Page 1 of Moth to a Flame

CHAPTER ONE

Landon

“Find what you loveand let it kill you.”

Charles Bukowski said that. I’m just the hateful asshole who repeats it.

Since I was twenty-one, these words have been playing in my head like a sick mantra. Over and over.

Fourteen years now.

Fourteen years that I’ve known this one. Simple. Truth.

The things you love will end up killing you.

Or worse.

You’ll be the one who ends up killing them.

Abstinence it is. That’s the best solution for a man like me.

I’ve gone and done better than that. I fill my life with things that piss me right the fuck off. All in the name of suffocating thislovemuscle.

Because it is a muscle.

The more you hate everything and everyone, the less you’re after the comforts life has to offer. The less you obsess over them.

The less dangerous you become.

My gaze lands on the window in front of me. The sound of the ocean reminds me it’s there, despite the dark of the night hiding the water lapping at the shore.

Hate the ocean. I truly do. Hence why I walk on the beach often. Wet my feet and despise the sand clinging to my toes and how the saltwater ruins the hem of my jeans.

But the darkness isn’t all I see out there.

My reflection stares back at me.

At six-foot-five, I’m taller than most people. My black eyes are as dark as the night outside. The color is unnatural.

Almost as unnatural as the color of my platinum-blond hair that I was born with.

The thick straight strands reach my shoulders and I hate it.

Sure, I could’ve cut it short, avoiding the unnecessary glares.

No.

It’s an agony to look in the mirror every day, knowing I’m a spitting image of my dead father.

I need it to be a burden. To be insufferable.

Like this place I call a home is. This mansion that means nothing to me. If I had it my way, I’d live in a loft downtown. Nothing fancy. Concrete floors and an industrial-looking apartment. I’d like that.

I won’t have that. Ever.

I have this. This estate with the white and gold marble floors. The fancy spiral staircase. I sleep in a giant room overlooking the ocean. There’s a chandelier in the dining room, for fuck’s sake.

Last but not least, what antagonizes me the most is my business. Moth to a Flame. I’ve made a fuckton of money off it. Money I don’t need from millions of subscribers from all over the world. Money that makes me feel like a rich bastard. Definitely not someone I’d want to hang out with.

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