Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

twenty-eight

I wake up at noon with my throat raw, as if I’ve been screaming in my sleep. The minute I open my eyes, reality crashes down on me again.

Eden.

She’s ok. I checked on her before I fell unconscious.

But then I remember. She is not ok. I am not ok. None of this is ok.

The truth hits me all over again, like a punch to the stomach. I try to breathe, to process things. I can’t. I end up in the bathroom, dry-heaving, but my stomach is empty. All over the hotel, people are running around busy: we are packing up the tour and moving it to Belgium for next Friday. Talk about a ‘moveable feast’.

But I am stuck. There is nothing for me to do.

I am not helping or practicing or resting or working out.

Instead, I can’t stop thinking about the coal of truth burning me. How nothing can stay the same now: everything will be made pure or turned to ash. There is no third option.

‘The coal has touched your lips. ’

That phrase is chasing me, tormenting me. Haunting me. Like the truth. Where is this from? I look it up.

It is, as I thought, from a biblical text. It is a quote by the prophet Isaiah—my name, of course. I knew Isaiah’s book was one of my dad’s favorites, but I may have repressed the memory.

I open the book of Isaiah on my phone and scroll to chapter 6. My eyes immediately sting with tears. The familiar words I learned as a little kid, now long forgotten, spring back into my memory as if I have never really lost them:

‘I am ruined.

I am a man of unclean lips ,

I live among a people of unclean lips,

and my eyes have seenthe King.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me

with a live coalin his hand,

which he had taken with tongs from the altar

and with it he touched my mouth and said,

This has touched your lips;

your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Ever hearing, but never understanding,

ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Make the heart of this people calloused,

make their ears dull

or they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts,

and turn around, and be healed.’

I finish reading the whole chapter. I reread it. Then again. And everything comes rushing back at me.

My dad’s faith. My mom’s words about who I am becoming.

What have I become? I became someone who decided not to believe in God anymore. Not to believe in anything good. I have become someone who turned away from the light. Someone with a calloused heart, someone who always hears but never understands, who sees but can’t perceive. Isn’t that what I was doing back in the woods? When Eden needed me?

I saw, but did not understand.

And now, I have hardened my heart so much that no one will ever break it again—but no one will melt either. It can’t ‘turn around and be healed’. It’s made of stone.

I get it now, but it’s too late.

Can I unbecome what I have become? Can I turn around from what I have made myself into? Is it too late to start believing in God again? In good things? In hope?

It may be too late, but I owe it to myself to try. To give it my all. I owe it to Eden as well.

I am unworthy, yes. I am not like the Isaiah who received the burning coal of truth on his lips. No seraphim brought mine from the altar. It was brought to me by a girl much more broken than I am. And I am not worthy of handling any of this. I am deeply unworthy.

This is what it says in Isaiah 6, and this is what it says inside my heart.

But what if faith is for the unworthy? What if hope is for the hopeless? What if forgiveness is for the unforgivable?

‘You will hear but not understand

see but not see…’

I read the words again, and my brain puts a melody to them instantly, so that I can commit them to memory as a song. I close the tab on my phone—the chapter is now securely memorized inside my head—and look at my texts with Eden.

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Waiting for you to text me.’

I close my eyes and let my head fall back.

I want to be with her right now. I need to hold her, to touch her. I need to feel her eyes on me, to trace the skin down her neck, to close my hands around her waist, to dip down my head over hers and taste— No .

My eyes fly open. I can’t go down that rabbit hole. She is home, where she should be, and I am about to board a plane to Belgium. And there is a whole ocean separating us. As there should be.

…

I last all of twenty-four hours days before I text her again. (I was asleep for most of them).

I’m texting Eden , I think, almost giddy. I’m texting Eden .

I haven’t felt that surge of adrenaline and happiness just by holding the phone in my hand since the summer after I met her. She might have gotten scared and have logged off yesterday—honestly, I was terrified too—but she didn’t delete our conversation this time. She never will again.

Isaiah : Checking in. Did you get any sleep?

Eden : I did, you?

Isaiah : More than I deserve. How are your sisters ?

Eden : They have some… interesting things to say about you.

Isaiah : Oh no.

Eden : It’s all good. I think.

Eden : How are you? Are you taking care of yourself?

Isaiah : Always.

