"Hurting: A Dark Romance Novella"

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There was once a girl who was lost. And she met a boy who was lost, and they tried to save each other. And they did save each other, for a little while. But then they got lost again, and even worse: they lost each other. I was the lost boy. And Eden was the lost girl—but she wasn’t lost in the same sense I was. She wasn’t just sad and bruised by life. She wasn’t just alone like me. No. She was literally lost. ... The pop idol. Everyone knows my name. Everyone knows my story, how I started from nothing and shot to stardom within a few years. I sell out stadiums within hours. I have everything, or so people think. What they don’t know is that everything is fake. My music, my success, my smiles. Even my name. I had to change it four years ago, when a girl broke my heart and ruined my life. I am starting a new tour in a few months, and I need at least five new songs. Problem is? I can’t write a single note. I am blocked. The hired help. I met her when we were both sad teens, each lost in our own tragedies. But with her, I came alive. We forged a bond that I thought would last a lifetime. I used to look at her and think that I could never stop. Then, one day, she told me she never wanted to see me again. And now, four years later? My team of assistants (ex-assistants, I should say, as they will all be fired soon) have hired an English lit student to help me out of my creative block. She is good, they say, she has won awards for her poetry. A genius of her generation. But when I see her? It’s her. The girl who destroyed me. The girl who stopped loving me on a whim and disappeared, taking my dreams with her. It’s four years later, and it’s four years too soon to be seeing her again. She pierced my heart. She ruined my life. I hate her. But when I look at her, she’s not the girl I hate: She is the girl who used to be my reason for existing. ... This is the story of how we met.