Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“Make me,” I growled into her face, so close I could see every individual, orange freckle peppered across her nose.
“This is sexual harassment.” She laughed breathlessly.
“Don’t embarrass yourself.” I pinned her to the sofa, my crotch on hers, my lips on her cheek so only she could hear me. “I bet if I slide my fingers up that fancy dress of yours and push your knickers aside, I’m going to find you so soaked and ready for me, it would take me an hour to lick you dry.”
Her body stiffened beneath me, and I elevated my upper body, glancing down at her. Her blue eyes were so wide and curious. I wondered if she was a virgin. Indie with another guy. I couldn’t picture it, and not because I was attached or some sentimental crap along those lines. She just seemed too reserved. Too proper.
“Alex,” she warned, too afraid to move underneath me, knowing my erection was dangerously close to her cunt.
It was crazy, but this was perfect. This. Me on top of her. The only things between us were fabric and the idiots watching us from across the room. Her body was humming, and I could feel it beneath me, struggling between lust and logic. I lowered my face to hers when some cocksucker grabbed me by the belt loop and yanked me away from her.
“Get off her, you wanker,” Lucas barked. When I turned around, he looked pink and pissed, not unlike Babe the pig. “You’re out of control!”
“So is she.” I fished for my cigarette pack in my back pocket and lit one up, blowing smoke into his face. “It’s called passion. You wouldn’t recognize it if it pissed directly into your mouth.”
“You’re such a twat, you know that?”
“Know it, live it. Sorry, Saint Lucas. Not all of us can maintain such high moral standards.”
“Alex!” Indie scolded.
Fine. I shut up.
The ride to the hotel was wordless. Indie looked out the window, Lucas looked at me, Blake looked at his phone, and Alfie looked at his watch.
“I’m expecting three fans in half an hour. Think we’ll make it in time?” The latter poked his lower lip out.
Everyone groaned, and I threw the blue pick he’d thrown at me in L.A. right at his face.
He laughed. “Oh, we’ve come full circle now.”
In the hallway, I flat out collapsed by my door, watching Indie do the same. It was past midnight, and everyone went to their rooms. Lucas knew better than to push me by loitering around her. Indie had her cloth duffel bag, with a patched dress stuffed into it, the one she’d been working on backstage.
I plucked the notepad and Sharpie out of Tania’s case and stared up at my muse, waiting for her to feed me spoonfuls of her soul.
Knowing I didn’t deserve her.
Knowing she didn’t deserve this.
Knowing how fucked everything was, but not being able to stop, because I wanted revenge, and an album, and solace. And Indie? She would get her money—hell, I might even throw in a couple more hundred grand to sweeten the deal for her—and I’d be to her what I was to so many others. A good story to tell her mates when she was piss-drunk at a hen party. I fucked a rock star once, and it was great.
“What’re you working on?” I jutted my chin to her bag.
She grinned.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just that you’re the only person who asks me stuff. Most people just tell me things, you know?”
“Well, you’re not utterly boring, and you’re here, so you might as well spit it out.”
“A dress. For Paris. My favorite city in the entire world.”
“I thought you’d never been on a plane before?”
“I hadn’t!” She batted her eyelashes and did some little girly-claps, looking so utterly ridiculous, it was almost endearing.
“Looks patchy,” I observed. There were white and pink and cream patches sewn together deliberately out of order. Like a patchwork blanket.
She fingered the fabric with her thin fingers. “It’s a little ugly. Isn’t it beautiful?”
It was my turn to smirk. I strummed my fingers on Tania.
“You find ugly things pretty? Tell me more.”
What she said came out in one breath. Like she’d been waiting to tell me this. Waiting for our midnight date.
“Anything essential is invisible to the eye.”
My eyes shot up. I’d recognize those words anywhere. “The Little Prince.”
“Have you read it?” Indie asked.
I snorted. “You can say that again.”
She squeezed the tip of my boot, her eyes probing. Was I really going to share this with her? Whatever. Why the fuck not.
“My family was the furthest thing from bookworms. I don’t think we had one book in our house, save for the Bible. We were skint as hell. But my dad had a brother, George, who lived in Notting Hill. Made his money composing songs for kids’ shows. It was my dream to go live with him, but George was a womanizer, and a terrible drunk, and even though he loved me, he certainly didn’t love me enough to give up on his precious vices. When I was eight or nine, George gave me a rare birthday gift. A hard copy of The Little Prince. He said to look for the meaning of the book, and once I found it, he’d buy me my first guitar. He said that no musician deserves as much as a pinch of success before they truly understand the meaning of life, and that he’d know if I cheated and asked, and anyway, I didn’t want to. I wanted to earn that fucking guitar. Wanted her to come to me justly and deservingly. For the next couple years, I was consumed by this book. Every year I saw him at Christmas, I tried my luck, decoding the meaning of this goddamn book. All I got was nonsense about some little twat asking people to paint him a sheep. Until, two years after he gave me the book—now worn and old and stained with mustard and milk—it dawned on me. All true meanings are hidden. Life is full of secrets, and narrow-minded people, and sugar-coated, empty conversations that hold no weight. What’s real is what’s inside us. What’s important is what we feel. That day I rang him, and he picked me up from Watford, even though I could’ve taken the train. That day, I got Tania. That day changed my life.”