Second chances are hard enough when you deserve them. Then there are the ones you don't.
Callie asked if I was ready. And that's the question, isn't it? Ready for what? The spotlight? The music? Or ready for life. Ready to face the reality that what I was is going to attack the very fabric of who I am now. No one knows I'm a different person. Well, no one except the two most important people in my life, which is why there's a remote chance I might actually pull off the comeback I never saw coming.
Then again, that was before Holland Drake crashed into my life. I didn't ask for her. Heaven knows she didn't ask for me. But sometimes it's not about what makes sense; it's about accepting that not everything will. It's learning you have a choice when it feels like you don't. It's believing even the worst past can still have a future.
And sometimes it's none of that. Sometimes it's survival. A blind fight through the pain as you cling to any shred of hope you can find. And it's those moments, those desperate pleas into the darkness for a flicker of light, when you have no choice but to confront the blessing that often feels like a curse:
You're still alive. You're still significant.
You're once again Luke Craven, frontman for Night Shifts Black.
Contains mature themes.
His name is Luke. But nobody knows that. He was an iconic musician before he gave up music. But nobody knows that either. They also don't know he's twenty-seven, that he used to have an infectious laugh, and that he's way too young to be widowed. They certainly don't know the rest of his tragic story. All they know is that he comes into their cafe at the same time every morning and stares at the same chair at the same table. They know he's strange. They know he interrupts their breakfast with a cold blast of air as he hovers in the doorway, mustering the courage to confront a piece of furniture.
No one asks why. No one cares. He's fine with that. He's done with life. This isn't even his story anymore. It's actually Callie's, the young writer who sat in his chair one day.
Contains mature themes.
