Willow Creek Bonus Content Read online

  Willow Creek Bonus Content

  Micalea Smeltzer

  © Copyright 2016 Micalea Smeltzer

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  14. Interview with the Guys

  15. Interview with the Girls

  Also by Micalea Smeltzer

  Author’s Note

  Important Information

  This Bonus Material contains eight brand new scenes PLUS previously released bonus material from my website. I have accumulated it all in the order in which fits the timeline of the main four books the best, therefore the POVs jump around, and since these are scenes, not a novella, they don’t merge together. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy seeing more of the Willow Creek family. I had so much fun going back to this world.

  —Micalea

  1

  Maddox and Emma Bonus SCENE #1

  (This is the breakup scene retold in Maddox’s POV)

  * * *

  I was high.

  Not that kind of high.

  I was high on the good stuff. The real stuff.

  Love.

  Apparently love also turned me into a sappy idiot, but maybe I was already that before Emma.

  Nah.

  Band practice was going good. I was floating on a cloud. The new music we’d been working on was some of the best I’d ever written—thanks to my new muse.

  “Stop, stop, stop.” Mathias stopped singing and signaled his hands for a time-out. “This sounds love sick as fuck.” He dipped his head back at me, narrowing his eyes in a glare where I sat behind my drum set.

  I pointed at him with a drumstick. “I am love sick and girls dig this shit. It’ll be a hit. Trust me.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  If he wasn’t my twin brother I might hate the guy sometimes.

  “Fine.” Mathias waved his hand, signaling for all of us to get back to it. “We’ll take it from the top.”

  I began playing, and like always my hands sort of took over and my mind wandered.

  Of course my mind was filled with images of last night. How could it not be?

  I’d had sex before, sure, but never like that. I always thought the people that said it was different with someone special were only lying to make you wait. I’d been wrong. With Emma I’d finally had an emotional connection to someone and it had made the sex a hundred—no, a thousand—times better.

  I heard a sudden war cry and I looked up in wonder, only to be pelted in the head two seconds later with a drumstick.

  My drumsticks dropped from my hands and I reached up to rub my forehead.

  That hurt.

  Everyone else had stopped playing too and I looked up to see the reason for the flying drumstick standing in the open doorway of the guesthouse.

  I’d never seen Emma mad—she was always sweet as pie—but if looks could kill I’d be dead right now.

  Her blonde hair was a wild tangled mess around her head and her hands were fisted at her sides. She was red in the face and I knew, knew deep down in my gut that she’d finally figured out the truth.

  You should’ve told her, my conscience shouted at me.

  It was right. I should have. I’d tried. But I was always too scared of losing her.

  But the look on her face told me I’d already lost her.

  “Emma, I can explain—”

  Almost immediately she cuts me off. “Explain, what?” She spread her arms out. “That you lied to me? That you used me? Did you laugh at me behind my back? Did you even care about me at all?” Her voice cracks and with it the first fissure in my heart appears.

  “Emma,” I stood up, and my stool fell to the ground behind me, “I love you. Stop this.”

  I have to fix this.

  “Stop what? Stop telling the truth? You lied to me, Maddox!” Tears clog her eyes and my throat feels heavy. I’ve ruined everything. “I have never felt so betrayed in all my life, not even the day my dad walked out on us and didn’t even say goodbye.”

  It would’ve hurt more if she’d slapped me. “I never meant to hurt you,” I whispered.

  Can’t she see that? I wanted something real. Something not impeded by my band’s fast growing fame. I wanted to hold on to my freedom for a moment longer. It was a breath of fresh air to fall in love with someone I knew didn’t want me for my money. She just wanted me.

  “But you did hurt me!” She screamed and her face grew red. “Even if this was some stupid game to you, you still owed me the truth!” A game? She thinks this was a game? She couldn’t be more wrong. I finally managed to get my feet moving and I moved toward her. I stopped in front of her and she shoved the magazine she held into my chest. I hold it, but I don’t look at it. I already know it’s bound to be the culprit of how she found out. “This is not how I deserved to find out.” Her voice quieted from her previous shouting and her shoulders sagged with defeat. She looked sad. So fucking sad and I hated myself for putting that look on her face. “I’m a human being, I have feelings, and seeing the truth laid out to me in a magazine isn’t fair.” She choked on a breath, and it took all of my willpower not to reach out and take her into my arms. I would have, but I knew she’d only shove me away.

  I cleared my throat. “Guys, can you give us a minute?” I hated how shaky my voice sounded, but I couldn’t help it.

  They mumbled a few words and reluctantly headed upstairs.

  The words I wanted to say, needed to say, tumbled over in my mind but I couldn’t seem to voice any of them. We stared at each other with only a few feet between us, but it felt like a whole ocean.

