Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

one

Athens

“Isaiah, you’re up!” some screams—it’s Skye. I didn’t recognize his voice at first because it’s so high-pitched and panicky.

“Leave me al,” I murmur, but Eden is already pushing me towards the steps.

“You need to get back up there,” she tells me and without a second thought, I obey.

I take her hand and hold it so tightly she has to follow me up on the stage, but she stops and tries to let go as we are about to leave the shadows and step into the lights. Jude’s guitar solo is ending, the rain is still going strong, and every single ph in the audience is angled to capture me on a livestream as I emerge.

“Go on,” Eden tells me urgently. “Isaiah, go.”

I turn around. If going on stage means I have to let go of her hand, I’m not going. She will leave the minute I let her go. She will leave me again.

I won’t survive this time, I just know it.

“Hit me,” I tell her suddenly. “Right now, in front of everybody. I need them to see that I deserve it.”

A sound that resembles the echo of a giggle bubbles out of her lips. It takes me back years ago, to the woods. Back then, I thought her laughter had been real. Maybe it had been. I just didn’t know how many tears it had to make up for.

“I’m not the hitting type,” she says. “Although my therapist says I might have turned out completely differently, considering how I grew up. But I didn’t. I grew into this,” she points to herself, “because of you.” She points to me.

I shudder so violently I get dizzy.

“Sorry,” she says, “for reminding you. ”

“If you apologize to me again, I’ll lose it.”

“You know,” Eden says, “when it got really bad and your life got destroyed, I used to I wish I had never met you in the first place. These past weeks I wished I had never met you again . It was just… so wrong. On every level.”

I just stare at her. I don’t think I heard her right.

She can’t have just said what I think she did.

I open my mouth to say her name, but nothing comes out.

“You said you came here for me,” I say when I finally find my voice. “Was it true at all? Is this not why you’re here? To get me back…. To get us back?”

Her eyes shift from side to side, avoiding my gaze.

“Answer me, please.” I sound desperate. I am.

No reply.

“Did you change your mind because I was too much of a jerk?” I press.

“I did come here for you,” Eden says finally.

I close my eyes, literally weak with relief. “Good,” I say. “Good. So you…”

“I need to get off this stage,” she interrupts me quickly and starts looking around for my guard, Ren. He comes to stand by her side. “You have to finish your show, and these clothes are sticking to me like a second skin.”

Does she think I have not noticed? I have been blocking her from the audience with my body this whole time. I have been trying not to look at every curve in her body. I have been failing.

She tips her head up in the rain and right there, in a stadium filled with thousands of people, she opens her lips to taste the raindrops on her lips. The crowd quiets down as it waits for me to turn around. I don’t. No else gets to see this but me. I watch her in fascination, absolutely mesmerized.

She is made of tears, raindrops and spotlight dust. She is magic.

She closes her eyes and savors it and I want to touch her so badly it physically hurts. I clench my hands into fists so tightly my nails dig into the skin. I have to restrain myself. I am not going to touch her just after she said she wishes she’d never met me again. And certainly not on stage in front of thousands of cameras.

She is standing two feet away, but she might as well be standing on the moon.

Is it too late to believe in God?

I finally have my answer. It is .

“What kind of sick trick is this?” I murmur, my voice clogged with tears. “This twisted game life is playing on us. On top of what happened to you, this is happening right now, and I can’t… I can’t…”

I can’t make sense of it. How could this be happening? It would have been so easy for me to know what has happened to her; for some to have told me about her. But I was blindsided again. I didn’t know all these years. Life had to drive the knife deeper, piling hurt after hurt on us both.

Why did this happen?

Why couldn’t some have said something? Yes, every was supposed to know about it, it was old news, but couldn’t some just have repeated the facts, just in passing? Out of morbid curiosity? Why did every have to be so freaking discreet around her? Not single person wanted to talk about it when she left the room?

I have all these friends, and not asshole between them.

“Don’t you see?” Eden tells me, turning those hy eyes on me. “It was better this way. It was just us. No ugly news stories between us. And because you didn’t know about my past, you did not treat me with pity. Every else does. Jude, Miki, Lou, Skye. They are good people, but I’m sick of pity. Of people being careful with me. Kind.”

“Well, I was not kind, that’s for sure.”