Eden : Not always. Athens day one, you fainted on stage.

I sit up. My face gets hot from embarrassment. Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to have seen that. Then again, the entire world did.

Isaiah : That’s honestly no big deal for me. I have fainted on stage a lot of times, and no one worries like that about me. Well, except my mom.

Eden : And Jude. And Skye. And a million people around the world.

I scoff.

Isaiah : All they care about is the product. Issy Woo. And he doesn’t even exist.

Eden : You are not a product. You are Isaiah.

Isaiah : Eden?

Eden : Yeah?

Isaiah : Thank you.

Eden : For what?

Isaiah : Because you see me. And no one has, for a long time. Since you, actually.

Eden : Don’t hide, then, Isaiah. Stop hiding .

Isaiah : It’s not that easy.

Eden : I don’t know what’s easy and what isn’t. Everything is hard for me and always has been.

I chew on my lip. She’s right. I don’t know how to answer her, so I don’t.

Eden : By the way, I finally told my dad all about you—us. And I told my sisters. They want to meet you.

Shock freezes me.

Meet me? What?

I get up and start pacing around the room. My hands are shaking so badly I drop my phone twice, so I sit back down. I start typing, still trembling.

Isaiah : What do you think?

Isaiah : Scratch that, what do you want ?

Eden : I want them to meet you too.

My phone is wrenched away from my hands as the massage crew gets in. I let them start working on me with a groan; after two shows back to back, I can barely move. The whole time the chiropractor tries to put my destroyed body back together, I think about Eden’s texts.

It takes me all of a second to decide: I will meet them.

If that’s what she wants, I’ll do it.

I am calling Skye and I am flying back to the States at the earliest possible moment. I know Eden did not ask me to do this right now, but the waiting would kill me. When the crew is gone, leaving me a wreck, but somehow feeling better than before at the same time, I pick up my phone to call Skye.

But I change my mind. There is someone else I need to call first.

I know I am way out of my depth here, and, for once, I am not too proud to admit that I can’t do this alone. I need reinforcements.

I call my mom and I just tell her that I need her. I have never done that in my life, just because I know that if I tell her that, she will drop everything to fly back home for me; and that’s exactly what she does. We decide that we will meet in Chicago—it makes more sense that way.

Then I call James and he books his flight while we are still on the phone. His flight to Athens. He is, and I quote, ‘coming to get me’. Whatever that means.

While I wait for my brother to descend upon me, I have two options: Just sit on my hands while my head quietly explodes, or go to the gym to blow some steam off.

The tabloids always love selling the story about ‘Issy Woo’s rock-hard abs’ and what my ‘workout secrets’ are, but there all lying. There are no secrets. All I do is go to the gym every day and work out until I stop feeling like I am ten feet underwater. I sweat until the pressure on my chest lets me breathe.

Working out is my therapy—my medicine.

It usually takes about two hours of high impact training for the anxiety to subside enough so that I can function again. I’m exhausted afterwards, but it beats taking the pills.

Today, I’m all kinds of shattered even before I head to the hotel’s gym, but I have no choice. I can’t sleep any more, and I need to see someone—preferably my boys. As I expected, they are at the gym already, pretending to lift. Jude, Miki and Skye.

In reality, they are in various states of unconsciousness. The minute they see me, they straighten up with this terrified expression on their faces, almost turning around to flee. But I don’t give them a chance to escape. I start yelling at them.

“Why did this happen?” I say between clenched teeth.

They go absolutely still.

“Someone say something!” It was supposed to be a scream, but it comes out as a broken howl. “Start. Talking. Now.” But no one speaks.

They just stand quietly and let me scream at them in my hoarse non-voice. All the pain pours out of me in this hotel gym, the harsh fluorescent lights revealing all the hollow angles of my face, all the ugliness of my despair. I don’t care. I just stand there and scream and scream, and they take it. They let me let it all out. And I do.

“Why couldn’t someone have said something?” I am almost screeching at this point, and I don’t even care. “You knew all this time who she was, what had happened to her, and you didn’t say a word! Not one word!” I swallow, tasting bile. “I get that everyone was supposed to know about it, about Eden’s story. I know you thought I knew—you took it for granted. It was supposedly old news. You’d all heard it a million times. But couldn’t someone just have repeated the facts, just in passing?” I am screaming by the end.

