SAVE ME

TWENTY-FIVE

"Holy shit, that's you!" She heard Dom shout over the sound of her voice playing through the speaker. She nodded furiously, her smile bright and her heart filled with pure joy for the first time in a long time.

"She gets her talent honest." Her brother gloated, her eyes narrowing a bit as she glared at his smiling face. She knew he would make a joke like that. He had to keep everyone in a good mood. Those moments were a rare thing in this house.

"We have to make a tweet about it. More people need to hear this." She heard Rook chime in, already on his phone and pulling up Twitter. Her nerves were kicking into overdrive again. Their whole fanbase was about to hear her song.

She turned to see Dom on his phone as well, no doubt doing the same as her brother and Rook. She closed youtube when she heard her phone ding three times and opened her twitter app to see the three tweets from the boys in front of her.

@rookxx: go check out "I'm With You" by @madibaker. It's dooope.

@machinegunkelly: my little sister released a song today. go check it out!!! @madibaker

@yungblud: @madibaker has the voice of an angel. go blow that song up! 🖤

Madison felt overwhelmed by the positive reaction the boys had to her music. She felt truly blessed to have them in her life. She had finally found her support system that she desperately needed.

Her phone was blowing up with notifications, half of her wanting to know what was being said, the other half of her fearing the backlash. She needed to stop being so afraid of things and just find the courage she lost long ago.

She decided to do just that and skim through the responses from the public, most of them good and lifting her mood even further. When she got to the bad however, she took it just as you would imagine.

"She's using her brothers fame to boost her shitty song."

"With how Colson and Rook hyped it, I expected a lot better."

"Yungblud shared this? I thought he had good taste in music."

"This is garbage. Don't do this to us again."

As soon as she read that last tweet, her phone dinged once more, this time it was a text message. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach at the name that was attached to it. She almost didn't bother to read it, but her curiosity got the best of her.

Dean: just heard your song. it fucking sucks. you should have kept that in your stupid song book and gave that dream up a long time ago.

That was the icing on the cake. Dean used to be the one to encourage her to chase that dream. He always told her that she was talented and deserved to be heard on the radio. To see his cruel words telling her the opposite, broke her heart even though she should have expected it.

Madison quickly turned off her speaker and locked her phone before she ran back up the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She went over to the corner of her room where her pink guitar was and grabbed it before swinging it as hard as she could against the wall, pieces of it breaking off and falling to the floor.

She kept swinging until it was completely broken, just like her heart. She was done trying to find ways to be happy. She was done having her happiness taken away from her as soon as it came. She wasn't going through with her dream anymore.

She threw the remains of her guitar down before she stepped over to the bed and emptied the contents of her backpack, her hands gripping her song book tightly. She grabbed her lighter and went out onto her balcony.

She began tearing pages out of her book, songs that she had worked so hard to make perfect being torn apart and dropped to the concrete below her. Once she had ripped out the last page, she dropped the empty book to join the pile of her broken dreams.

She held up the lighter and striked it before she dropped it as well and watched the pile burst into flames, the glow of the fire shining on her skin as she dropped to the ground next to it and watched it all burn.

She heard someone practically knock her bedroom door down, her eyes never leaving the flames. Dom had rushed to her room as soon as he heard the banging from the guitar hitting the wall. He knew something wasn't right.

He stepped out onto the balcony, his eyes wide once he noticed her song book burning. "Maddie, what the fuck are you doing?" He began stomping on the flames to put them out, not wanting the neighbors to call the fire department.

"I'm done. It's over. I'm not chasing some silly dream anymore. It was stupid of me to even try." She wiped away the tears she didn't even notice with her sleeve as Dom bent down to be at eye level with her.

"Why are you saying this? You were just so happy and excited about it. I loved seeing you that way. What happened that made you change your mind?" He wiped her tears away as well with his thumbs, his eyes glued to hers.

She didn't respond. She just pulled out her phone that had all the bad tweets on the screen for him to see for himself. He scanned through them in disbelief, wondering how anyone could think of her beautiful song that way. "Dean texted me too."

He pulled up her text history with him, seeing his vague replies to previous conversations and moments where he went weeks without responding to her. But what bothered him the most was the text at the very bottom. The most recent one he had sent to her.

He placed the phone down next to him and reached out to take her hands before pulling her closer to him. He tried to look past the sadness in her eyes, searching for the happy Madison he had seen earlier.

"Maddie, fuck what they all have to say. You know that none of it is true and so do we. You have people here who are professional artists that are telling you that you have serious talent. You don't need anyone else's opinion." He hoped he could make her feel better after this. He hated seeing her upset and didn't want her talent to go to waste.

"It's too late. I burned everything." She mumbled, the pile of ash on the ground that was still smoking made her realize that she had made a mistake. She shouldn't have done that. She had so many songs in there that she wanted to record for an ep.

"You don't need a song book. You have them all up here." He mumbled as he reached up to poke her temple. "And most definitely here." He poked the place where her heart was, finally noticing a ghost of a smile on her lips.

"Help me create a new book?" She asked in a hopeful tone, her smile slowly growing when he began laughing.

"If you want me to."