Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 220
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
“We don’t stay up past four a.m. tonight. It’s only three a.m., so if we go take a nap now and clock in three hours, it’ll give us enough time in the morning to get the videos done for Sheela before the bus walkthrough. I’ll set my alarm.”
Phoenix says, “Okay. But you’re sleeping with me in my bunk.”
I don’t think he trusts that I will go to sleep. Which is fair. I can’t really tell if I’d hold myself to the full three hours.
“You just want to rub your dick against my ass,” I say into a smirk.
“You keep telling yourself that, nepo baby.” He stands up and grabs my hand. Phoenix crawls in first. Before I know it, I’m wedged in his bunk, and I have my phone alarm set.
Curtains shroud us in darkness. Phoenix presses close to me, his chin on the top of my head, his arm wrapping around my chest. Being this near always sends a surge of serotonin through my system. Everything calms. It’s so easy to sleep.
When I wake, it is not 6 a.m. I blink a bunch and squint through the glow of my phone. We didn’t change time zones, but it’d make me feel a thousand times better if we were somewhere in Oceania—Australia, New Zealand, the fucking Polynesian islands.
Because what the fuck—it cannot be 10 a.m. in Amarillo, Texas.
There’s only one thing that makes sense. I roll over to see Phoenix is awake and scrolling on his phone. “Did I sleep through my alarm?” I ask, my voice full of morning rasp.
He meets my eyes when he says, “I turned it off so you could sleep.”
I almost can’t breathe through the sudden anger.
“Back lounge,” I growl. “Right fucking now.” I jerk the curtain to the bunk aside and roll out of bed. Crew are already milling about the bus, brewing coffee, and getting ready for the day because it’s TEN in the goddamn morning.
I’m vibrating with ire as I pass Stan, who gives me a wide berth. The back lounge with the U-shaped couch is empty. A true blessing in this already fucked day.
Take three breaths, I coach myself. Take four. Five. No amount of breath training can push down the anger swirling in the pit of my stomach. Not even as Phoenix shuts the door closed.
Phoenix’s eyes are wide in panic. “Tom, if I knew you’d be this upset—”
“You wouldn’t have what?” I cut him off, my throat blistered with anger. “Shut off my alarm. Cost me an entire morning of work. Fucked over this album, the tour, our careers—”
“Hey,” Phoenix growls. “This hasn’t fucked over anything, Tom.”
“You don’t know that,” I choke out, hurt chipping away at my fortitude. Why doesn’t he care about this as much as me? Why does no one fucking care? “That was time I needed to get those videos done. Time you stole from me.”
Phoenix winces into a scowl. “You think I stole from you, fine. But I stole your exhaustion. I stole your fogged, sleepless brain. What I didn’t steal was your fucking career. Because there’s no way in hell one stupid fucking video interview would make or break you.”
“We’ll never know if it could’ve made us into something bigger,” I counter. “Because you didn’t let me.”
He glowers. “I don’t regret what I did. Reverse time, and I’m making the same choice.”
“Fuck you,” I curse. “I bet you didn’t even go to sleep. Didn’t take a nap. Just stared at your phone all night—”
“Because I’m an insomniac, Tom! I don’t fucking sleep!!” His bloodshot eyes bear into me. Steal oxygen right out of my lungs.
My throat swells. Pressure compounds on my chest. “What?” I blink through the pain in my sternum.
Phoenix kneads the back of his neck. His voice is as raw as the look in his eyes. “I’m lucky on a good day to get four, maybe five hours. Otherwise, I’ll take three. Chronic exhaustion has ruined me in so many ways. The irritability. My short fuse. You don’t want that, man. One thing I will never apologize for is letting you sleep. There are things you can sacrifice for our band, but not that.”
My anger evaporates off me slowly. I thought he needed to understand me, but maybe I just needed to understand him. “How did I not know?” I say into an agonized wince. “I just thought you were…I don’t know…like a cat taking a bunch of naps.”
“Basically yeah. Just the naps are short and shitty.”
“Dude, how long have you been without sleep?” Worry climbs up my spine, and I check my phone, trying to do mental math. He’s been projecting, right? That’s why he’s so overly obsessed with my sleep schedule. He’s the one being mentally fucked all the time.
I hate I didn’t know. I didn’t realize…
“‘Wired,’” I name a song we wrote together, agony swelling in my chest. My eyes burn. I sing this song five nights a week. “‘I eat through time like a regnant beast, while time laughs back at me.’ You came up with that line. I didn’t think…there is pain in it?” I thought it was boastful, but Phoenix is forced to eat through time.