I get no answer. I didn’t expect one.

“Why did everyone have to be so freaking discreet around her?” I go on. “Not one single person wanted to talk about it every time she left the room?”

Jude shakes his head slightly.

“So you are telling me,” I single him out, shower him with my rage, “that there isn’t a single asshole between you.”

Jude finally steps up to me. The other two—cowards—take a step back as if I am about to explode. Idiots. I already have exploded.

“Don’t you see?” Jude hisses at me. “Can’t you get it through your thick skull? You not knowing about her… It is incredible. It is impossible. It is a miracle. You have been granted a miracle.” He shakes his head, as if he’s astounded at my stupidity. “This was… Isaiah, it had to happen this way. You had to be completely oblivious, otherwise she would never know if it was real. She could never be sure whether you pitied her, like everyone else, or not.” I frown. If he uses the p-word one more time, I’m going ballistic. “If everything you did was out of pity. Eden would think you weren’t being authentic—she would be convinced it was because you felt sorry for her.”

“Pity? Pity ?” my eyes flash. “Don’t you dare use that word in the same sentence as her name. Don’t you… don’t–I can’t breathe.”

Of course, he is completely right. Spot-on. Eden said the exact same thing to me after the concert.

“Remember when you thought Jude was flirting with her?” Skye pipes in.

I shut my eyes as waves of embarrassment and self-loathing wash over me. But the jealousy was useful, I suppose. It made me realize how much I felt for her. Still. Always. In fact, I feel so much more things for her now than I did four years ago.

“I was her friend,” Jude says. “God knows she needed one. But she wouldn’t let me help her and she would never talk to me. She allowed me to be there for her in very few, insignificant ways, because she absolutely hated pity. Every time she looked at me, she saw that I knew. That I was careful with her. That I wanted to protect her. And she hated that. She hated that so much, Zay.”

“You were so kind to her, all of you,” I murmur .

“Well, she told me…” Jude’s sentence trails off. “Ah, I don’t want to tell you this.”

“Tell me,” I snarl.

“She told me that he… you know, that Solomon person, he made her unable to trust anyone’s kindness,” Jude says looking at me slowly, carefully. Terrifiedly. “But here, with us, she felt safe. She told me that. Every time she saw us, she didn’t see a threat. Isn’t that something?”

“Well, if you’re right,” I spit, “she saw pity instead.”

“ I didn’t pity her,” Miki says.

“Me either,” Jude agrees, “but she told me so many times that she was sure I did. I think, no matter what, that was what she saw every time she looked at me.”

“And what did she see every time she looked at me?” I muse. The fight goes out of me suddenly, leaving me weak and hollow. “Rudeness and hatred and bitterness.”

“But not pity,” Jude says, not denying what I said. “You were you, not someone who felt bad for her.”

“And that’s why I lost her.” I fold to the ground, defeated.

“You,” Jude says, lowering himself to meet my eyes, “have lost nothing. She just needs time. You both do.” I turn away from his intense stare. “Have you stopped throwing up yet?” he asks me.

I have not, but he doesn’t need to know that. I flip him off and he chuckles.

“Get on the machine, Zay,” he says quietly. “You’ll feel better. Try at least not to faint this time, yeah?”

I climb to my feet, hands in fists, and come at him, but it’s hard to fight a dude who will not fight back. Even if it’s fake-fighting. He won’t budge. He just stands there, prepared to take it, whatever I may have to give.

My hands drop to my sides, chest heaving.

“Let me be here for you, man,” Jude says and the pain in his voice rips me open.

“I can’t,” I tell him.

I fight the urge to punch him on the nose. Can’t break the nose, it’s his best feature. We’ve got a show coming up.

“Would it help you to hit Skye instead?” he asks kindly.

Laughter bubbles up in my chest, easing the tension, but I’m not quite there yet. I do not have the ability to smile. Skye clears his throat behind me. It sounds like a whimper.

“I’d rather hit you, to be honest,” I tell Jude.

“Well, do it. ”

“Your fans will be upset with me.”

“Skye has no fans,” Miki, as always, jumps at the chance to be helpful.

“Boys!” Skye interrupts, sounding panicked. “Why am I suddenly in line to get my ass kicked?”

“By Isaiah,” Jude clarifies. “That’s like getting your ass kicked by a little moth.”

