Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns)

by Monica Alexander

  “No, you didn’t screw up,” I said, biting my lip.

  “Uh, don’t do that,” he said, pinching my chin between his thumb and forefinger, pulling my lips to his. “You’re sexy enough when you’re not biting your lip. It makes me lose focus, and I need to stay in the moment right now.”

  “Why?” I asked, feeling like I was playing games. We both knew why.

  He raised his eyebrow at me. “Was it too much?”

  “Zack, are you serious?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I kind of am. Are you mad?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not mad. I am surprised, though, so if you were going for shock value, it worked.”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Listen,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking – we haven’t been together that long, we have a choppy history, you’re still in college, etcetera, etcetera. I know there are a million reasons for you to say no, but there’s one reason for you to say yes, and that’s that you love me. It’s that simple.”

  “Zack, it’s not simple,” I said, and I wasn’t sure why I was protesting. I didn’t even have a solid argument, outside of the things he’d already mentioned.

  He reached forward and smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen into my face. “Do any of the things I mentioned change the way you feel about me? Please say no.”

  No. Not in a million years.

  “Well no, but Zack this is a big step. Are you sure you want this? What about Lily? Have you thought about how this will affect her?”

  He smiled. “I know exactly what I want, and I know my daughter is on the same page as me. She adores you. But the question is, what do you want, Emily Cole? What would you do right now if there were no consequences, no regrets? What would your answer be?”

  I looked at him, so afraid to answer, but at the same time I didn’t want to hold back.

  “No thinking,” he warned. “Just go with your gut. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly, surprising myself, but knowing it was what I’d wanted all along.

  Somehow, through all we’d been through, and the ups and downs and the uncertainty, there was one thing I knew for sure. I knew that I was unconditionally in love with Zack Easton. And somehow that was enough for me to make the biggest decision of my life, because at the end of it all, I got to be with him. And that in itself was a fairytale ending.

  Playlist

  I listen to music constantly, so inevitably songs have a way of working themselves into my stories, but this was even truer with Buried Castles since music was a central theme all throughout the book. Below is a playlist of the songs I hear when I read the book. Of course, I had to leave out the Liar’s Edge songs because, as much as I wish they were a real band with real songs, they’re completely fictional. I can’t write music to save my life, and my guitar skills are even worse, so imagination will have to suffice for those songs, but all others are below are real. Some songs I referenced in the book itself, some Zack played, and others are just ones that I felt fit in nicely with the story. Enjoy!

  Love Bites (So Do I) – Halestorm

  One Day Too Late – Skillet

  Paranoia In B Major – The Avett Brothers

  Last Kiss – Taylor Swift

  Numb – Linkin Park

  A Place Only You Can Go – Needtobreathe

  Sandcastles – Kate Voegele

  Slow Burn – Atreyu

  Royal Blue – Cold War Kids

  Better Way – Sister Hazel

  The Dirt Whispered – Rise Against

  Wine After Whiskey – Carrie Underwood

  Undertow – Warpaint

  Get Me Right – Dashboard Confessional

  Use Somebody – Kings of Leon

  Some Nights – Fun.

  Enchanted – Taylor Swift

  Everybody’s Fool – Evanescence

  What I’ve Done – Linkin Park

  Kids In Love – Mayday Parade

  Shot Through the Heart – Bon Jovi

  Get Around This – SafetySuit

  Traitor – Liar’s Edge

  Brick By Boring Brick (Acoustic Version) – Paramore

  Jump – Liar’s Edge

  Without You – Liar’s Edge

  CASTLE OF GLASS – Linkin Park

  Payphone (featuring Wiz Khalifa) – Maroon 5

  You Can’t Break a Broken Heart – Kate Voegele

  Learning to Love Again – Mat Kearney

  White Horse – Taylor Swift

  Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – The Beatles

  Whispers in the Dark – Skillet

  Gravity – Sara Bareilles

  Never Grow Up – Taylor Swift

  I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – The Proclaimers

  Here We Go – Mat Kearney

  I Would Be Sad – The Avett Brothers

  This Isn’t Everything You Are – Snow Patrol

  Let Us Love – Needtobreathe

  Always Love – Nada Surf

  You and Me – Parachute

  Without You (New Verse) – Liar’s Edge

  Love Comes Tumbling Down – Matt Nathanson

  Shattered Crowns

  By Monica Alexander

  Copyright 2013 by Monica Alexander

  ISBN: 978-1-3013-5508-2

  Cover Image: (c) Lisa S. / www.shutterstock.com Stock Photography

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or personals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  The information in this book is distributed as an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One

  Zack

  “For a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world.”

