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“What’s that supposed to mean? Where the hell are we going?”
“Look, Ian. We know these past few months have been hard on you. From your parents, to Hazel, and now to the record being fucked over. But we, as your best friends, cannot allow you to lose your light. You can’t give up on everything.”
“I didn’t give up on everything.” Everything had given up on me.
Fuck. Did I even hear myself? How much more emo could my ass be?
“No offense, dude, but you’re drunk all the time,” Marcus said, his voice low and filled with care. “And I don’t fault you for it, because I’d be the same way if I went through half the shit you went through. That’s why we allowed it for so long. What happened to you was fucked up, man. You were dealt a shitty hand, and you were playing it the best you could, but it’s time to realize that you don’t have to play alone. We’re your best buds. So we kidnapped you to give you the detox your body and soul need.”
“Detox? And where the hell is this detox taking place?” I barked, still annoyed as fuck about being kidnapped from my drunken daze and dropped in a damn hallway.
“Eres,” Eric said, glancing back at me from the passenger seat. “So sit back, relax, and enjoy the twenty-hour drive. We’re taking you home, Ian.”
38
IAN
The guys forced me to drive with them for the whole twenty hours. Whenever we stopped, I couldn’t even figure out a way to get away and back to Los Angeles. They hadn’t brought my phone or my wallet. I had no way of escaping my friends kidnapping me.
What an odd situation.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Eric had uncovered about Max Fucking Rider and Donnie Fucking Schmitz. I wished I could’ve said I was surprised, but it turned out dreams didn’t come without their own set of troubles. Max had had red flags from the beginning, but we’d chosen to ignore them, because we wanted our dream so fucking bad it ached.
Now, we were left in a shitty situation because we’d trusted the wrong people. We’d trusted the people who didn’t give a damn about us as individuals. They only cared about the money being brought into their bank accounts.
The moment we pulled up to the old dirt roads of Eres, I felt a lump in my throat. The guys drove me to my house—correction: now Hazel’s house—and before I could argue with them, they tossed me out of the car and drove away.
It was the middle of the night, and I had no desire to walk inside to see Hazel.
Okay, that was a lie. I had every desire to do exactly that, but I didn’t. Instead, I grumbled like a damn child and stomped off to the shed.
I’d sleep there until morning, when I’d go to my grandparents’ house and beg Big Paw for a bed to sleep in for a few hours before I figured out how to get myself back to Los Angeles and face reality.
I grumbled, tossing and turning in my sleep. I was having that dream again. I was falling deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of darkness, shouting for someone to give me a hand. Begging for help. My parents reached down, and right before I was about to grab ahold of them, they snatched their hands back, and they began laughing hysterically as they stared my way. Then everyone else began laughing too. Big Paw, Grams, the guys. Everyone began pointing at me, laughing their heads off, as I kept falling deeper and deeper.
Everyone except Hazel.
She locked eyes with me and moved her mouth to speak. I couldn’t hear her, though.
“What?” I called out.
She kept moving her lips.
“What?” I shouted.
“Wake,” she whispered.
“I can’t hear you!”
“Up,” she said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
I shot up from my nightmare, drenched in sweat and panic. My eyes bugged out as I looked around, trying to piece together my whereabouts, and when I looked to my left, I froze.
Those green eyes were piercing me.
Those eyes that I’d missed.
Those eyes that I still stupidly loved.
