Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“I wish I knew.”
Aleks didn’t push me for information. He didn’t pepper me with questions or guess what I was feeling. He just stood there, right beside me, our eyes on the water for the longest time.
“Every other album release party I’ve had, I’ve been so… excited,” I finally said, voice so soft I wasn’t sure he could even hear me over the waves. “It really freaks me out that I don’t feel that way tonight. In fact, I feel the opposite. I feel… scared.” I swallowed. “Maybe it’s because I know the album is shit. Maybe it’s because, deep down, I wonder if Garrett Orange is right about me — if they all are. Maybe it’s because this could be the night I crash and burn and everyone realizes I’m a fraud.”
Aleks nodded, tilting his head side to side a bit as if weighing the options I’d presented. “Maybe,” he conceded, which did nothing to ease the ache of my chest. “What if that was what was happening? What if every big fear you just listed came true?”
“I’d throw myself off this balcony.”
His gaze turned to me, stern and severe. “Don’t even joke like that.”
“I’m being dramatic,” I said, waving him off as my shoulders slumped more. “But I mean… I’d be dead in all the ways that matter. Creatively. Career-wise.”
“Would you?”
I blinked at him. “Didn’t you hear the worst-case scenarios? If Garrett is right, if the album tanks, if everyone realizes that I…” I shook my head. “That I’m a shit songwriter and an even more terrible singer? That I’ve been hyped up for years for nothing? That I’m irrelevant? That would be it. I’d be done for. I may only be twenty-six, but in this industry, that’s… not young.” I swallowed. “My time would be up.”
“But you wouldn’t be dead,” Aleks pointed out. “Regardless of how dramatic you want to be about dying of embarrassment. Your heart would still be beating. Your lungs would still be pumping oxygen into your organs.”
“I’d be lost without music.”
“Who said you’d have to give it up?”
He turned to me then, leaning weight on his elbow that rested on the railing. God, he looked so sexy it wasn’t fair. His suit, his freshly trimmed facial hair, his dark eyes…
“Would you really stop creating music if this album got panned? I mean, honestly. Would you just never pick up a guitar again, never sit down at the keys, never sing?”
My heart squeezed at the thought. I couldn’t even voice it, but I didn’t have to.
Aleks already knew.
“You wouldn’t stop,” he said when I didn’t answer. “If anything, you’d be… free. Free to create whatever you want, to start over, to take all this damned pressure off yourself to be the best. And then what would you bring to life? What would you feel?”
Every word he spoke made my heart race faster.
“You already have everything you could possibly want from this career, Mia — money, fame, awards. You wouldn’t be broke and on the street. You wouldn’t all of a sudden stop being booked for shows. Even if your tour didn’t sell out, it would still sell. You would still be desired by millions of fans worldwide. But you know that already. And you know what else? I think you also know you’re not scared of people not liking the album or agreeing with that chotzbrocke, Garrett Orange. Not really, anyway.”
Aleks inched closer, sliding his arm along the railing until our chests nearly brushed. He ran his fingertips up my arm, over my shoulder, along the slope of my neck until he was sweeping my hair back and behind one ear, his eyes locked on mine the entire time.
“You’re scared because this album is real, Mia. It’s you.”
My eyes instantly watered, a strangled breath escaping my parted lips.
“I heard it in just the first few tracks. I heard you at seventeen, and at twenty-one, and at twenty-six. I heard you breaking, heard you healing, heard you finding a new way. You’re not excited tonight because this wasn’t an album written for fans or for a label. This was an album written for you. And there’s nothing more terrifying than showing someone your true self like that, let alone showing the entire world.”
Silent tears built in my eyes and slipped hot and heavy down each cheek. Aleks caught one with his thumb, and I leaned into his palm, hanging onto his every word. It was like being back in my childhood home in Chicago, the two of us up way past our bedtime confessing our biggest fears to one another.
He knew mine so intimately now that I didn’t even have to voice them — even with years between us, he still knew.
“You should be scared. But you should also be proud, Mia. So fucking proud. Because you fucking did that. You put your everything into this. It isn’t just another cog in the wheel full of pop hits. It’s art — your art.