Page 3 of Jude

The standard industry playbook dictated that to be a rockstar, you had to burn out, pop pills, trash rooms, leave venues in cop cars, and treat people like disposable commodities.

The world expected the cliché: snow on the table, a hundred groupies in the trailer, and a chaotic trail of destruction left in your wake.

Six Sinners had thrown that script in the garbage; we believed the fast life was a trap designed to shorten your career and wreck your sanity.

Besides, we’d already shredded our youth with drugs, homelessness, and even jail years ago; we just weren’t about that life anymore.

‘We’re out,’ Bishop called, throwing a chin-thrust my way.

I flicked a two-fingered salute as he and the crew stalked down the corridor, their second-wind adrenaline a contrast to my grinding, bone-deep exhaustion.

Post-show runs were standard, but tonight my engine was dead.

Early flight to catch, too.

I hauled down the hall, tossing brief nods to backstage crew as the post-gig crash hit like a sledgehammer.

Two months back, opening night had me running hot.

Ten thousand voices roaring under the rig, my guitar a live wire in my grip.

Now, weeks deep into the run, the high was dead, replaced by a cold numbness.

Stripped down to jeans and a sweat-soaked tee, I trudged down the venue corridor with my head down, my hard case in my hand.

I hit the elevator button.

Minutes later, I sat in the back of a black town car provided by Knights End Music, as the Austin at night rolled past the glass.

The city’s neon lights cut across my face.

We passed a strip of card houses and small-time casinos, my eyes locking onto them out of pure habit.

An old itch twitched under my skin, the ghost of a past I tried to bury.

I locked the craving down, holding the line all the way to my hotel until the car pulled up outside The Archer.

The hotel sat twenty minutes off the main strip.

Upscale, quiet, tucked away from the swarms of fans and tourists choking downtown.

I prowled inside to my suite, a silent, discreet sanctuary, just the way I liked it.

I laid my custom Martin, Grace, into her velvet case, shut the cupboard door, and dropped onto the bed.

My body was wrecked, and as I set the alarm, I welcomed the silence and went out like a light.

The loud beeping jerked me awake, and I knifed up from bed, pushed off, and threw my gear into a bag.

A couple of hours later, I was strapped into a first-class seat at Austin’s airport, staring out at the tarmac.

Eyeing the families, couples, and kids filing down the aisle around me, a sudden wave of isolation hit my chest.

The band was crucial, but over the last year, the hunger in my soul began to shift.

The wealth, the platinum records, the luxury mansion I now owned in Nashville, the toys; all of it was noise without my own family to share it with.

I’d built an impressive career, enough to bury the shame of my past, yet my heart was an empty desert.