Page 96 of Soul Food

He smiled, and it hurt to see it because it was sad—like me, like us. “I’m trying to do better by you. Don’t tempt me to take back my words and steal you away.” Like a flower, he stood before me wilting. His petals lying on the ground at our feet.

I let go of his arm…

…letting him go.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

This is ya boy Tyler Dee with Tyler On These Beatz!

First Liz James, then her father Brian James, and now Amit Kingston?

Sure, the Black Hearts president hasn’t shown up dead anywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from wondering… It’s been two months, and still no one has heard from him. Word is, that his credit and debit cards haven’t been in use, and there was no large sum of money taken out before his disappearance either.

Which begs the question: Where is Amit Kingston?

What is happening to this industry?

Do we have reason to believe there’s a killer targeting the entertainment industry?

…Or is it all merely a coincidence?

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

***

This is ya boy Tyler Dee with Tyler On These Beatz!

Spotted: The SoulGoddess and The Oppressors chilling out at a public event together. SoulGoddess is looking rather gloomy. I wonder just how smitten our girl was with Black Hearts’s president or am I getting ahead of myself?

Have you guys already ordered your tickets for their upcoming tour? Make sure you catch one of their stops before they’re sold out. You know they created a whirlwind with SoulGoddess’s latest song, “Soul Food,” not to mention the boys dropping their first mini album last month and hitting the charts the first week of release.

This unique mash-up is one we don’t want to miss!

Chapter Twenty-Nine

6 months later…

RUTH

Nerves and adrenaline ricocheted off my chest cavity, my body thrumming to the sound of the crowd. The fans were screaming, and I wasn’t even on stage yet. I stood backstage like I always did and let her—music—pull me in.I let her cadence flow through my veins. I let music in. I let music become me. Always and forever, music was a living and breathing entity in my very lungs the moment a song came on.

In life, my one true solace had always been music. Lyrics were there when I was down and even when my ma wasn’t. I listened to lyrics and heard someone sing the same things I felt, the same things I witnessed and been through. I fell in love with her, the way she brought us all together and showed we all felt the same sometimes.

She gave strength when weak. Hope when it felt like there was none. She hyped you up, or she put you on your knees. She explained us all.

I thought I had to give her up. Now, I never did. But I was about to let go of this part of her if everything worked out.

SoulGoddess! SoulGoddess! SoulGoddess!

I could hear them chanting my name.

Once upon a time, there was a girl that attracted a demon—or more accurately, her soul did. He went on to scare her and promised to eat her soul. But instead, he stood by and watched her achieve her dream. He wouldn’t let her enter relationships, but he never told her who he was either. He watched her like a perv. A real awful demon he was. But then she met him and just like he was drawn to her, she instantly felt a connection in which she had never experienced before. Both fools, you see, because they only took enough from each other in hopes of it being okay. Him only watching her from afar, and her only going after his body, but that failed miserably. And the truth came out, and it wasn’t pretty.

If you think I regretted letting the demon disappear on me that day, you were right.

I’d had six months to think about it, and the only thing I knew was I missed him terribly. The first day I spent in denial, I thought he would come back. That first week was spent waiting for him to come find me. The day he was supposed to come for my soul, I expected him to show. I wished he had, but he didn’t.

He meant his words. I couldn’t have gotten to this acceptance of my feelings for him if he hadn’t said what he had that day. He gave me a sense of respect. He treated me wholly as an individual, and it sealed the ache I had deep inside my chest for him. His words freed me into loving him out loud. I did this by admitting it to other people, including Liam and the boys, Ma, and Jayne who thought he was most likely dead and hurt on my behalf.

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