.
“Lofton?” Devon called.
I sniffled and frantically used the neck of my shirt to dry my face. I’m not sure why I thought that was going to hide anything. The tears just soaked a puddle into my collar instead. I didn’t know why I was trying to hide it from him. Devon was an emotional bloodhound.
“Yeah?” I croaked.
The door opened, and his thick frame filled the doorway. His eyes went straight to my tear-stained cheeks, only straying long enough to take in the wet spot on my shirt. “What’s going on?”
I laughed, but it was wholly sad. “Just doing my nightly skincare routine. Moisturizer, serum, and tears. Trust me, it’s all the rage on TikTok.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Thought you were good.”
“I was… I mean, I am.” I sighed. “Wine always makes me emotional.”
It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t the truth.
He nodded, clearly unconvinced. “Right. Well, if that changes, you know where I am. Yeah?”
“Yep,” I popped the p, but only to hide the lump in my throat.
He started to pull the door shut, when something inside me moved faster than my pride could stop. “Will you stay with me for a little while?” I shook my head, hating how needy I sounded. “You don’t have to. It’s not like—”
He interrupted what was surely going to be an epic ramble. “Okay.”
Just like that.
No deliberation. No sigh. Just okay.
He walked into the room and then promptly stopped at the foot of the bed like he’d hit an invisible wall. He scratched the back of his head, then cracked his knuckles, then wedged a hand in his pocket only to pull it back out and run it through the top of his hair. His eyes moved around the room, making brief stops on the show choir trophy, the ribbons, the ceiling…the floor.
Okay, so not exactly the company I’d been hoping for.
The man who could clear a room, read a threat, and talk me off a ledge without breaking a sweat stood at the foot of my bed with absolutely no idea what to do with his hands.