2016 WATTY AWARD WINNING CHEATER, FAKER, TROUBLEMAKER SEQUEL
Written by Jenny Rosen & Kristen Maglonzo
For rehabilitated bad boy, Elias King, falling in love again means losing everything--including his life.
When a ghost from his past tears him aw...
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Alex
Dear Nobody,
It's quiet.
Too quiet.
And for the last forty minutes it's been nothing but.
Twenty since Elias left me in his room to go on a walk to talk to his mom.
Forty since the door slammed shut to an eerily quiet conversation Elias and Dan had outside.
It's almost like the hush after a hurricane. That moment where you step outside, stare up at an unclear sky wondering if it's over, completely in the dark of whether you've cleared the storm or just ended up in the center of it.
Too quiet.
Too calm.
And anything but safe.
I don't think anyone ever gets used to it.
Silence.
And how truly a scary sound it is.
The kind that swallows every sound within earshot leaving you all too conscious of the high-pitched ringing that settles in your ear making you fully aware of the fact that you're alone.
And this house has been filling from rug to rooftop with this unsteady quiet for nearly an hour. Every nook, cranny, every single room.
It's suffocating.
It closes in on me leaving nothing but the worst things imaginable running through my mind.
And, I can't help it. How my mind works. How it starts running a mile a minute focusing on theories and worst possible outcomes for whatever situation seems to be playing out in my head.
Focusing leads to thinking and thinking leads to thoughts and those thoughts lead to these conclusions I can't stop thinking about.
Like why did Elias seem so calm in the brief minute between him asking me to wait in his room before he went on a walk with his mom and after his talk with Dan?
I don't know what happened between him and Dan. I don't know if I want to. Stepping between the thunder and clash that was the two of them was traumatic enough.
And, I don't mean for me.
Elias was shattered. Angry and hurt like I've never seen before, and I didn't know how to stop it.
I didn't know how to lessen the pain aside from keeping him from making a heat of the moment mistake.
I haven't seen that in a long time. Elias living moment to moment. Pushed to the point of acting on impulse.
