Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

thirty-two

Europe

The months pass by, and I don’t even notice. I reach a point where I no longer know what day it is, what month, or even what city we’re playing in.

All I do is survive.

It’s like I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff, white-knuckling it through every performance, and then falling apart afterwards. Skye, Jude and Lou are left to pick up the pieces, and, to their credit, they always do, but I can’t go on like this.

Once the UK shows start, our schedule is brutal. Staying on top of my game requires stamina like nothing ever has before. Some of the arenas are a bit smaller than the US ones, but that makes the performance even more demanding. It’s more intimate, and the fans love it, which means it’s full-on for us, double the shows, and far more scrutiny on me as I sing.

A few nights ago, I was crying so hard during Heartbreaker on stage, I couldn’t finish the second chorus. I smiled and just tried to hide it, while Jude sang instead of me, but everyone could tell I was crying.

Even before the show’s end, the Internet was bursting at the seams with videos and photos of me trying to smile while I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Tonight, we are playing Cardiff. A lot of cities are behind us and a lot are yet to come. So I hit the gym and try to get my head on straight.

And not think about Eden.

Or think about how the pills would take the edge off, make the pain bearable. No. I will feel it, and I will learn to deal with it. To live with it. To work with a broken heart, even though it’s decaying inside of me.

I try to shut out all other thoughts, and focus on not dying on stage.

When I get really desperate, I text Faith, and she always replies, usually with a joke, always with news. Eden is doing better—and worse. Applying to schools, which is good. Waking up from nightmares, which is bad. Writing too much poetry, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. But poetry is her lifeline these days, it seems. Eden says she is writing a lot of poems—poems I will never read, because she writes under several pseudonyms.

When I get even more desperate than that, I write. The words and the music just come pouring out of me, and within the space of a few weeks, I have ten new songs. Most of them—or all of them?—are crap, but it’s such a difference from being blocked. It’s such a release of anguish, it feels like breathing.

I think a lot about the past. About what happened back then, to Eden, to me. To us. About all the things I did wrong. But I also think about the present. The songs I have already put out there. The life I am living at full speed. My fake name, Issy Woo.

It feels like it’s time to make some decisions. The more I think, the more I write. I write quickly, desperately, in a frenzy, and when I’m done, I’m so tired, I sleep for two days straight. I’m scared that when I wake up and am no longer crazy, the lyrics and the music will seem moronic.

They don’t. I play them again, by myself, not even letting Jude hear them just yet. I have never said this before, but for the first time I feel I might actually have something good here. And to think, I used to be blocked.

I finally tell Skye, and he doesn’t believe me at first. He thinks I’m messing with him, but I patiently explain to him how the words and the melodies are somehow pouring out of me with little effort, as if they have been there all along.

“I don’t feel drained at all,” I tell him. “I feel as if I have another fifteen songs inside me, ready to come out.”

“It seems like you’re tapping into your genius again,” Skye says.

I sigh. “I told you a million times, I’m not a genius, that’s my brother, he-”

“You told me a million times that a genius is like an ocean being poured into a glass,” Skye interrupts me.

“Exactly.”

“Well, this sounds like an ocean to me. Your ocean.”

I fall silent, because he’s right. Of course he’s right. I mean, I’m not a genius, I know that. But this was an ocean. And it came out of me in a whoosh—it would have all come out in a single day if I could stay awake long enough to write everything down. It had to come out of me or otherwise it would have drowned me.

The pain, the guilt, the shame. The love.

All of it, an ocean. And me, with my little boat made of music and lyrics, trying to keep my head above the waves. That’s all my songs are .

“We need to produce this,” Skye says.

“You haven’t even heard any of the songs yet,” I laugh. “They might be all crap.”

“I hear it in your voice,” Skye says, and he’s not laughing. “I hear something that I’ve never heard before, something that makes me think that what we have here is gold. Pure, unfiltered gold.”

“You do, do you?” I lift an eyebrow. “What is that thing that you hear in my voice?”

“Pride,” Skye says. “Sheer pride.”

I close my eyes.

“What is it?” he asks.

I know what I need to do. I have known it for some time now, even though I haven’t said it out loud. But it’s time. This album is going to be filled with songs that did not come about on accident, like Heartbreaker , or out of blind pain, like Saint Hope ; they are going to be something I hope to eventually be proud of.

And it’s time.

