Page 140 of When the Stars Rise

I don’t have to ask him what his tattoo means any more than he had to ask about mine. I know exactly who the three birds in flight represent. I guess we both need to believe that they flew high, and they found a better place.

I press my lips to his chest over his beating heart and the ink on his skin and we lose our clothes to each other’s hands, tossing them in a heap on the floor.

Naked, in my bed, I try to say everything that words can’t.

I hold him in my arms, skin against skin, our bodies moving to the same rhythm, our every breath, our every heartbeat in perfect sync, and when we barrel into shared orgasms, I think to myself that maybe we’re going to be okay.

Maybe now we can put the ghosts of the past to rest and move on.

I think this even as I try to find his eyes, but he won’t let me.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Noah

TellingHayley the truth last week… it was hard. It made us both sadder. More introspective.

But it loosened something inside me. I can’t remember the last time I cried like that. Not since I was a little kid, I guess.

She’s cried a lot too. But a few days ago she told me she’d already cried for her parents and these tears were for me.

I’m not sure how true that is or how I feel about that.

She knows about Zeke, too. So I guess it’s all out there now. But I can’t say I feel good about any of it.

I went home the next day, packed a bag, and drove straight back here and since then we’ve just been hanging out. Watching movies. Swimming in the pool. Cooking together. Having sex. Yesterday was like a fucking marathon. But I get the feeling we’re using sex to avoid talking about anything too deep. We’re both mastered the art of pretending everything is okay when we both know it’s not.

I’m going through the tour footage and editing it, and while there were a lot of great moments, I keep going back to that Q&A session we did in New York.

What’s your greatest fear?

Losing the person I love most.

Without him, there would be no music.

I think I already knew how Hayley would answer the question, so it didn’t come as a great shock or a new revelation. I don’t know if it was designed to make me feel guilty, but it did. For a little while, anyway.

Now? It pisses me off. I don’t even understand why. It just does.

“I need to ask you the same question,” Hayley says.

I pause the video on my laptop and look over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

Hayley rounds the sofa and sits next to me, legs tucked underneath her on the caramel velvet.

She’s wearing one of my old T-shirts and her skin smells like chlorine from doing laps in the pool but there’s some clay in her hair and splattered across the cotton.

She bought a potter’s wheel, don’t ask me why, but it’s where she disappears to in the middle of the night.

“What’s your biggest fear?” she asks, hand over my heart, eyes locked on mine.

I open my mouth to tell her that I already faced my biggest fears, and I lived to tell the tale but that’s not a hundred percent true.

My biggest fear is losing her. But not in the same way she’s scared of losing me.

If it was so easy for her to walk away three times, what would make me think that this time will be any different?

Hayley nudges my arm. “Come on. We’re being honest now, remember? No more secrets. No more lies. You can tell me anything.”