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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NOTE: DON'T MISS THIS SUPER SPECIAL AUDIOBOOK RECORDING! To all audiobook listeners new and old! Make sure to check out the recording for this chapter! Not only will it make your reading experience so much more emotionally intense and make the chapter last longer, you'll get to hear a special song by Kristen! kaelking12 wrote and performed an original song on electric guitar for the recording this time! Check it out at the end of the audiobook recording! Also featuring music by Ellie Goulding, Fleetwood Mac, S. Carey, Sundara Karma, Ben Howard, and Kristen M!
Alex
I wake up from a dream that doesn't feel like one. The kind where reality and make believe trade places and leave me stuck somewhere in the middle. It's been happening a lot more lately.
Elias was at the center of it again-just like he's been in the center of everything lately. But I guess a week of barely seeing someone will do that to you.
Absence has a funny way of working itself into your mind, taking the shape of whoever you're missing, and then plastering reminders of them all over the inside of your head.
If a doctor were to crack open my brain right now he'd find images of Elias lining my skull thicker than a sixteen year old's collection of boy band posters. The old him would've been tickled pink that I even said something like that but that was before.
The new him is different.
Quieter.
There but not there.
With smiles that barely reach his eyes.
But anyway, back to my dream.
In it, Elias is holding me. We're caught up in his sheets, under his blankets, tangled up in each other like we used to be. His warmth should be everywhere. His hands should be hot against my skin. But the heat doesn't reach me. Instead, I'm filled with a hollow cold that starts in my stomach and slowly spreads across my body until I'm covered in it.
Elias's warmth disappears from me, and everything else disappears from me until I find myself here.
Alone in a bed that's starting to feel less and less like home.
Maybe it never was.
The front door creaks open and the earthy smell of Indigo's Fair Trade coffee sneaks under the covers and invades my nostrils. In about thirty seconds, she'll be sitting on the edge of my bed with a cup of so-organic-it's-undrinkable coffee in one hand and a bag of sand pastries in the other.
She buys these inedible delights at the local farmer's market and they're probably the secret to long life, but they taste like gluten-free cat litter.