“I think I want to be Isaiah,” I tell Skye. A huge weight is lifted off my chest as soon as I say it. Freedom.

“Um, are you forgetting a tiny little thing?” Skye, to his credit, doesn’t bat an eyelid. But he does look at me as if he’s worried I’ve lost what’s left of my mind.

“What’s that?”

“You freaking are Isaiah,” he replies patiently.

“No, I mean as a singer. I am Issy Woo, and I hate that. That’s not me anymore—I’m ready to move on. I want to stop being that product. That lie. I want to be Isaiah.”

There’s silence for a bit as he digests it. Shock, I think. Then he’s thinking in the way only Skye thinks. Slowly and rapidly at the same time. It usually makes me want to tear my hair out watching the cogs turn in his head, but not this time. This time I wait, calmly. No matter what he says, I’m doing this.

But I don’t know if I can do it without his support.

“Fine,” he says finally. “It’s going to be a lot of work, you know that, right? I’m not even sure if the producers will allow it this early in your career…”

“I know. I am doing this. Whether the producers back me or not. Will you back me?”

Skye looks at me. This tour costs so much money, and so many jobs are on the line. I can’t afford to displease the producers, or anyone right now. He knows all this; still, he says nothing. Not one thing. Except :

“I will. We are doing this.”

I nod, grateful, and the next minute he’s gone, already dialing numbers on his phone. ‘ We are doing this’ , he said, but I know there is no ‘we’ here, now. If I do this, if I fail or if I succeed, it’s going to be me. Nothing but me. Finally.

…

On my first Cardiff night, after I’ve finished my regular set, I step up to the mic.

“Cardiff, you have been an amazing audience. That’s why I want to tell you something special tonight.”

They roar, and I wait them out. After they settle down, I give another dramatic pause. If I am ‘always so dramatic’, as Eden always used to say, then I want to make her proud right now.

Bring on the drama. The fans love it.

“My name,” I say quietly into the mic, “is Isaiah.”

The crowd reacts in waves of cheers and screams as they begin to realize what I am doing. I am revealing a part of myself I had kept so carefully hidden. I am giving them all that was left of me: My name.

“My name is Isaiah,” I repeat, now shouting over the clamor, “and I wrote this song.”

I nod to Jude and we go straight into the intro for Pierce Me , as we had rehearsed. Someone hands me my violin, and I start singing before I play. The crowds sing Pierce M e with me, matching me word for word, note for note.

I am half agony, no hope

Thinking of that multiverse

that’s picturing us happy

Where I haven’t hurt you yet

and never will

Where you’re still reading under that tree

And I’m confusing

Juliet with Lizzie

And Jane with Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Don’t press me, man

I’ll recite it right now

At the end of the show, as I kneel on the stage floor, trying to catch my breath, my violin at my side, I feel proud and humbled at the same time. Everything is different; I can feel it in my bones. I bring the mic to my lips, panting and tasting sweat on my tongue.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” I gasp into it, and the crowd lets out a series of deafening screams.

What a perfect way to end the show. With my real name out there.

I can hear Skye’s voice in my head, almost as if he’s saying to me: ‘It’s out there now, forever. You can’t take it back once you let it lose.’

I know it’s out there and I can’t take it back.

I don’t want to.

…

Nothing horrible happens once I’ve put my real name out there.

For a few weeks, everything is fine. Calm. And so it must follow, as the night the day, that Weston Spencer, he of the brooding Regency gentleman fame, has to call me one day out of the blue and ruin everything.

“Sup,” I tell him, just to annoy him.

He, of course, wastes no time with small talk. Oh, no, that’s not Weston’s style. He goes straight into being an idiot.

“I have invited Eden to come and visit my film shoot. We’re in Dorset for two weeks, filming my historical series—it’s just a few hours away from you.” I sit down abruptly, blood rushing from my head. “I thought she might like it,” he adds more softly. “She might enjoy meeting Ari, too.”

He’s gone and done what?

He and Ari are shooting the final scenes for a Regency historical romance set in Greece. Spencer is directing and starring in the mini-series, shot mostly in Vermont. Ari is doing the stunts. It is disgusting how incandescently well they work together. Wes’ Regency series, his directorial debut, has already generated tons of buzz. It’s based on a book series. Wes’ best friend and latest Hollywood heartthrob, Oliver Sikks—Ollie—is set to star in the next season in a year or so.