  – Taylor Swift, Long Live

  “And that was Jump, the song that launched the four guys sitting before me into the virtual stratosphere just two months ago when it became the number one song in the nation. Today it’s at number twenty-four in our countdown. Hey everyone, I’m Lindsay Hollenbeck, and I’m here with Zack, Leo, Andrew and Derrick, the super-hot foursome that is Liar’s Edge, the hottest band to hit the music scene this summer! In a few minutes, we’re going to play their latest single, Without You, but first we’re going to take some time to get to know who these guys really are.” Lindsay turned to us then. “Tell me guys, what was it like to suddenly have everyone know your names and your music?”

  She watched us with anticipation, waiting for one of us to speak up and probably thinking we couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable. But to our credit, we were nervous. We’d done radio interviews all summer, but they were small time compared to a national broadcast in a major city that potentially millions of people would listen to. It was completely surreal.

  The lingering notes of Jump were still echoing in my ears, and I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. Shit, hearing our songs on the radio still caught me off-guard. None of us had ever thought it would happen so quickly, but as soon as we inked our record deal, my cousin Molly, who was our manager, her friend Adam, who owned Live Ammunition Records, and my fiancée, Emily, also our publicist, had worked their asses off to gain us notoriety.

&nb
sp; And they’d taken some pretty unorthodox routes in my opinion, but after the summer we’d had, I was convinced I didn’t know shit about promoting a band and sat back and just did what they told me to do since apparently they knew exactly what they were doing. Liar’s Edge had reached a point I’d only dreamed about when we’d been playing at small bars for so many years, loving the fact that there were thirty people in attendance who were singing along to our songs.

  “It’s fucking awesome,” our drummer Derrick said, when no one else spoke up, earning himself a bleep as Lindsay turned to him.

  “I love your excitement, Derrick, but the FCC will have my head if you use expletives like that on the radio,” she said, winking at him, and next to me I heard him mumble something to Andrew, our other guitarist.

  “I’m totally going to do her later,” he said.

  “No, you’re not, dude,” Andrew murmured back, shaking his head.

  “Zack, you’re smiling,” Lindsay commented when none of us said anything else, and I could hear Emily’s words in my head.

  Take the lead. When no one else speaks, you’re the lead singer, so you need to speak up.

  I looked up and caught her gaze through the window of the studio, and she smiled as she waved her hand forward in a rolling motion to encourage me to speak. I took a deep breath and launched into the talking points we’d gone over.

  Live with Lindsay Hollenbeck was the biggest radio interview we’d done to date, so we’d prepped a lot. The last thing I wanted to do was screw up. She’d called just the week before asking us to be on her Top 40 Countdown show that aired on Sundays. We were already going to be in L.A. for the week, so it was sort of a no brainer – especially when Molly and Emily told us the reason why. Lost Chances, the single we’d released at the beginning of August, had slowly been climbing the charts, and it was debuting that week in the number one slot.

  Hell yeah!

  We were also promoting our new single, Without You, which was airing for the first time on Lindsay’s show. It was off of our first full-length album, Devil’s Countdown, that was set to release in October. In June the label had re-produced and released our EP, Off the Outer Banks, that we’d been selling for a few years to local crowds. When they released it, though, they’d only included four of our older songs, in addition to Jump and Lost Chances. Since it had done so well, we were getting to release another album fairly quickly.

  Thankfully we’d been recording songs for the new album intermittently during the summer, since Adam had pushed up the release date by three months, but we still had about seven more songs to go before it was complete. Adam had booked studio time for us to get everything finished, and after we left L.A. we’d be home for just a few days before heading to Charlotte to record for two weeks. It was going to be crazy, but that was pretty much our lives these days.

  We’d just wrapped a summer long tour we’d done with a band called The Claws who we’d played with before, and just when I thought we might have a break so I could go home and spend some quality time with my daughter, Lily, who was two and a half, we’d hit it big. Not that I was complaining. No, what we were in the midst of was what I’d wanted and worked for since I’d been in high school. Playing in a band, making a living doing what I loved, writing music and performing it. It was at the core of who I was, and just that summer, practically everything I’d dreamed about since the first time I’d performed for an audience had come true.

  I just wished my mom would have been there to see it. We were coming up on the year anniversary of when she passed away after a long battle with cancer, and although Emily and the guys were aware of the date, they hadn’t said anything. They all knew how hard I’d taken losing her, and I think they were waiting to see what that day would bring. And I had no clue. There were days when I’d think about her and let myself breakdown, because I still missed her like crazy, but there were other days when I lived life to the fullest because I knew it was what she would have wanted me to do. Losing someone you loved was never easy, but I also knew she’d have been so incredibly proud and happy to see all that I’d accomplished.

  She’d passed away when I’d been going through one of the darkest periods in my life. I’d given up music, I’d ended things with Emily, and I drank a lot because it numbed the pain of watching my mother die slowly and painfully. But because she was a freaking angel, she saw the good in me and knew I’d do great things in life. It took me a little longer to realize it, but I was slowly coming around.

