Page 6 of Wild Eyes
“Wait! Don’t you want to know my name?” she calls as I pull away slowly, giving her time to hop in her Tesla and trail behind. I don’t respond because I know who she is. I’ve been a closet Skylar Stone fan for years.
But I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I don’t say that. Plus, there will be plenty of opportunities for conversation.
Because if she’s heading to Wild Rose Records…we’re about to be neighbors.
CHAPTER TWO
SKYLAR
I have a thing for hands.I won’t even deny it.
Men’s hands, specifically. The way the tendons on top flex and ripple when they strum at a guitar. The way they use up the entire length of a microphone handle. The way they can be warm and gentle on my skin.
I’ve dated famous people. Artists and musicians. Handsome men, influential men. And yet, I’ve never found myself as obsessed with a man’s hands as I am with the ones wrapped around the steering wheel of the truck ahead of me.
The steel grip on my bicep as he threw us to the ground.
The scratch of his callouses against my skin as he told me it would all be okay.
The tattoos on his knuckles that I stared at every time he scrubbed his beard.
I can hear my dad in my head, clear as day, warning me away from a man like Weston. He’d be overly concerned about the person I’m dating tarnishing my pristineAmerica’s sweetheartreputation.
Respectable men don’t get tattoos a shirt can’t hide.
But what about heroic ones? Ones with dusty blond hair and muscles that make their shirt look just a little too tight through the shoulders.
Weston Belmont saved me from a grizzly bear. Saved me from myself, really. From my own naiveté.
A smarter girl would be captivated by his bravery, or his deep voice, or his quippy one-liners.
Not me. I’m following him down a backcountry road in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, daydreaming about his big fucking hands. I make a mental note to follow up with my therapist about this too. I have to be diagnosable. It has to be a coping mechanism of some sort.
Do daddy issues give you a hand kink?
I scoff at myself before muttering, “God, Skylar. You really need a people detox.”
And it’s true.
Or at least that’s what I told everyone when I packed up and left. Some might say that fleeing Los Angeles is running from my problems. Others might think it’s rude to show up unannounced for an unconfirmed job.
Me? I’m calling it fleeing the world’s most humiliating breakup.
I’m calling it desperation.
But I also have a plan. One I have kept secret from my parents, who work as my managers, as well as my agent, who is mostly just their paid puppet.
I’m going to record my own album. And I’m not going to tell a single soul about it. I don’t want their input. I don’t want their opinions. This project will be by me, for me.
I am desperate for a fresh start. Desperate for a change of scenery. Desperate to escape the chokehold my life has on me.
And I mean aliteralchokehold.
One where my throat goes so tight that every word fails me. Put a mic in my face, turn a camera on me, or trot me out in front of an audience, and your girl goes blank. All I can do is blink and giggle. My mouth goes dry, and I do my absolute best “bimbo impression,” as a recent headline called it.
I’m not even sure if they’re wrong anymore.
My most recent speechless moment came as I tearfully left a restaurant after enduring the aforementioned breakup. I walked out into a sea of questions.