It's a historical period drama, which takes place during the Greek Revolution of 1821. Wes keeps blowing my mind with his dedication to his art and how serious he is about his love for Greece. He scoured the bookstores for a good story set in Greece, finding nothing for months, and then he finally did. He nearly lost his mind when he found those books which combine his two loves: Austen and Greece.

He purchased the rights to produce and star in it within a few months.

Of course, the publishers are no idiots: Weston Spencer in a white shirt and breeches, looking like a hotter, younger, golden-haired version of Mr. Darcy, is bound to break the box offices come release day.

Wes is calling it The Rakes .

People underestimated Spencer in the industry for years. All they saw was his golden locks and killer smile, and then he was the child star who had ended up with a life-threatening alcohol addiction. He was a has-been before he had reached his twentieth birthday. Well, an Academy Award later, he is proving them all wrong. The Rakes is set out to be a huge success, but I know that Spencer is not looking at the financial aspect of it. He wants the stories to reach as many people as possible.

To reach their hearts.

He has something to say through these stories.

He plans to change the world, one Regency story at the time. I fully believe he will.

Oh, to do something that you believe in , my heart sings as I hear the passion in his voice. Oh, to matter. I am so jealous of the purpose and peace he has found in his work, that I get distracted for a second.

Then what he actually said crashes me back to reality.

“Excuse me,” I almost yell, “you’ve what ?”

“I’ve invited Eden to Dorset,” Spencer repeats calmly. “Do you want to come visit me and bump into her accidentally on purpose?”

I rub my eyes. I have been hibernating since last night’s show, and I’m still not fully awake.

“Your sets are guarded tighter than the Pentagon. I wouldn’t be allowed there if I sold my right arm for it,” I tell him.

“I’m inviting you, you doofus,” he explains. “I thought you could come in-between your shows, if you have the time.”

“You would do that for me?” I stand up real fast, and I need to sit back down real quick. “You-you…” I stutter.

“You ok there, Zay?”

“Just got dizzy.”

“I’m told I have that effect on people.” I imagine him smirking self-conceitedly. That’s not even a word, I invented it just for him. I should put it in a song, just to get back at him for him giving me a heart attack every time I pick up the phone. “Well, what do you say?”

“Are you playing matchmaker all of a sudden, Darcy?”

I hear him laugh. “Maybe.”

“Why.” It’s not a question.

“The work I started, I will finish,” he says.

I stand up again, even more surprised. I know these words by heart—I have been taught them as a kid.

“Weston Spencer, are you quoting Scripture to me right now?”

“You bet I am,” he replies without hesitation. He doesn’t sound surprised at all that I know Bible verses by heart. “Been studying it daily.”

I don’t know what to say. I would never have thought, not in a million years, that someone like bad boy Spencer would start believing in God. Then again, I would never in a million years have thought that I might be trying to do the same thing.

“Miracles do happen, I guess,” I murmur. “Wait, you might be the right person to ask this,” I continue before I change my mind. Something urges me to snatch this chance—I know it might never come again.

“Ask and we’ll find out,” Wes says.

“Is it too late for me?”

“No,” he replies instantly. Then, “For what?”

“Why did you answer ‘no’ if you don’t know what I’m asking?” Frustration bubbles up inside me.

Hope. Hope does that to me. Hope gets me, every single time. I hate myself already, just for asking. But I did it. The words came out of my mouth.

Their truth burned my lips.

I think of the coal, and I wait for his answer.

“Because it isn’t too late,” Wes replies, and somehow it sounds as if he’s smiling. I want to smash his face in right now. “But what for, Isaiah?”

“To believe again,” I get the words out with some effort.

There is a short pause, which is rare indeed with Spencer. He’s thinking. When he speaks again, his voice has changed. It’s deeper, gruff with emotion, but fierce and determined.

“Listen to me, Isaiah. It’s never too late, ok? It wasn’t for me, and if it was too late for anyone, it would have been for me. Your brother may have not told you this, but I was dead for nearly ten seconds. Ari was doing CPR on me, and I was—” his voice breaks.

I hear muffling sounds, as if he is fighting to control his voice .

“I should be the one rescuing her and instead, she had to keep me alive with her bare hands,” he says. “And after all that, it still wasn’t too late to hope, to be forgiven, to believe. To live, Isaiah. To live. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I do.” My throat is all clogged up now too, damn him.

“It’s not too late,” Wes says. “But it is time.”