“Hey!” Fury rises up inside me again, eclipsing every other feeling. And then I realize what’s happening. These idiots are trying to make me mad so that I will stop feeling sorry for myself.

And it’s working.

“Shut up, all of you,” I tell them.

They back off, give me some space. I head for the weights.

“Let’s just work out in silence, before you don’t tell me anything else important about Eden,” I murmur, bitterness thick in my voice.

I hate it. I hate feeling like this.

…

James flies in six hours later, and Skye sends a car to pick him up and bring him to the hotel. I tried to eat something, but I can’t keep anything down. I am freshly showered after my brutal workout, and all packed and ready to go as soon as James gets here. And he gets here all right.

He doesn’t run into my room, he flies in.

“Where is she?” his eyes are twin flames, burning with hatred. “Does she know what she did?”

“Hey, little bro,” I say, getting up.

He pushes me back down on the bed, eyes frantically looking for something. I think it’s my phone. He locates it next to me and makes a beeline for it.

“If that girl thinks she’s going to destroy you again, she’s got another think coming.”

He looks pale and drawn and thinner than he looked over the video call. I suddenly realize how bad I must look for him to be this worried.

I grab him by the waist and bodily remove him from the proximity of my phone. He’s gone white and scared, and I could just murder him and hug him at the same time.

He is shaking as I hold him down, and I have never known him to be violent, not even once, but if I let go, I honestly feel like he might hurt himself right now .

“It’s my fault,” I keep saying in my brother’s ear as I half push half carry him to a chair. “It’s my fault.”

Ren pops his head inside my door, hearing us struggle, and I shake my head at him. I don’t want anyone’s help. This is my mess. I’ll fix this. I will.

“It’s my fault, James,” I keep telling my brother, waiting for it to sink in, “she did nothing. It’s my fault it’s my fault it’s my fault.”

James stops struggling against me.

We look at each other properly for the first time.

“What did you say?” James speaks first.

He is terribly still, barely breathing as he stands there, trapped between my arms, his slightly taller-than-me, skinny body still shaking, ready for a fight. But he’s not fighting anymore.

“That girl destroyed you,” he says, his voice guttural, raw. “She ruined your life, she caused Grandpa to die, she stole your future, she… She ruined you in every way, Zay. I was there, I saw it. I watched… I watched you die.” His voice catches.

I take a deep breath.

The memory of betrayal washes over me, but I shake it off. It’s not real. It never was.

“It wasn’t her,” I tell my brother, letting him go. We sink to the floor, panting, both of us exhausted. “It was someone else. She… Look, this girl? You know her.”

James’ eyebrow flies up. He is never surprised. But he is now. Stunned. Speechless.

“You know about her,” I add.

“Explain,” is all he says.

He’s looking at me. He’s ready to listen.

So, for the first time, I tell him our story—the real one. With all of the new to me data.

James is not like me. He stays absolutely still and silent as he listens, not interrupting with questions. The whole time I’m talking, he doesn’t react at all, his face expressionless, etched in marble. To his credit, once he realizes where the story is going, he does not throw up like I did, but he does look a bit green around the mouth.

Around the end, he just starts swearing a lot, which I have never heard him do.

I finish the story, and he begins to mumble to himself, but I don’t know what he’s saying, because he’s talking in French. Then he falls silent for a long time, gazing out the window as a fairytale-esque night descends on Athens, tears streaming down his face .

“You need to talk to Skye,” he says finally, voice thick with emotion. “I know you are Internet illiterate, but you have a whole team handling this stuff. Skye needs to make sure that her face stays out of the Internet, period. Once your rabid fans discover that you have history with her… That she is the heartbreaker from your songs and the lost girl from all these years ago…” He stops, rubs a hand over his eyes. “All hell will break loose, Zay. It’s going to be a circus like we’ve never seen. And we have seen the circus. We are currently living in it. But the pressure you have been under so far will seem child’s play compared to what will happen once people find out.”

I just stare at him.

“Any story remotely touching on Eden’s subject needs to be killed instantly,” he says. “Needs to be killed yesterday.”

I look at him in wonder. It never crossed my mind to think about that, but he is absolutely right. That’s my brother: practical and efficient. He always knows what to do when the crap hits the fan. Calm and collected in the face of disaster. Always has been, since he was a kid. He is not a kid now; he’s taller than me by two inches.

