AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But if I do any of those things, he’ll be ruined. Judy will push the button on her weaponized media lies, and the world will think he’s a monster. That he abused me. That he hooked up with girls on the road who were so young.
It doesn’t matter if they’re lies, and Judy knows it. But her strategy is basically to overwhelm with bullshit. If she floods the news with enough scandalous, horrific things, at least some of it will stick, even if they’re lies.
And I won’t do that to him.
Because if that happens, there’s no place on earth he could go to escape. And ifthathappens, it’s the final nail in our coffin.
We’ll never be able to be together after that. At least if I go along with Judy, I can hang on to hope.
I can cling to a dream, even if I’m just waiting in tears to wake up.
Judy smiles for the cameras and the sycophant producers of the show as she drags me to the center of the front row. My body clenches nauseously as I stare up at the microphone stand not five feet from me, wherehe’llbe standing in just a few minutes.
Leering at me.
Singingat me.
Making me feel like I’m that kid again—cold and motionless and unable to do or say a thing as he puts his hands on me.
“Mom,” I choke, almost unable to swallow as the anxiety claws at me. “Mom,please—”
“Don’t make a scene, Melody,” she hisses out of the corner of her mouth, still smiling at the cameras around us.
And then, the house lights go down, and the audience begins to cheer.
It feels like they’re cheering for my own execution.
Dread swallows me whole as I stare blankly at the stage. An electric guitar starts to play through one of the amps on stage. I flinch, going pale. I glance up, and my eyes follow the trail of the guitar cable leading out of the amp and across the stage into the darkened wings.
The guitar strums again, but suddenly, something ticks in my head. I freeze, my breath choking as the chord blares out again.
My heart begins to swell.
That’s not the opening to any Kurt Harrison song.
It’s the opening toour song.
The lights dim down to blackness as the guitar chord repeats in a rhythm I know too well. My pulse roars in my ears, my skin throbbing with electric current as a dark shape holding a guitar steps from the wings to center stage.
The chord roars out again.
The stage lights come up.
And my heart almost flies out of my mouth as the entire Beacon Theatre loses their fuckingminds.
Because standing there alone on stage, for the first time in over ten years…
Is Jackson Havoc.
And like magic—like watching an artist touch a brush for the first time in years, or a sports legend pick up a football again—I watch him morph right there in front of my eyes. The brooding, angry, jaded Jackson melts away.
And a fucking rockgodsuddenly looks up and grins that famously roguish, pulse-quickening grin at the audience.
“Been a while, hasn’t it?”
He grins wider as the crowd goes apeshit. Judy is gripping her armrests like she might tear them off, a look of pure hatred on her face. But around us, people are surging to their feet. A million phones illuminate the theater as Jackson winks on stage.
“So, I was in the neighborhood, and thought I’d stop by.”