  Lindsay leaned toward me and eyed me with a gleam in her eye as I wrapped up my standard talking points about how well we thought the EP had turned out, how excited we were to showcase our music to the world and how awesome the fans had been. I’d done more interviews than the other guys over the summer, so I was prepared and comfortable to speak to what I knew about, but the questions that I knew would come next always unsettled me. I wasn’t overtly personal with people I didn’t know, so sharing things about my life felt weird and unnatural.

  “Well, it’s a great album,” Lindsay said, leaning even further forward.

  She was into me. I knew that. Before Emily had reigned in my heart a year earlier, I’d been a pretty big player, so I could spot the signs that a girl liked me fairly readily. I knew Derrick was chomping at the bit to hit on the hot blond with the sexy, gravelly voice in front of us, but I also knew she’d never go for him. He was too out there, too much of a risk, too much of a bad boy. I was, as Emily liked to call me, bad boy light. And Lindsay was the kind of girl who wanted to take risks but only if they wouldn’t burn her. I could tell she thought I was a safe bet.

  But I also wasn’t available. I’d asked Emily to marry me at the end of April and had put a giant ring on her finger that night after proposing on stage at Devil’s Hangout, the bar that Leo, our bassist, owned in Durham, North Carolina.

  It had been right before we’d started touring, and I was leaving Emily for a month since she was wrapping up her senior year at UNC. I hadn’t wanted to go without something concrete holding us together, since we’d had a rocky relationship from the start. So I’d gone all out and asked her to marry me even though we’d only been back together for about four months. I didn’t care. I knew she was the one, and I wanted her to have that security too. After what I’d done at the start of our relationship, I felt like I owed it to her.

  “Thanks,” I said in response to Lindsay’s reference to our first album.

  We’d been playing most of the songs we’d included on Off the Outer Banks for a few years, but our fan base had been limited to the places we’d played in North Carolina. It was a little unbelievable that essentially the whole world now knew our music.

  “Zack, you’re the songwriter of the group, right?”

  I nodded, then remembered that no one could see my response if I did that. “I am, along with Andrew.”

  I wanted to give my band mates credit where it was due. Most people who interviewed us only wanted to speak to me since I was the face of the group. They didn’t know that Leo was really our leader and the one who kept us all in line or that Andrew had collaborated with me on a lot of the songs or that without Derrick keeping things fun, we wouldn’t have taken a lot of the risks we had along the way. The four of us made up Liar’s Edge, not just me, and I wasn’t about to let anyone forget that.

  Lindsay grinned, but she didn’t move her gaze away from me. “Your lyrics are incredibly romantic. Do they reflect who you are in real life?”

  Next to me Derrick snickered and Leo, who was on my other side, coughed out a laugh. I elbowed them both simultaneously.

  “Leo, you don’t agree?” Lindsay asked, turning to him before I could answer. I noticed she was ignoring Derrick, and it was making him pout.

  Leo shook his head and laughed. “Zack is probably the least romantic person I know. If he wasn’t so good looking, he’d never score any chicks.”

  I looked up and caught Emily’s gaze, and she nodded. How she could be okay hearing that
was beyond me, but it was her idea. She wanted to play up the angle that I was hot and available, even though it was a total lie. I hadn’t so much as looked at another girl in over a year.

  “Oh, I don’t believe that for a second,” Lindsay said, grinning at me. “Zack seems like the brooding, introspective type who’d sweep a girl off her feet if given the opportunity.”

  I shook my head, doing my best not to show any emotion. I did not need to encourage her or make her think that she had a chance in any way, shape or form. “No, Leo’s right. I kind of suck at romance from an execution standpoint, but I can write about it.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Emily grinning and shaking her head. She of all people knew how cheesy and romantic I could be since she’d experienced it firsthand when I’d been trying to win her back after I’d royally fucked up and let her go. But she was the only girl I’d ever been romantic for, and it wasn’t like it came easy. I’d had a few botched attempts before I finally figured out what to do.

  Molly, who had joined Emily at some point outside of the sound booth, smiled at me and shook her head in disbelief. We’d been close our whole lives, so she’d seen me as a complete womanizer and then as the totally love-struck idiot I’d turned into after I realized Emily was the one.

  She’d also been there pretty much since Emily and I had first met. And because she knew me so well, she also knew before I did how hard I’d fallen for the sweet, innocent blond who we both knew was way too good for me. But despite our differences, Molly knew from the first time she saw Emily talking to me that we were going to end up together. Of course she didn’t tell me that. She let me see it on my own. She didn’t push me, because she knew me well enough to know it wouldn’t have done any good.