  “I never tried to play you.”

  Good going dumbass, you couldn’t have said anything better than that?

  “Then what do you call this?” She spread her arms out wide. “This whole thing between us is a lie.”

  I winced. It felt like she’d slammed a knife straight into my heart and turned the blade. A lie? How could she possibly think this was a lie? Especially after last night?

  “God, Emma,” I growled, the hurt I felt seeping into my words, “it wasn’t like that.”

  “Then tell me what it was like!” She yelled, poking her finger into my chest.

  I clenched my teeth and then words came tumbling out of my mouth.

  “I wanted something for myself, okay? Because I’m a selfish fucking prick. The last year has been insane as our band has grown in popularity. Everyone wants something from us. And I was sick and tired of feeling used.” I felt tears pooling in my eyes and I hoped she could see them—so she would know how much this was killing me. “And then I met you and you didn’t know who I was and…I felt like me again. I wasn’t Maddox Wade the drummer from Willow Creek—I was just Maddox. I craved that.”

  “So, what? You only liked me because I didn’t know who you were?” She looked sickened by her own words—no, tortured.

  “No!” The word ripped out of my mouth immediately and I clutched at the short strands of my hair. I felt panicke
d. I didn’t see how I was ever going to make her understand. Any way I tried to explain I looked like a bad guy. Maybe I was. But I’d never intended for it to be that way. “You’re making this sound so much worse than it is!”

  “I’m making this worse than what it is?” She seemed shocked that I’d suggest such a thing. “You’re the one that hid your identity from me. I don’t even know you!”

  She doesn’t even know me? She’s one of the only people that truly knows me.

  “Yes, you do.” I said fuck it and took several steps to close the distance between us. I took her face between my hands and before I could even relish in the feel of her soft skin and warm cheeks she flinched. Flinched. Like I’d hurt her. My hands fell to my sides and my heart broke a tiny bit more. “You know me better than anyone, Em.” I tried to plead with her. “I’ve shared things with you that most people don’t know about me. I know you don’t believe it right now, but you are special to me, and I love you. That isn’t a lie.”

  “Then why couldn’t you tell me the truth? Did you think it would matter that much to me? Did you think I’d try to use you?” She rambled, completely flummoxed.

  “No!” I cried and my hands flew into the air. “Jesus Christ, that’s not what I thought at all! I tried to tell you so many times, I really did, I swear. But I never could. I just…the words would never come out right and…” I paused and inhaled a breath, trying to gather my racing thoughts. “I was scared,” I confessed. She started to speak, but I cut her off. I needed to get these words out. “I was scared to death that if you knew who I really was that my fame might push you away, and the last thing I want to do is live a life without you in it.” Sincerity poured out of every word I spoke, but when her face crumpled I knew it’d done no good.

  Tears fell down her face in a river.

  “Congratulations, Maddox,” she sneered the words, looking at me like I was the most despicable thing she’d ever laid her eyes on, “now you’ll get to find out what your life is like without me.”

  She turned, her hair whipping over her shoulder, and started for the door.

  “Emma!” I yelled after her. “Please, stop!”

  By some miracle she did, and I allowed myself to feel the tiniest bit of relief.

  She turned slowly to look at me over her shoulder. My hands clenched into fists at my sides while I warred with whether or not to stay where I was or go to her. I decided to stay where I was, afraid of making her run away.

  I finally found the strength to speak, but my voice was barely a whisper. “Loving you is my greatest adventure. Nothing else means anything without you.”

  Shutters came down over her eyes and I felt the last refuges of hope leave me.

  “Then I guess you can live a life full of emptiness.”

  “Emma!” I started after her.

  “Don’t follow me!” She yelled, so full of anger. You have no right to follow me! Just leave me alone! You’ve done enough damage! …If you follow me I’ll kidnap your hedgehog!”

  If this situation wasn’t so serious I might’ve laughed at that last bit.

  But I was too hurt and upset to find anything funny at the moment. “Emma.” My voice cracked. “Don’t do this.”

  My body gave out then and I fell to my knees.

  Begging.

  Pleading.

  Please stay.

  Don’t leave me.

  I love you.

  “Too late.” She opened the door and left.

  As it swung shut I yelled her name one last time. “Emma!”

  The guys came rushing down the stairs just as I stood and Ezra and Hayes grabbed me when I started to run after her.

  “Don’t do it,” Ezra said, shaking me when I tried to wiggle out of their hold on me, “she’s upset, within reason, give her a chance to cool off. You owe it to her.”

  “You really fucked this up,” Hayes added.

  Mathias watched me with narrowed eyes from the corner of the room with his arms crossed over his chest. I kept waiting for him to say some smart-ass comment, but he didn’t. He was very obviously thinking about something, though.

