Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 162567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Choose to live.
Life.
Death.
I feel as if my family has always teetered between the two. Loss. Almost loss. It hangs around us like a cloud. Depression has clung to my mom before, and maybe she’s worried for me. Worried that my spirit will be snuffed. I want to pacify her worries. Tell her I’ll be fine. I won’t suffer inside.
But I can’t.
Her love for me wraps tightly in this moment.
I nod. Okay. Okay.
“You always have Lily,” she says softly. “My sister will always understand what you’re facing. Her fame was about as soul-crushing as yours right now. She had Moffy, then Luna.”
“Xander,” I finally mutter, the weight of his name hanging in the air.
“He’s getting better. It gets better.”
My eyes hit hers. She gives me a soft smile. “I love you.”
That hits me. “I just wanted to be like you,” I say, choked on the words.
Tears well up in her eyes. “I love my sister to the moon and back. It gives me extraordinary joy to know you’ll raise your kids like her. She is my fairy, you know. Magical creatures like fairies need belief to exist. I believe in her every single day I’m breathing, and I’ll always believe in you. My strong, daring mer-daughter who lives in the sea.”
I laugh a little, rubbing my wet cheeks. Realizing this is her blessing. To move forward. Onward. No hiding.
I love you too, Mom.
We say a few more words before I hang up. Taking a deep breath, the night air swirls around me. Akara and Banks watch from the pool. I kick off my shoes and race to them.
I jump in.
The water bathes all of me.
Home again.
53
AKARA KITSUWON
Summer Music Fest in Philly. Five stages have been erected in the city’s park, and I’ve attended one of these packed outdoor festivals before. Way back when.
I’ve been a sweaty sixteen-year-old letting the sun roast me as I wait shoulder-to-shoulder with sweaty, boozed twenty-somethings for a popular band to take the stage. For someone to spray me with a water bottle. Hoping the sky would part and rain would shower us all.
Hating the third day of the fest when rain would actually come, and my friends and I would be sloshing through mud and piss. Shivering our asses off as music pounded the beer-littered ground. Yet, we stayed outside. Never missed a second.
Never let the experience pass us by. And even though I’m on the other side of the stage, I feel that same effervescent energy course through me, the need to encapsulate the experience—and how happy I am that Sulli chose to be here.
With us.
I smile at my girlfriend. We’re backstage, but “backstage” is really the side-stage where VIP and the band wait for their set, and we can easily peek out and see Summer Fest crew setting up The Carraways’ equipment.
Drums, guitar, bass.
Crowds have amassed for Tom’s band. Packing tight under the hot August sun, some are already exhausted, others drunk, considering it’s now evening. The sun finally beginning to lower.
The Carraways are the lead-in band for Nothing Personal, a main headliner. When I called us the “opener”—Tom nearly had a stroke. He actually grabbed onto Eliot and said, “Water.”
Apparently, Nothing Personal shares the same label as The Carraways and their drummer once auditioned for Tom’s band.
Tom turned him down.
Now he’s experiencing more success than Tom, and it’s a thing. A thing that I can’t weed-whack through. I’m not trying to make Tom Cobalt faint.
His fans would come for my head.
I hear crew tuning the guitar and doing mic tests. And the crowd gathers bursts of energy to chant, “CARRAWAYS! CARRAWAYS!”
Drumsticks sweat in my palm, and Sulli hands me a water bottle while Banks surveys the VIP side-stage area. Most of the Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts are here, and while I’m off-duty, Banks is completely on. I have less stage-fright and more apprehension about not being able to lead my men today. I’m handing the wheel over to Thatcher.
And this is a big event for the families and security. Big for Sulli, too. I keep smiling at her, seeing her smile rise again and again.
Sulli can’t restrain a happy one. “I might cum watching you on the drums.”
“Me too,” Banks jokes into a crooked smile.
Sulli’s brows rise. “I’m being serious.”
“We know,” Banks and I say at the same time.
She elbows us.
We all laugh.
A pyrotechnic goes off with a blast. Sulli flinches, her laugh dying immediately. “Fuck. Sorry.”
I wince a little. Crap, I wish I could be here as her bodyguard. I want to shield her from the anxiety that’s been pummeling her every so often.
“Don’t be sorry, Sulli,” Banks hugs her close to his tall frame.
She glances over at the stage. We see smoke roll over the ground as they test a fog machine. “I shouldn’t be this shaken. The Olympics didn’t bother me this bad.”