She smiles.

It’s the second time she’s told me that she thinks Jude and Lou are only pretending to be her friends because they feel sorry for her. I need to disabuse her of that notion, but I don’t know how. I have seen how they act around her, and if that isn’t enough to convince her that they genuinely like her, I don’t know what is.

I don’t know what I should say. I am so unqualified to help here.

“I wouldn’t have you any other way,” she says. “The way you acted… That was how you truly felt, right?”

“ It. Was. Not. ” The words come out in desperate gasps.

I never hated you , I want to say to her. I tried to, I truly did. I have the songs to prove how hard I tried to hate you, to forget you. But I never really did. But she’s already talking.

“So, I finally got my closure,” she says.

My legs threaten to give out.

“What did you say?” I whisper, but no sound comes out. The blood has drained from my face .

Closure. Did she say closure? No. No, please no. Anything but that.

“This is your best show yet,” she tells me. “And the rain too… Just magical. Some was praying for you for all these miracles to happen at once tonight. And that song was so freaking brilliant.” She’s talking about Pierce Me . Which premiered worldwide tonight, on this stage. For her. “No has ever written a song like that before. The lyrics were sheer poetry, and the melody… It’s so wonderful I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you do.” My voice is barely audible and I don’t know if she even hears me. “Look, stop… Stop saying all these amazing things about me. Just call me a jerk, would you?”

She doesn’t.

“You’re the amazing ,” I whisper, “and I’m the jerk. It’s the other way round.”

I don’t think she’s listening. I can’t imagine she’s been used to hearing good things about herself. To feeling like she deserves good things. I wish I could change that. I need to change that. It’s a physical need, like dying of thirst or of lack of air.

I need a second chance. Well, I got a second chance and I blew it. I need a third, a thousandth. I need a miracle.

Is it too late to start believing—?

“I’ve never been out so late in my life,” Eden says in a low voice. “It’s almost dawn. And I’ve never felt the rain on my tongue. It’s nice.”

I don’t know how long I’ve been crying—I haven’t realized it until now.

“You’re breaking my heart,” I try to say, but what comes out is: “You’re breaking me.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever meet you again,” Eden murmurs, those hy-gold eyes of hers roaming over my face as if she is memorizing every single feature. As if she is saying goodbye.

No! I want to scream, except I am ten feet underwater. Drowning. Some, stop her. Some, stop this. Water fills my mouth, and it’s rainwater, but it might as well be an ocean. I am not breathing anyway.

“Bye, Isaiah,” Eden says.

And she turns around and leaves me on that stage, soaking in the rain.

…

The crowd is still roaring my name five minutes later. Their cries of ‘Issy Woo’ drown out Jude and Miki’s gorgeous music, as I slowly sink back to my knees, where I belong.

Utterly, desperately, completely al.

“I hope I haunt you!” I shout at Eden’s retreating back, not caring who hears.

“I hope you do,” I think I hear her whisper, before the darkness closes over my head. I’m sure I imagined it.

I’m the who will be haunted. By the hope that I really did hear her say that.

I know the truth now.

I know that she never left me.

I know that she never broke me. She never broke us. Life did that.

And me. I broke us too.

If any is the heartbreaker here, it’s me, not her. I broke my own heart, and hers. And I have no idea how to put what I broke back together.

“Waiting for you, Isaiah,” Skye’s panicked voice pops in my earpiece.

When did they put the earpiece back in?

I can’t seem to get back up on my feet. I can’t answer Skye. All these people waiting for me, and I can’t open my mouth. I can have pretty much anything I want in the whole world, except for her. She is the thing I want and the thing I can’t have.

I know that the hope of her won’t stop haunting me until she’s back in my arms. Where she belongs.

I have no idea how I’ll do it, but as I kneel on the wet stage, mid-show, drained of energy, rain seeping into my skin, I know I’ll get her back. Or die trying.

The minute the truth touched my lips, my fate was sealed. I love her. The coal has burned my lips. Anything that comes out of them now will be scorched by that realization.

Is it too late to start believing in God?

Is it too late to start believing in hope?

I hope it’s not. Because right now, at this moment when I have zero reasons to start believing and even less reasons to start hoping—this is when I freaking start.

And this time, I’m all in.