“Why are you being so cruel?”
He snickered. “Because I think you’re right. I think I like controlling things.”
“I won’t do it,” I said. “I won’t break things off with him.”
“That’s too bad. You know what else would be too bad?” he asked. “If this nice old ranch burned down. Or even worse, if something happened to this little sister of yours.”
I knew he said those things as threats, but I also knew that Charlie’s threats normally ended up as promises.
“So here’s what we are going to do. You’re going to give me money every two weeks, you are going to break up with your superstar, and you are going to live a miserable fucking life, because you don’t deserve to be happy. You got it?”
“Just say yes, Hazel,” Garrett choked out.
“How about you learn to shut the hell up,” Charlie called out toward his nephew. “The grown-ups are having a meeting. So Hazel, what do you say? Do we have a deal?”
I nodded slowly as tears slipped from my eyes.
He walked over to me and placed a finger beneath my chin. He raised my head until I locked eyes with his. “I need a verbal agreement, sweetheart.”
“Yes, we have a deal,” I said, shaking from his touch.
“Now, pull out that cell phone of yours, and make a call to the guy, and let him know you’re over.”
“What? Can’t I—” I started to argue, but the fire in Charlie’s eyes was enough to terrify me. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and dialed Ian’s number.
Please don’t answer; please don’t answer; please don’t—
“Hello?”
“Hey, Ian, it’s me,” I said with a shaky voice.
“Good. You made it home?”
“Yup, I’m here safe and sound. There’s just one thing . . . I, um, I . . . I . . .” My words fumbled against my tongue as I covered my mouth with my hand to conceal my tears.
“Haze? What is it?” Ian asked, growing concerned.
“Spit that shit out,” Charlie ordered in a low tone.
“I—it was great seeing you, Ian. Truly, it was, but after seeing the world you’re creating out there, I realize that there’s not much space for me in it anymore.”
“Wait . . . what?”
“I just think it’s best if we end it now, before your career takes off. I’m sorry. I just can’t be with you anymore. I can’t be in this relationship.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Hazel? We’re good. We’re so fucking good. We made love this morning, and everything was fine. You left and said you loved me. Tell me what’s happening here. What’s really going on?”
“Nothing. I just had a lot of time to reflect on the flight home, and it’s clear we’re going two different ways. My life is here on the ranch, and yours is out there in the world. It’s best that we end it now.”
“You can’t say this,” Ian started.
“Hang up,” Charlie said, shoving me in the arm, making me tremble even more.
I can’t, I mouthed.
“Hang up now, or I walk out with your sister,” he threatened.
With a pained heart, I clicked the phone off as Ian was still begging for answers to my sudden change of heart.
“Good girl,” Charlie whispered, rubbing his hand against my neck, sending chills down my spine. “Here. Take this bitch,” he said, handing Rosie over to me. “It’s been nice doing business with you. Garrett, get your ass up, and let’s go.”
Garrett did as his uncle said and stumbled toward the front door.
Charlie turned back to glance at me, and then he looked down at the carpet. “Half a cup of warm water mixed with one tablespoon of ammonia. That will get the bloodstain out of your nice carpet.”
Then he left, leaving me there sobbing against Rosie. Our tears intermixed as she howled in sadness.
My phone kept ringing with Ian’s name popping up on the screen, but I didn’t dare answer it. Even if all I wanted was to hear his voice.
Three days later, Ian was back in Eres, standing in front of me with confusion and heartache in his eyes. “Did Max say something to you? Did he try to push you away?” he asked as we stood near the shed late that evening.
Oh, Ian . . .
Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.
“It’s not that,” I said. “I just feel like we aren’t right for each other.”
“No one’s more right for one another, Haze. It’s us. But I’m so confused. I feel like you’re talking as if you don’t believe in us anymore. As if you don’t think we can figure this out.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “That’s because I don’t think we can. I’m sorry, Ian. My life shifted, and I need to learn to accept the way it is shaping up. I’m coming to terms that my responsibility in life now is to look after my sister. And I’m coming to terms that you and me can’t be—”
“Don’t,” he begged, shaking his head. “Don’t say it.”
“Ian. We can’t do this anymore. I can’t be yours, and you can’t be mine.”
“You’re running away before you even give us a fair chance. I know things have been crazy lately, and I know we haven’t found our footing yet, but we just need more time.”
“You’re right. We need time to let go of the idea of us. You’re an amazing person, Ian Parker, and you have so many outstanding things coming your way. But I refuse to be the girl who gets in the way of your dreams. I know you say I won’t, but I know I will. Especially with Rosie. So I’m ending this. I’m breaking up with you because I care too much about you to keep this going.”
“You promised,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You promised you wouldn’t leave. You promised you wouldn’t abandon me.”
That felt like a knife to my soul. I knew of his struggles. I knew how he feared being left behind, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t be with him, because not only did it put his family’s ranch in danger, but it put Rosie in harm’s way, and I couldn’t let anything happen to her. I couldn’t let her get hurt because I selfishly wanted to be with Ian.
