Page 64 of The Silent Waters (Elements 3)

Why did she send away the things I loved?

Everything grew darker.

Everything became shadows.

Everything went black.

“You okay today, Magnet?” Brooks asked, standing in my doorway. He hadn’t been allowed into our house for the past week, and since Mama wasn’t home, I assumed Daddy had let him in. Mama had gone to stay with her sister for a few days, a request Daddy had made. I was happy she disappeared for a while.

Seeing Brooks standing there, leaning against my doorframe, broke my heart.

How was it possible?

How could you miss someone who was only steps away from you?

He didn’t ask to come into my room like usual; he stayed there with his hands stuffed into his pockets. “We fly out in the morning. We fly out to meet with the producer, to talk about our future.” He smiled, but it felt more like a frown. That made me sadder than I had known I could be. Music was his dream, and his dream was coming true, yet still, he seemed so sad.

I’m so proud of you.

He snickered and looked down at the ground, sniffling. “What’s going on, Maggie May? In your head?”

I don’t know.

He stepped into my bedroom. “Do you love me?”

Yes.

“But you don’t want to be with me?”

I hesitated to write, because I knew my words would be confusing to him. I couldn’t be with Brooks, especially now. He had his dream finally coming to life, and the last thing he needed was for me to interrupt it with my issues. How could we date, with my parents falling apart? How could we be in love, with him halfway across the country? Even though I hated it, Mama was right. Brooks did deserve more than me. He deserved to be loved out loud, and my love was a whisper in the wind that obviously only he could hear.

He cleared his throat, my nonresponse seeming like all the words he was afraid to hear. “Do you love me?” he asked again.

I do.

He turned away from me for a second and wiped at his eyes. When he turned back, he gave me a tight smile and walked over to me. “Can I hold your hands?”

I held them out, and when he wrapped his fingers with mine, I felt it—the feeling of home rushing through me. A building with walls wasn’t a home. Home was the place where the warmest kinds of love lived between two people. Brooks was home to me.

It took everything for me to not cry.

“You know that moment when you discover a new song? You think, no big deal, you’ve heard a lot of new songs, and this one’s gonna be like all the rest, but when the introduction hits your ears and it rockets through you, you feel it in your bones. Then when it hits the chorus, you know. You just know. You know that song is going to change you forever. You’ll never be able to remember your life without those rhythms, those lyrics, those chords. When the song ends, you race to replay it, and each time you hear it, it’s better than you remembered. How is that possible? How could the same words mean more and more each time? You play it over and over again until it’s ingrained in you, until it races through your body, becoming the flow that makes your heart beat.”

My hands trembled in his, and his trembled in mine. We moved in closer, and he rested his forehead against mine.

“Maggie May, you’re my favorite song.”

I couldn’t fight the tears, and he couldn’t fight his, as our faces rested against one another. “I’m so torn right now, Maggie. A part of me wants to go to Los Angeles and c

hase the dream, but another part of me knows you are the dream. You’re it. So tell me what you want. Tell me you want me. I’ll stay. I swear, I’ll stay.”

I stepped back from him, dropping his hands.

His dream was in Los Angeles.

Mama was right.

I was no kind of life for him.