Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
I stared at Lewis, stunned. She didn’t want to work with me anymore. My stomach fell and I shifted on my seat. Her face on Wednesday flashed in my mind. When she’d stood at the door and saw me, saw Kacey in my bed. I shifted in my seat again when a stab sliced through my chest.
Bonnie had been hurt. I saw it in her brown eyes.
I’d hurt her.
I’d sent Kacey home later that night. I hadn’t even tried to get back into it. Back into what we’d been doing before the knock came. I couldn’t. All I saw was Bonnie’s face. Even drunk off my face, I knew I’d fucked up.
As I sat here now, my shoulder burned. Right over the exact spot where she’d put her hand on me and I’d lost myself in the music. It had sucked me under to the point that I wasn’t even aware of what I was playing. And I’d been playing that piece. The one I never wanted to touch again.
Bonnie had heard it.
No one ever had but me.
“Cromwell,” Lewis said, pulling me out of my own head.
“Fine. Whatever.” I left his office and stormed through the corridor. The few music students left knew to give me a wide berth. Bonnie was gone from my life. I should have been okay with it. It was what I wanted. I’d pushed her away like everyone else.
But my body was a live wire. And I couldn’t let it go. I worked better alone. Always had. But the thought of her not being there…
I sparked up a smoke and walked home. But with every step I got more and more agitated. I knew Bonnie had done this somehow. She’d made Lewis drop me. I pushed through the door to my dorm. Easton was out. Good.
I sat at my desk and fired up my new laptop. I cracked the window so the fire alarm wouldn’t go off when I lit up another cig. With my headphones over my ears and blocking out the world, I let the colors lead me in the beats.
I closed my eyes, and the pulsing shapes of vivid colors took form. I followed the patterns, let them control my fingers as I slammed the keys and drum machine, chasing the painting on the backdrop of the black canvas.
I worked and worked until my cigarettes ran out and my fingers ached. I’d drunk the last of the cans of beer and drained a two-liter bottle of Coke. But when I slipped off my headphones and saw that it was dark outside, nothing had changed inside me. It didn’t matter that I’d mixed tunes that would have the clubs bowing down to me like I was a god.
I was still pissed off that I’d messed up. Anger ran through my veins, ready to burn like lit petrol. I tipped my head back and let out a loud groan of frustration.
She’d had me dropped because I’d hurt her.
I’d gotten drunk after I’d left her. So drunk that I just needed to spin, needed to be busy. The next thing I knew we were at the Barn. I’d downed shot after shot of whiskey to forget Bonnie. So that I didn’t rush back to where I’d left her and tell her it all. She was getting too close. And something happened to me when I was around her. My defenses fell.
I couldn’t let them fall.
Kacey had been at the Barn, clinging to me like glue. When I couldn’t get Bonnie from my head, I knew I needed to be with another girl. But when she was at my door, her brown eyes wide with hurt, I knew I’d fucked up.
It would never have worked. Bonnie Farraday was cemented into my brain.
“How about eight at Jefferson Coffee?” That wanker’s words ran through my head at a million miles an hour. I looked at the clock. She’d be with him now. It was nine. The dark pit that started forming in my stomach at the thought of her with Bryce McCarthy grew and grew until, the next thing I knew, I was out of the door and pounding the pavement until I hit Main Street.
Her brown eyes filled my mind, urging me on. Her smile and my name coming off her lips. The imprint of her hand still burned on my skin, and her palms I still felt on my cheeks. The scent of peach and vanilla from her neck was still in my nose.
It tasted of sweetness on my tongue.
I stopped dead outside the coffee shop. I kept my head forward, telling myself to go the hell home and to not do this. But my feet didn’t listen. The pit in my stomach didn’t go. Bonnie was in there with Bryce.
And I hated it.
I gritted my teeth, then snapped my head to the side and looked through the window. Something resembling a stone in my chest dropped when I saw Bonnie at her usual table with Bryce. Her hair was down and curled, hanging halfway down her back. I’d never seen her hair down.