I didn’t respond to his comment, and that was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, because I wasn’t trying to abandon him. If I had a say in the matter, I’d easily love him forever.
He lowered his head. “I want to push you, but it feels like you’ve already made up your mind.”
“I have, and I’m sorry. It’s better this way. I know you can’t see it right now, but it truly is better. I am so sorry for hurting you, but it’s better to do it now than years down the line.”
Tears flooded my eyes, but I did my best to blink them away. I didn’t want to cry, because I was certain he’d want to wipe my tears away.
I saw the moment it happened, the moment his shell began to harden. His eyes flashed with that same hatred he’d held for me when we first met. His jaw clenched, and he stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets . . .
“Ian . . . I’m sorry, please don’t . . .”
Hate me.
Please don’t hate me.
“Keep the damn house. Keep the job. Keep everything, Hazel. But I don’t want to hear from you again.”
He didn’t say another word. As he began to walk away, my mind started spinning as panic began to settle in my gut. He was leaving, he was hurting, and he was building up his wall again—all because of me. “Ian, wait.”
He looked back toward me, and a flash of hope moved across his eyes.
I swallowed hard. “Maybe we can still be friends?”
“Friends?” The hope sizzled from his irises, and his stare became stone cold. “Fuck you and your friendship, Hazel Stone.”
35
IAN
Maybe we can still be friends.
Was she fucking joking? Those words felt like the biggest slap in the face after everything we’d been through.
She hadn’t even tried to find a middle ground for our love. She hadn’t given me a chance to showcase how things could
’ve worked. She’d simply cut the cord and left without even trying. It had been weeks since Hazel had called it quits for us, but she’d reached out and kept saying she hoped we could be friends like before.
Yeah, fucking right.
I didn’t know how to be her friend anymore, and I didn’t want to be her friend. I wanted to be her forever.
At least, I’d thought I did when I’d thought I knew who the hell she was. It turned out she was nothing worth chasing. She’d abandoned me, because that was what people did. They fucking left.
I sat in the airport, waiting to board the plane to our next show. I kept flipping through Hazel’s Instagram, where she had pictures of her and Rosie grinning ear to ear. I didn’t know why I kept scrolling through the photographs, looking at them all as if it weren’t killing me every single second, but I couldn’t stop myself.
She looked happy.
How had she looked so happy after ripping my fucking heart out and stomping it into the ground?
I didn’t understand. I’d thought we had something real, something that we both craved from this world—real love.
But maybe I’d been dreaming. Maybe there wasn’t anything real about us. Maybe we were just a temporary love story.
I should’ve known. All good things had a way of leaving.
“You all right, man?” James asked as he nudged me in the arm.
I shut off my phone and slid it into my pocket. “Yeah. I’m good.”
He frowned, knowing better than to believe me. “You know, I don’t think Hazel did what she did out of not having feelings for you. I think she honestly was trying to protect you.”
I huffed. “Protect me from what?”
“From you giving up your biggest dream to have her in your life.”
“I wouldn’t have given up my dream. I’ve been doing it, haven’t I? I’ve been showing up and performing and putting one hundred percent into this music, James. So fuck that excuse. I’m not buying it. I even invited her out here with Rosie to join us. I went out of my way to bring them into our world.”
“Yeah, I know, but you can’t believe that’s for the best. Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
James grimaced and patted my shoulder. “Ian, Rosie is only four months old, and Hazel is just now getting a grip on some kind of normalcy. Do you really think it would be wise to bring a kid as young as Rosie on the road? What kind of life would that be for her? For Hazel? You’re asking them to uproot their world to come into yours, and that’s not fair.”
I hated that he was right, and I hated that I was being so selfish, but I didn’t care. I wanted them there, with me, so Hazel and I could try to see whatever it was we could’ve become. It was stupid; I knew that. I could hardly imagine me being on the road for months, traveling city to city, hotel to hotel, with no sense of normalcy. It was messed up for me to even offer up such an idea to Hazel. But still . . . I’d tried.
“Shit,” I murmured, rubbing my hands against my face.
“I know it sucks, man, and I know you really care about her, the same way she cares about you, but the best thing you could do for yourself is handle these next few weeks and remember why we started this all. It’s all about the music. It’s always been about the music.”
Yes, that was true. It had been all about the music before I’d known that there was more to the world.
I gave him a half grin. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. Just got to get through the first few weeks of this change, and I’ll be back to my normal self again.”
Bullshit.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
He gave me another pat on the back before heading off to talk to the other guys. Probably to inform them that I wasn’t going completely off my rocker and I’d be able to be committed to the next few months of our lives. I would be committed too. Until forever still rang true when it came to my bandmates, even though I’d been slipping a little as of late.
They were busting their asses day in and day out, and what had I done? Given them reasons to doubt our shot at fame because my heart ached for something that wasn’t mine to have anymore?
