Read Night Moves (The Night Songs Collection) for Free Online Page A

better than rotting away in some jail cell. “Whatever has happened to you, it doesn’t make you any less of a person. It doesn’t cancel out what you think, what you feel.”
    He shook his head against my fingers. “It does. I’m not a person anymore. I’m a monster. I lost everything for this band, and then I have to listen to shit like what happened during sound check every single day. Nothing’s ever good enough for Drake. He doesn’t care what he destroys to get what he wants. Do you know I haven’t seen my girls in a year because of this?”
    Ryder had been married to a semi-successful, totally beautiful actress named Shannon Seymour. Perky little blonde thing who starred in a sitcom about ten years ago. Their divorce had been splashed all over the gossip rags last year. At the time, Erin emailed me all the dirt, with a smiley face in the subject line. I never responded. Now as those images flashed through my mind, I wondered if that was her way of trying to drag me out of my adulthood jail and back to the land of the living. If she only knew how tangible Ryder’s pain was while I sat here in his bunk. That he’d never be a part of the land of the living again.
    The irony was not lost on me. It emptied me.
    “I’m so sorry.” I whispered. “Maybe your wife—“
    “Ex-wife.”
    “Whatever. Maybe she’ll come around, and understand that you’re no different than you were before. That you still love them.”
    “No! You have no idea what you’re talking about. You hardly know me.” Those words cut my soul. “You don’t know what I was like before. If I didn’t love them with every fiber of my being, I would maybe be able to accept that they’d be better off without me as this beast. But they’ll never be better off without me as a father.”
    Hot tears slipped down my cheeks. How must those little girls feel, mourning the loss of a father who they didn’t even realize was dead? Or undead. One that was everywhere they looked, except for the place they needed him to be.
    “Tell me about them.” I knew this was risky, but Ryder needed help processing this pain.
    Thankfully, his face softened and his eyes filled with the love of a proud father as he began to talk. “Isabella, Issy, is nine. She’s my little tomboy. First string on the All Star soccer team. Olivia is my princess. She’s six. She wants to be an actress. Just like Mommy.” Ryder reached for his phone and pulled up pictures of two adorable little girls with shiny dark hair just like his. “Shannon still sends me photos. I don’t know if she’s trying to make me feel better or torture me.”
    “They’re beautiful.”
    “I know. Thank you.” He put the phone away, almost as if it caused him physical pain to look at the pictures. “This job cost me everything.” His voice was little more than a whisper.
    I sighed, the weight of his sorrow closing the sides of the bunk inward. “I understand.”
    “That’s nice of you to say, but with all due respect, you couldn’t possibly.”
    It was time to take the plunge. After all, Ryder was a vampire, he could surely sympathize with the fact I was a murderer. Right?
    “Remember when you asked me what I was running from?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Well, I gave up everything I cared about for my job too. I got this great job in the investment department in one of the biggest banks in Boston. So many people I went to college with are still struggling, looking for jobs, and I got recruited before I even graduated. I made enough to pay my student loans, pay off my car, and still have a life. Or so I thought. I talked my boyfriend into staying in Massachusetts instead of heading back to Oklahoma after graduation. I thought we could really make a go of it. I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But I didn’t realize that maybe I wasn’t so lucky to get this job after all. There was a reason they went after me so hard, and it had nothing to with me. It was them. The demands