  “I know,” I finally said. “I know.”

  What I didn’t know was how I could ever make this right—was there even a way?

  2

  Maddox & Emma BONUS SCENE #2

  (This is a Valentine’s Day Bonus Scene that was originally written for the blog Prisoner’s of Print)

  * * *

  EMMA

  * * *

  I gazed out the two-story window at the L.A. skyline. Every day I woke up here it never ceased to amaze me that I was living here, with the guy of my dreams, writing songs for a living. How did I get so lucky?

  He stepped up behind me, wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me against his solid chest. He nuzzled his head into the crook of my neck and kissed the tender skin behind my ear, making me giggle.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he murmured.

  I smiled. Last year we didn’t get to spend Valentine’s together since he was here in L.A. and I was still in school. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Maddox.”

  “I have big plans for today.” He nipped my shoulder and pulled away, sauntering over to the kitchen.

  “I told you I didn’t want to do anything,” I warned him.

  “I think you’ll enjoy this,” he grinned. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed the bottle of orange juice. “Go get dressed and then we’ll go.”

  I sighed. I knew there was no point in arguing with Maddox. He always got his way.

  “I can’t believe you blindfolded me,” I growled, sitting back against the plush leather seat of the car.

  He clucked his tongue. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  Maddox and his surprises.

  A moment later I smiled when a Willow Creek song came on the radio.

  I used to only listen to classical music, but dating a famous drummer had expanded my palate when it came to music. I was extremely proud of him and the other guys, for living their dreams and doing what they loved. I knew the fame weighed heavily on their shoulders—it had been completely unexpected for them. But that made me love all of them that much more, because they were so incredibly humble. They were in it for the music, nothing else.

  The car lurched to a stop and my body jolted forward.

  “Geez, Maddox, give a girl some warning.” I rubbed my chest, sure that I was going to have a seatbelt shaped bruise later.

  He merely chuckled, said he was sorry, and got out of the car.

  I began to panic.

  He wasn’t going to leave me in here by myself, was he?

  Just when I was ready to freak out, the door on my side opened and a cool breeze swam inside the car. I felt him reach over my body to undo the belt, and then he grabbed my arm, helping me out.

  I wrapped my arms around his side and held on tight.

  The last thing I wanted to do was trip and fall on my face.

  “Can I take this off now?” I asked, reaching up with one hand for the blindfold.

  “No.” He took my hand, wrapping my arm back around his body.

  I sighed, letting him guide me around.

  “Hold on,” he said a few minutes later. He pried my arms off of his chest and kissed the side of my forehead.

  His body heat disappeared.

  “Maddox?”

  I heard a door open.

  “Maddox?” I asked again. “I’m going to take the blindfold off!” I warned.

  “So dramatic,” he sighed, reappearing at my side. “I had to prop the door open.”

  “I was scared you were going to leave me here,” I mumbled, letting him help me into the building.

  “That doesn’t sound like a very fun Valentine’s Day,” he chuckled warmly, “and I’m pretty sure you’d kick my ass if I did that.”

  “You’re right,” I nodded.

  A few minutes passed and I couldn’t figure out where he’d brought me. Nothing felt familiar.


  “Alright, you’re going to sit down now.” He helped me down and my butt landed on a plush pillow. “Keep the blindfold on,” he warned.

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but it would’ve been pointless since he couldn’t even see my irritation.

  “Now you can take it off.”

  I ripped that sucker off and looked around in awe. “Maddox,” I gasped.

  We were sitting in the center of a large stage, to my left were the seats, and to my right instruments were set up—the drum set boasting the Willow Creek logo on the front.

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered, my eyes now zeroing in on what was in front of me. Pillows and blankets were laid around, and little tea lights had been lit. I could see a bag sitting beside him, and figured he’d packed us a lunch.

  He smiled crookedly. “You know how I told you we had a concert coming up in L.A.?”

  I nodded, waiting for him to get to the point.

  “They’ve agreed to let us sing our song,” he grinned triumphantly.

  “Seriously?” My jaw unhinged. Not too long ago I’d been terrified to sing in front of ten people, but since I started songwriting with Maddox fulltime I’d gotten over that fear. It also probably helped that they played our duet on the radio quite a bit. Once you hear yourself singing on the radio, singing in front of people doesn’t seem so bad anymore since millions of people have already heard it.

  “Seriously,” he nodded.

  “But Mathias is the singer.” I still couldn’t believe what he was telling me.

  Mathias—his twin brother—was the lead singer of Willow Creek, so the record label had been hesitant to include Maddox’s and my song on the soundtrack, but they finally relented and now it was a hit.