The walls I’d been working so hard to knock down over the past months were beginning to build again as reality set in—I’d never fucking known who Hazel Stone really was.
I had to shut it off. Shut off my feelings, shut off my heart, shut off my emotions.
I unfollowed her on social media. I deleted all of our previous text messages. I let her go as much as I could, and then I boarded the plane and found the whiskey.
I prided myself on being able to be fully invested in our performances no matter how heavy my heart felt. It became easier when we were standing under those bright lights and a sold-out crowd was singing our lyrics back to us.
Every single day, I thanked God for our fans and for having the ability to meet them. To perform for them. There were so many hard parts of the job, so many things I hated and wished I didn’t have to partake in. Having meet and greets with the fans wasn’t one of those things. If anything, it was the highlight of my career. It was because of those people that I was able to live the life I lived. It was due to their undying love and support that I was allowed to do what I loved doing: create music.
The lines grew more and more each show, which felt surreal to me. Everything was happening in superspeed. I wondered if this was what boy bands felt like. One day, they were performing at high schools, and the next, boom. Millions of fans.
The fans came in droves, hundreds of people spending way too much money to meet me and my gang for the amount of time it took me to scribble my name and snap a photograph. There wasn’t much time for conversation, but there were tears.
The fact that people cried over me and my bandmates baffled me.
It all felt like a dream. Days blended into nights, and weeks transformed into months.
And still, every now and again, Hazel Stone would cross my mind. I tried to brush her away from my thoughts, but it was almost impossible to do so. When I called home to chat with Grams and Big Paw, it took everything for me to not ask how Hazel was doing. Sometimes I’d hear Rosie crying in the background, and I’d want to rush home to hold her.
So stupid, I thought to myself. It’s not even your kid, and you miss her.
Whenever Hazel would cross my mind, I’d let her linger there for a while before moving on and focusing back on the music. Max Fucking Rider told me I just had to find a hot model to bang to get Hazel out of my head, but that was the last thing I wanted. Luckily, Marcus was more than willing to take the models off my hands.
I hadn’t come on that tour for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I’d come for only one reason: to share my music with the masses, and that was exactly what we were doing.
Still, oddly enough, even though I was surrounded by thousands of fans chanting my name, never in my life had I ever felt so alone.
If you’d asked me years ago if I would miss Eres, I would’ve laughed in your face. Still, there were days I would’ve rather been in the pigpen, hauling hay and staring at Hazel Stone as she told me her confessions.
No matter how much I’d tried to shut off my heart, I couldn’t. It was as if after Hazel had awakened it, I couldn’t turn it back off. And it hurt. It hurt so fucking bad some days all I wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep.
Since I couldn’t do that, I used whiskey to cope.
I drank more than I should’ve every day to keep my heart from shattering. The guys mentioned it every so often when I’d show up with sunglasses on to the meet and greets, but I didn’t have the energy to explain myself to them. I was fucked up and needed the whiskey to keep me going.
I never missed a show.
That should’ve been all they were concerned about—I always showed up.
Three months had passed since Hazel and I had ended the relationship. The band and I were officially heading back to Los Angeles to finish the tracks on our first album. After the album launched, I knew our
lives were only going to grow busier.
One night after our last meet and greet before heading back to LA, James pulled me to the side. He must’ve smelled the whiskey on my breath, the same way he had all the nights before.
He lowered his brows. “Be honest, Ian. Are you happy?”
I snickered. “What does happiness have to do with anything? We’re getting famous,” I sarcastically remarked. He went to argue with my words, but I stopped him. After all, the show must go on.
It amazed me how it could seem that all your dreams had come true, yet still, it wasn’t what you’d thought it would be like.
I’d been having nightmares. Some involving my parents, others involving Hazel. I didn’t remember all of the pieces of them, but at the end of each dream, I’d be falling down what felt like an endless black hole. I’d scream out for help, and everyone would stand around me on the outskirts, watching me spiral, watching me fall, and yet no one would reach out to me to give me their hand to hold. Instead, I’d keep free-falling with no hope of finding my way back to solid ground.
When I’d awake, I’d sit up in the darkness of my room and then fall back to sleep, hoping the dreams wouldn’t come back.
36
HAZEL
“James said Ian has been miserable,” Leah mentioned during our girls’ night, which was now a weekly event. We’d been bingeing Netflix, doing face masks, and eating crappy food as Rosie rolled around in her playpen. Leah had become a best friend to me, and I couldn’t have thanked her enough for stepping in to help care for Rosie when I had online exams to complete.
My chest tightened as I sat on the sofa, eating popcorn. The last thing I wanted to hear was that Ian was struggling with our split. I’d had a strange hope that he’d be able to move on from thinking about me due to his career taking off.
“I wish you would’ve brought me a better update,” I muttered. Guilt had been eating me alive lately, along with loneliness. I missed Ian more than words could ever express. My sleep had been affected by everything that had happened over the past few weeks too. My nightmares had come back, only this time they were dreams about Charlie harming Rosie—my worst fear in the world.
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