Page 105 of Should Our Stars Collide

‘You are safe. You are safe withme.’

“It’s not that I want to fight,” Kieran admits shakily. “Fighting is fucking exhausting.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“The alternative would be to give in.”

“Okay?”

“Giving in means letting myself have something I never had.”

“Uh, yeah? That’s the good part— Oh.” Gabe’s face softens with understanding. “You don’t want good things if there’s a chance you’ll lose them.”

Damn, he’s good. Except it was never about losing things—or rather, the people who make the good things happen. You don’tlosepeople.

They leave. There’s a difference.

His whole body feeling like someone went over it with sandpaper, Kieran stands up. “Thanks for the magic lesson. I’ll get going.”

“Okay. I’m here if you need me.” Gabe smiles lopsidedly. “Zeke too.”

Kieran scowls. “Don’t poke the bear, Gabe.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks again. I…guess I have some thinking to do.”

“Maybe less thinking, more feeling.”

“Sounds dreadful.”

Gabe grins, then suddenly goes still, his eyes starting to glow again. It’s a little strange, because this time the action seems almost involuntary.

“Hey, Kieran…”

“Yeah?”

Gabe closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they’re their regular amber color.

“It’s okay if you can’t love yourself first,” he says, voice soft. “There are others who are more than happy to do it for you.”

Kieran frowns. What’s with the sudden fortune cookie wisdom? Whatever, Gabe is just being Gabe, which means weird as fuck.

“Okay, Yoda,” Kieran retorts with a snort. He salutes Zeke on the way out and heads down the street with no particular direction in mind. He just doesn’t wanna go home yet.

He went to Gabe to regain some semblance of control, but leaving the café now, he feels more raw and vulnerable than when he walked in.

24

Leaving his car at the café, Kieran wanders the Coast with no real plan, just this restless itch under his skin that keeps him moving. He’s stalling. Stretching the day so he doesn’t have to go home to the huge apartment and face the silence—and the murder cat.

The walk doesn’t feel particularly relaxing. The streets he walks and places he sees are mostly the same as he remembers, but there’s this…weird air around them. Aroundhim. It’s heavy and a little suffocating, like he’s carrying around both versions of himself, and they’re not sure how to fit together.

At some point, he ends up outside his old apartment complex, the one with the peeling paint and the palm tree that never stopped shedding giant fronds like it had a personal vendetta against cars. Just another of those things that haven’t changed.

Soon, though he doesn’t know when, this will be the place he’ll return to, once the stupid spell runs its course.

At first, the reassurance that he would eventually come back to his old life is what kept him sane. But now? The prospect isn’t as thrilling anymore. To him, it was only last week that he finished work and stepped through the door of this very building, then took the lift to his apartment, yet it feels like another lifetime.