Page 143 of When the Stars Rise

I want to live.

I break through the surface, gasping for air and try to fill my lungs with oxygen but I end up with a mouthful of seawater. I cough, trying to clear my lungs and I’m so sluggish and disoriented that I can barely hold my head above water.

I spin, searching for the shore but I’m met with the horizon as the last of the sun is sinking into it.

My arms and legs are heavy with fatigue and I’m so far out, with darkness descending, that I can barely see the shore. I have no idea how I’m going to get myself back to land but I was born and raised to be a fighter, so I have to give it everything I’ve got.

My survival skills kick in and I swim.

Waves crash over my head, I get tumbled and ragdolled, and I don’t know which way is up, down, or sideways. The ocean spits me out only for another wave to drag me under again.

I’m not ready to die but I’m just so fucking tired. My eyes close and I stop fighting. That’s when I feel it. Arms wrapping around me and her voice in my ear when she lifts my head above water.

“I’m going to get you out of here. But you have to help me, Noah. Please help me.”

This must be a dream. There is no way in hell that Hayley would be out this far in the ocean.

But it’s her. With her big hazel eyes and her little dancer’s body and her long chestnut hair dripping with seawater.

Why is she here?

Fuck. Now we’re both going to die.

“We’re not going to die,” she says. Must’ve said that out loud. “I’ve got you.” She latches onto my arm, and we catch a wave that carries us to the shore, the sand and rocks scraping our skin and clumps of seaweed tangling in our hair as we get to our knees and stagger to our feet.

She’s holding my hand, dragging me as the waves crash against the backs of our legs and the last of the sun dips into the horizon, painting the sky inky blue.

We stumble out of the ocean, and I fall to my knees, coughing up seawater.

“Come on, Noah. Just a little farther.”

I crawl across the sand on my hands and knees because I don’t have the strength to walk. When I’ve gotten far enough up the beach that the tide won’t reach us, I collapse onto the sand and roll onto my back, shivering from the cold.

Hayley covers me with a blanket then crawls in next to me.

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay,” she says, smoothing her hand over my cheekbone and wiping away my tears.

I don’t even stop to ask how she knew to come down here or why she brought a blanket. She justknew.

We lie on the coarse sand under the thick cotton and stare up at the sky without speaking… for minutes or maybe hours.

I almost ended it all. I was so close to giving up.

Hayley takes my hand, guides it to her chest and flattens her hand over mine. Her heart is beating strong and steady under the palm of my hand and her skin is warm, chest rising and falling on every breath that gives her body life and I don’t know how I ever could have thought of leaving her behind.

“We’re alive, Noah,” she says softly. “It’s not our time yet. But when our number is up, I don’t think we’ll have any control over that. I’ve been scared for so long. I was so scared you were going to die that I kept pushing you away even as I tried to hold on tight. And I’m so sorry for that. I’m so sorry that I ever made you doubt my love for you for even one minute. Because I love you so deeply and so profoundly that there aren’t enough words to describe it.”

She doesn’t need to say it in words because I already knew.

I just let my own fears and doubts get in the way. “I was scared you’d leave me again and yet I kept doing the same things over and over,” I confess. “But you were right.” I stare up at the sky because the words are hard to say, and before this week, I never would have even contemplated saying them to Hayley. “Maybe I did have a death wish. Or maybe I just… had this compulsion to keep pushing the limits… testing them. It got worse after Zeke died,” I admit. “I was so fucking angry. All the time. And the only way I knew how to shut out the noise was to keep taking bigger and bigger risks.”

She listens without judgment and after a few minutes of silence she says, “You never gave yourself time to grieve.”

She’s right. I didn’t. I just kept trying to outrun everything.

We roll onto our sides to face each other, and I speak my truth, just like my dad always taught me to.

“I was running too.” I brush the wet hair off her face and tuck it behind her ear then trace the constellation of freckles on her cheekbone with my fingertip, connecting the dots. “We just went about it differently. Earlier, I said I didn’t trust you. But the second and third time we broke up… those things were within my control. And I made the wrong choice. I always said I would do anything in the world for you and yet I wouldn’t give anything up for you. The whole time I was running earlier I kept asking myself how I could have ever chosen anything over you, and I don’t have an answer for that.”