[Once and Forever 04] • Immaterial Defense

*She’s all alone in the darkness.

He’s lighting up the stage.

But not even the brightest spotlight can reach the shadows of a broken soul. *

* **Declan** *

Every wanna-be rocker dreams of the day when crazed fans will pack their shows. But the more people worship me as some kind of musical god, the more I realize why singers are called "performers." I'm just a pretender. A fake. 

I need something real. Something to break through the revolting glamour that's bled into every part of my life. And for one perfect night, I found that in Sara. 

Then she ran. 

* **Sara** *

No sane woman would’ve ever walked away from Declan Hollis after only one night. But walking away from him was the safest move for both of us.

I've spent so much time burying my old self in the past, trying to erase the vulnerable person I used to be. I’m smarter now—men are dangerous, and relationships are doubly so. 

But the more time I spend away from him, the more I want to go back.

I may end up shattered all over again. Or maybe, just maybe, he'll be the one to help me pick up the pieces. 

****Immaterial Defense is a standalone contemporary romance****

A rockstar twist on The Emperor’s New Clothes, and this is how Declan and Sara's fairytale begins…

*Once upon a time there was a woman whose life had been blessed from the moment of her birth. She wore beautiful gowns and went to fancy balls and danced with handsome princes and hated every second of it. For though none but the woman knew it, these things were not real but imagined. And the reason she understood this was because she wasn't real either, having been unmade in a single moment in time…by an enemy she hadn’t foreseen…in a way that left her body wounded and her soul scarred.

At that moment she finally learned the truth of the world—that nothing mattered because no one was safe and no one cared. Regardless of what she did, she couldn’t find anyone who believed her, so the woman felt alone beyond imagining. Even sadder than that was the day she stopped being lonely, when she gave up trying to make people hear her, when she gave up on people altogether. And even sadder still was the day she gave up on herself.

The woman began a new life, apart from all others, even while surrounded by admirers, for she knew they were admiring someone who wasn’t real, whose truth couldn’t be seen by their eyes. Though outwardly people still believed her to be beautiful and blessed, inwardly she knew it wasn’t true. And though her appearance and wealth continued to bring compliments and accolades, she saw what none other could—that for the rest of her non-existence, she would be invisible to all.*