Needing You Always

© Lizzie Morton 2023 All rights reserved. Edited: Hayley Ramsey Editorial Cover Model: Anthony Patamisi Cover Photographer: Michelle Lancaster The right of Lizzie Morton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior permission in writing of the author, except for the brief use of quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial use permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. 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Contents Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Thirty-Four Thirty-Five Thirty-Six Epilogue Acknowledgements Needing You Always Soundtrack Follow My Feet – The Unlikely Candidates London Is Lonely – Holly Humberstone Liberated – Britton Drinking with Cupid – VOILA Love From The Other Side – Fall Out Boy Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard Black Butterflies and Déjà vu – The Maine Flowers – Lauren Spencer Smith This Is The Time – Nothing More Washed Away – Savage Hands I’m on Fire – Mark Wilkinson I Think I’m In Love – Kat Dahlia Beauty and the Beast – Angela Lansbury Keep You Safe – Lindsey Ray I Didn’t Know – Sofia Carson Love and Hate – Camylio Pierre – Ryn Weaver Scan the QR Code below to listen on Spotify. Alternatively, click here! Boxes are for packaging, not people. The best person you can be, is yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Dance to whatever song you want. When you can, laugh till it hurts. On the days where smiling feels impossible … remember the days that you did. Seize every moment. Forget the words of those who don’t matter. Don’t fly, soar. Prologue When the words ‘urgent action’ glared at me from my laptop, I hesitated before opening the email. Ange—my superior—has never dropped me from a project. Yet here I am two weeks later. Crammed in the back of a cab, crawling through the clogged streets of Nuremberg. My colleague, Abby—who’s also my roommate and best friend—huffs as I divert my gaze away from the diary sitting open in my lap. The scribbles covering what should have been our schedule for Johannesburg’s first major fashion week make my eye twitch. The carefully crafted client list has been swapped for a summer centered around unprotected sex, drugs, sweaty dreadlocks, and tattoos. When the cab slows to a stop in the staff parking area of our first festival, I smooth the line between my brows and lift the corners of my mouth into a tight smile. Nuremberg might challenge the Bermuda Triangle seeing as it’s eating all the scheduled flights. The rest of our PR team might still be on the other side of the Atlantic, and the group of rockheads we’ve been forced to work with might be nowhere to be found—but I refuse to allow these things to be more than a hiccup. At least we have Abby’s childhood friends—Sophie and Zoe—on hand to help unload the gear from the trunk. The fact I’m thankful for these small mercies, when the two of them together regularly out-drink a football team, adds to the absurdity of the situation we’re in. “You need to go to the front-stage area and get set up,” I tell Abby when we’re almost backstage. Her feet remain glued to the trampled grass. She’s short-circuiting. I would be too, if I were her. About to face an ex. The ex. The one that got away and the sole reason we’re in this mess to begin with. I’d also be more accommodating if we weren’t working on borrowed minutes. We should already be ready for a musical performance, but the likelihood of there being actual music is slim to none, because we still don’t have a band. “Now!” Abby springs to life and hurries away. The second she disappears, I’m tempted to call her back. After casting a quick glance around to check no one is watching, I dab at my sweaty top lip with my finger and wipe my palms against my white linen pants. You’ve got this. Feeling more Zen, I make my way to the VIP tent where the band is due to arrive. My positive mood evaporates when all I find is a group of B-list celebs dressed in a mixture of boho and nineties aesthetic clothing—festival chic at its finest. The people who aren’t lounging in multicolored egg chairs with cocktails are drinking beer beside a pop-up bar, which is being manned by a bartender living his main character moment. “Come on,” I mutter. “Where are you?” I’m mentally planning my speech to Ange to explain how we’ve messed up before the tour’s started, when the fake pretentious laughter surrounding me drops a decibel. My heart stutters when four guys enter the tent. S.C.A.R.A.B.—Warped Record’s rock babies. “Hey!” I call out when the band begins walking in the wrong direction. I wave, hurrying toward them. “Sooz, PR.” I smile and hold my hand out to the guy I know to be Jake—the lead guitarist. It’s the weak, lack luster handshake I receive in return that has me deciding against the same intro with the rest of the group. The guy on Jake’s left, with less-tangled-on-the-top dark hair—Zach—looks like he’s going to be sick. Things improve when I get to the lead singer—Sam. He swipes some dirty blond locks out of his face and gives me