Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 34760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Chapter Two
Ash
"What do you mean, you aren't in town?" Jess Matheny, my publicist, practically shouts, her voice crackling through the car speakers like the voice of God. "You're supposed to be here, Ash!"
She isn't wrong. And that's precisely why I'm not there. Every minute of my day has been scheduled for too goddamn long, from the time I get up until the time I go to sleep. Everywhere I go, everything I do, and everyone I see is on a fucking list. I'm tired of it.
I'm tired of smiling for the cameras. I'm tired of playing the game. I'm tired of being the perfectly trained little monkey. I'm just…fucking exhausted.
So I did the only reasonable thing I could do. I told the band to figure it out without me for a while, rented a cabin, and drove away.
A bolt of lightning slams into a tree a few yards up the road, followed immediately by a massive clap of thunder. Even from inside my SUV, I feel the electricity crackling in the air.
I don't regret my decision, but if this storm is God's way of telling me that he's unamused with my decision to ditch the band and the album for a few weeks, he's going to have to get in line. Jess has dibs on murdering me.
I hit the button to turn the windshield wipers to turbo mode, but they don't do much to improve my line of sight. It's raining too hard.
"Jess, I'm going to need you to—"
"Ash Kilborne, I swear to all that's holy, if the next words out of your mouth are calm down, I'm going to crawl through this phone and choke the breath out of you," Jess growls in that terrifying voice she reserves for moments when I've managed to thoroughly piss her off.
"That's not what I was going to say," I mutter, not above lying to her. If it gets her off my ass long enough to give me a break? Oh, I will absolutely lie to her today, tomorrow, and for the rest of eternity. She's been my publicist long enough for me to know that some truths are better left unspoken.
"Oh, really?"
I cringe at the way she emphasizes really, like she knows I'm full of shit. She probably does. Jess knows me better than anyone. The woman practically raised me. I was green as hell when I stumbled into fame at eighteen, and she already had fifteen years of dealing with rockstars, actors, and industry professionals under her belt back then.
Everything I know about surviving in the spotlight, she taught me. And she's stuck by me every moment since, even when she probably shouldn't have. Believe me, she knows me. Too fucking well.
God, those twenty years feel like a lifetime. Sometimes, like right now, I feel every damn year.
When did this shit get so hard? Juggling it all used to be a breeze. It didn't feel like a chore or a job. When we first hit it big, I felt like I was on top of the world.
I don't even know when it stopped feeling that way.
"What were you going to say?" she asks, her tone only slightly less hostile.
"That I'm not coming back right now. I need a break, and I'm taking it. You can feel however you want to feel about that, but I need you to call me back later to bitch about it," I say. "It's storming like a motherfucker right now, and I'd really prefer if you didn't have to write my obit anytime soon."
It's a lie that isn't really a lie. It is storming like a motherfucker at the moment. And I'm in the mountains outside of Santa Maria, on a road I've never driven, heading to a cabin I've never seen. I'd prefer not to die trying to do it. But that's absolutely not what I was going to say.
I'm smart enough not to tell her that, however.
"Fine," she sniffs. "But don't you dare think we aren't going to disc—"
The woman in the roadway comes out of nowhere. One second, there's nothing but rain. The next, I meet the terrified gaze of a pale, soaking-wet woman through the windshield. She's frozen still damn near directly in front of me, little more than a blur in the sheeting rain.
"Fuck!" I shout, slamming on the brakes. I yank the steering wheel to the left, trying desperately to avoid hitting her. The SUV fishtails wildly, kicking up gravel.
I don't know where she went…but the car comes to a stop without hitting anything solid.
Thank you, God.
"Jesus," I whisper, my voice shaking. "Jesus fucking Christ."
"What?" Jess asks, her voice distorted like I'm losing signal. "What hap-pened?"
"I almost hit someone."
"Wh-at?"
"There was a woman in the road. I nearly hit her."
"Je-sus, Ash. Is s-he o-kay?"
"I think so." I scrub a hand down my face, trying to find her in the rearview. "I'm getting out to check on her, and I'm losing signal."