He looks like a man, although through his eyes I can see my little brother frowning back at me. For how long will I be able to see him in there, though?

I think what I told him today killed the boy inside him a little bit already.

…

We board my jet in a few hours, and we’re both so exhausted we sleep for most of our flight to Chicago. Mom is waiting for us at the hotel Skye has booked, and after changing clothes, we are ready to go meet the Elliots.

Or, in my case, absolutely not ready.

We get in the car.

Mom, seeing me shake, takes one of my hands and holds it between both of hers. I can feel the tremors in her fingers; her arthritis is getting worse. But her expression is calm, like usual, even though her face looks pale. I did not have as much time to explain Eden’s story to her in person like I did with James, but, like him, she knew her story well. She had followed it all these years on the news, so as soon as I told her who she was, she got it immediately .

“Do you remember the story about why your father and I named you Isaiah?” she asks me, as our car reaches its destination.

I told my driver to park a few blocks away from Eden’s dad’s house, because I want to prepare myself. As if I ever could. We get out of the car, security guards flanking us on each side. This is a nice neighborhood, clean and quiet. Cozy. You can see the water in the distance. The perfect place for a kid to grow up.

But Eden didn’t grow up here.

“Tell it to me again, Mom,” I murmur, trying to distract myself.

“Well, your dad picked it,” she starts.

I can feel her smiling next to me, even without having to look at her. She loves telling that story. Her short hair just about covers her ears—she’s gotten a haircut since the last time I saw her a few months back. I miss seeing her every day.

“It’s from his favorite passage from the Bible,” she tells me, her eyes shining with love. When she talks about him, he is real. He is alive in her words. She loves talking about him. “Isaiah 55. You were named after one of your dad’s favorite promises in the world.”

I nod. She and Dad were meant to be touring the world together, it was their dream. Now she is doing it by herself, and she will have to stop soon, judging by how crooked and painful her fingers are beginning to look.

“You know, when I first met your dad,” she goes on, her voice a music all on its own, “I was just a Chinese immigrants’ kid who didn’t belong anywhere, and he… he helped me have faith.”

I know he did—I’ve heard the story so many times. We have reached the house. It’s a four-floor brownstone walk-up; Eden’s house is on the first floor. The entire building looks like it belongs in a story. I imagine the history it’s seen, the creaky wood floors, the narrow layout of the hallways inside. How will I ever be able to walk in? I put my arm around Mom’s shoulders and prepare to climb the steps leading up to the cozy red door. I can’t.

“I can’t go in,” I murmur to James, hoping that Mom won’t hear—she does, of course.

“Do you need more time, Zay?” she asks me.

I nod. “About four more years,” I reply, “just to wrap my mind around it. Actually, I need to go back in time and prevent myself from being a blind moron.”

Mom is rubbing my back in circles. It helps, but not enough. My heart is beating a mile a minute and there’s a boulder lodged in my throat, preventing all air from getting in. Or out.

“If I were Eden’s dad, I would hit me in the face,” I murmur .

“Well, that can be arranged,” James sniggers, but his voice is strained. “Do you want to go in already punched? Maybe that will soften him up.” He’s trying to make me laugh, but it’s not working.

“Right. We can’t keep them waiting any longer,” I say.

“Them?” James asks.

“Her sisters are going to be there as well,” I reply and he tries to laugh again, but he is starting to look petrified now. Good. We match. “I mean, it’s just going to be the family. Us three and Eden’s dad. And Eden’s murderously-inclined sisters.”

“You sound nervous,” James observes.

“I am so nervous I could throw up,” I reply.

“Is there anyone in this house that you’re not terrified of, baby?” mom asks me, and I could just hug her right now for making me smile.

“Eden,” I reply at once, and then I think better of it. “Actually, she might terrify me most of all. I’m not sure it would be good for her to be here right now.” I called them from the car, and I think they might have decided to keep her away from me for now. I agree. “We’d better do… this, whatever it is, without her.”

“That’s my boy,” mom says. “Terrified of the girl he loves. That’s the way we do it in our family.”

With that, we climb the stairs and ring the bell.

There, it’s done. There is no turning back now.

I try to take a deep breath and almost faint in the process. My brother’s arm on my shoulder is the only thing holding me upright.