Skeletons of Us (Unquiet Mind Book 2)
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Authors: Anne Malcom
SKELETONS OF US
Unquiet Mind #2
By Anne Malcolm
Copyright 2016 Anne Malcolm
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.
Edited by:
Hot Tree Editing
Cover Design: Sarah at
Okay Creations
Cover image Copyright 2016
Formatting by
Max Effect
CONTENTS
Love can be a beautiful thing.
It can fill up your life with the warmth of its embrace and spread to every corner of your mind.
It can quiet your soul.
But when that love turns wrong, it twists and warps into something bitter and unrecognizable.
The pain of it promises unyielding noise in place of that half-remembered silence.
Lexie has lived with this pain for four years, pouring it into music that transformed Unquiet Mind into the most famous rock band in the world.
But fame can also turn ugly, curl into that bitter version of love and endanger everything Lexie holds dear.
The moment Lexie’s life is threatened, he comes back to ensure she stays alive.
Killian.
He’s not just back to save her life, he’s back to save her soul and to claim what’s his.
Problem is, someone else already considers Lexie his, and he’ll kill to make sure she stays that way.
To my Dad.
I may have lost the gift of your wisdom, but I’ll always feel your support. I miss you every day.
“Hello, Los Angeles,” I murmured into the mic, my voice thankfully not shaking like the hand holding my guitar was.
The returning roar was deafening. The sound filled up my mind, making my teeth chatter. It wasn’t mere sound; it was physical. The crowd in front of me was a pulse. It was like the sun; I couldn’t look too closely at it or I might be blinded. Or faint. Either way, I couldn’t think too closely on the fact that there were thousands of people in this arena to see
us
. We weren’t opening for another band or playing for some small gig. This was real. People paid to see Unquiet Mind. Our dream was coming true.
I glanced to Wyatt who was at my side. He was grinning.
Grinning
at the crowd in an easy way like they were some cute girl he was trying to get to go home with him. I glanced to Sam, who wasn’t grinning. His usually cheerful face was stoic and he clutched his drumsticks so hard his knuckles were white under the fluorescent lights.
Noah was regarding me, his beanie pulled low on his head, his eyes lazy. He looked like he always did before a show. Serene. Like he’d just done an hour of yoga or smoked a huge joint. He winked at me.
I took a deep breath and turned to the screaming mass once more.
“We’re Unquiet Mind and we’re here to rock your world.” My voice echoed through the arena.
When my fingers ran along my guitar string and I sang the first word into the mic, the sound disappeared, like a black hole had opened up right there and swallowed it all up. All that was left was the music, flowing through me like a wonderful kind of energy. A temporary cure to an aching soul.
The entire set was a blur, like some kind of half-imagined dream, or what I thought a drug trip might be like.
Then it wasn’t. One pure, lucid moment hurtled into my mind’s eye. My gaze locked with ice blue eyes that assaulted me every time I thought I might be escaping the heartbreak from that dock a year ago. They were there. Right there. In the crowd.
He was there.
Killian.
And then, in the snap of forever, he was gone.
The last word of the song left my lips and the roar entered my brain once more. I’d wonder for almost three years if that was a side effect of the nirvana of performing or if I’d began hallucinating.
I never thought he was actually there.
Though I wished it. Every show I looked for those ice blue eyes.
I never saw them again.
Not until later.
THREE YEARS LATER
“These echoes of silence are a part of me.”
-Lexie Williams
You’re not meant to speak ill of the dead. I was pretty sure the same sentiment translated to
thinking
ill of the dead. But I couldn’t help it.
“Andrew was the best of us. Selfless as he was kind, the world is a little less bright now that he’s left it for the warm embrace of our Lord.”
Sam rolled his eyes and made a disbelieving sound from beside me, the very sound I was doing my best to suppress. Wyatt elbowed him subtly, glaring at him the way a parent might try to communicate a scolding in public when they couldn’t spank them. It was the way of those two, though Wyatt definitely shouldn’t be classed as the responsible one. Due to something I’d walked in on two months ago, I knew he was just the person to be spanking someone—just not a male someone.
But seriously,
selfless
?
Kind
? Sam’s gesture was well founded. Andrew Bruntley was a lot of things, a long list of things. No one could ever accuse him of being kind nor selfless, not while he was alive anyway. Now he was dead, everyone seemed to forget that he was, in truth, an asshole. As soon as someone stopped breathing, unless they committed some horrible crimes, they somehow transformed in people’s minds. Every bad thing about them was forgotten, memories of the goodness replacing it. Sometimes qualities, like selflessness and kindness, were plucked from thin air.
I guessed you couldn’t really say, “He was a narcissistic dick who didn’t care about anyone else but himself” in a eulogy, hence the imaginative euphemisms.
I only thanked the Lord, who was unlucky enough to have Andrew in His warm embrace, that I didn’t have to go up there and lie through my teeth about my dearly departed boyfriend. That’s what both my publicist and manager had wanted. That’s what everyone at the godforsaken funeral were expecting. Aching for. Half of Hollywood seemed to be here—supermodels in the latest in funeral chic and actresses, who had previously despised him, crying crocodile tears. I’d imagine that less than a quarter of people here were mourners; the rest were spectators. A death, the death of a prominent movie star, and the invitation to the funeral were the hottest ticket around. That was sick, but that was Hollywood. Paparazzi were crowded around the entrance to the cemetery. They had followed the crowds of town cars like vultures. At least I didn’t have to worry about them snapping some photo of me, when my grieving girlfriend mask slipped.
I was sorry he was dead. I wasn’t emotionless; I may have a huge hole in the place where my heart was meant to be, but I wasn’t cruel. Andrew was a bastard, an arrogant movie star, a chauvinistic prick, and
so not my boyfriend,
but he didn’t deserve to die. Very few people actually deserved to die. Only truly evil people who tainted the earth with their presence didn’t deserve to take breath in it.
My heart stuttered.
Like my father.
My mind left the crowded cemetery, and the lies of the minister left my ears for a split second.