Prologue
JUDE GRAVES
The city lights blur past, reflected in the glossy black of my 2025 Lamborghini Revuelto. Alexei’s gift. His way of softening the blow of leaving the band behind in the States. I’ll admit that Moscow looks beautiful at night from the driver’s seat.
“Nightcrawler”by Travis Scott pounds through the speakers, the bass vibrating through the frame of the car and into my bones. I let the music swallow everything else. My black T-shirt clings to my chest as I glance down at my arm. Track marks windbetween my tattoos, thin reminders that somehow, against all odds, I’m still alive.
I exhale smoke and watch it curl into the cold air, twisting like the fucking ghosts that won’t leave my head no matter how hard I try. The wind tears through my messy black hair as the chorus hits. For a moment, I feel strangely peaceful. High, detached…and untouchable.
Like the world is just a movie I’m watching instead of a life I’mactuallyliving.
Against my better judgment, my thoughts drift toherand the spark in those honey-brown eyes when she looked up at me...
The memory shouldn’t matter anymore...but it aches in a place I keep trying to bury beneath the bass, the smoke, and the speed. It’s better this way. At least she’s safe.
And Micah.
I left them for areason. I told myself distance would dull everything eventually. But every song, every rush of wind, every streak of passing streetlights drags me right back to the life I walked away from. To the man I used to be. I refuse to say her name, even in my own head.
My phone buzzes, and I glance at it.
Adriana:
Hey, baby. I know you’re enjoying that car, you lucky asshole. I’d love it if Nolan got me one. Dinner is at 7. Meet us back at the hotel, and we’ll go together.
I don't respond. I have my hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. The city stretches endlessly ahead, neon bleeding into the darkness as the speed climbs higher.
Faster.
Further.
Away.
This is who I am now. And for tonight, at least, I can pretend I’m okay with that.
I have to be.
Chapter one
EMMA EASTON
I can’t stop shaking. It’s like I’ve been ripped from a frozen lake, yet I’m covered in hospital blankets. My teeth are chattering so hard that my jaw aches, every muscle locked tight as if my body is bracing for an inevitable blow. My hands won’t obey me. I press them flat against my thighs, try to ground myself, tobreathe, but my lungs keep forgetting how. The heart monitor keeps blaring warnings that it’s panicking, like a bird trapped in a crevice that it might die in. I feel like it will eventually beat so fast that it will just trip over itself.
He’s gone.
He’s gone he’s gone he’s gone—
I have my phone clutched uselessly in my hand. I’ve called him so many times that my thumb is actually numb. But he has me blocked. Again.
I just had him back.
The thought rips through my stupid, devastated heart. I had him back. His voice. His laugh. His hands on me, loving me, like I was worthsurvivingfor.
And they took him from me.
My chest caves in, pain detonating behind my ribs, and I fold forward with a broken sound tearing out of me. My stomach lurches violently. I barely manage to twist before I’m retching over the side of the hospital bed, bile burning my throat as my body empties itself like it’s trying to purge him from me.
“Emma, shit—”