Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

thirty-three

By the time I reach the waterfront, my head is a mess.

A mess of hope, joy, terror, panic. I feel everything all at once. I’m going to see Eden. And she won’t want to see me. But at least I will see her. I will breathe again, if only for a second.

But the minute I step out of the car, Wes, damn him, runs over to me, dressed in his Regency costume. I just gape at him as he jogs over the sand in a pair of breeches, a cravat, shirtsleeves, and a silk light blue vest that brings out his turquoise eyes. The look on his face is slight panic mixed with pure terror.

“Regency much?” I say to him instead of another greeting.

“Hello to you too.” He grabs my elbow, turning me to the side, and fear floods me.

Eden is not coming. Eden has asked him to kick me out. Eden hates me. Eden—

Stop it, brain.

“Something happened,” Wes tells me and it’s so hard to take him seriously right now. His hair is in curls, literal curls, styled to within an inch of its life, and he has these golden sideburns that make his cheekbones look more chiseled than a Roman god’s statue. But I am so scared, I can’t even laugh at him. “I see you’ve gone pale already,” he sighs. “Please don’t freak out for once.”

“Tell me,” I say.

“Eden’s poetry has been discovered online, and her poems have gone viral. Her real name has been leaked and attached to them. Her real… you know, story. Apparently, some people snooped around and discovered that she had been slamming her poems in New York a few years ago; they’ve found her out.”

I swallow hard, trying to concentrate past the icy fear that grips me, but all I can think of is:

No. No no no no no.

Everything is foggy after that.

I think that Spencer is explaining how Eden has been contacted by several huge websites and newsagents, as well as by several book agents who want to publish a book of her poetry and her story. Also, apparently, a princess has been calling her? No, wait I can’t have heard this last part right. Wait, how does he know all this?

Of course, he’s been talking to Eden .

The whole world has been talking to her, it seems, now that I’ve stopped.

“My lyrics,” I gasp, my throat completely dry. Terror blinds me, and only Wes’ arm on my elbow is holding me upright. “Has it been leaked that she writes my lyrics? Have they linked her name to Issy Woo?”

“Not that I know of,” he says. “She is safe in that regard.” I breathe brokenly. I am never releasing my new album. Never, if it’s going to put her at risk. “Look,” Wes goes on, “this happened nearly two weeks ago, and things have… progressed rather rapidly.”

I’m only half-listening to him.

Because I am already scrolling on my phone, looking for the poems.

Wes tries to snatch the phone from my hand, while his director follows us around and nearly drops to his knees to beg him to get back to the shoot. Spencer lifts his hand, palm up, and the man disappears, giving us some privacy.

Waves break over the sandbar behind us, but I don’t see them, I don’t hear them.

I find Eden’s new poems and I start reading them, standing there on the beach, two feet away from the car that drove me here. I don’t move a muscle. I don’t move an inch.

There are so many poems. So many.

I read Survivor . I read So You Don’t Want To Stay , Get Myself Lost and Multiverse . Then Smaller . I read that one twice over, my whole body shaking. My eyes go blind with tears.

“I need to t-talk to her right now,” I say, barely able to get the words out. That thing she said about watching me kiss other girls in Get Myself Lost just about murdered me.

All her pain just poured out of these words at me and I… I can’t stand it. I want to run until I reach her, wherever she is, and hold her tightly until the pain disappears. I want to annihilate the very memory of pain for her. But no. That’s not what she wants, is it? In these poems, Eden is wearing her grief on her sleeve. She is wearing it calmly and with dignity, like a cape covering the body of a warrior. Like glory.

“I need to see her, I need to explain…” I can’t breathe.

Wes’ hand is on my shoulder, gripping me tight, keeping me upright. He’s still here. He’s been waiting for me while I read. My hands are shaking so hard, I drop my phone on the pebbles. I am barely able to concentrate on Wes’ voice, barely able to get in some air .

“Isaiah,” Spencer’s voice grounds me. “Isaiah, I read the poems too. Listen to me, man. She is really talented, man she is talented. But the first thing that hit me when I read them… It honestly hit me like a punch with every word…”

“What?”

“That she’s not over you.”

I freeze. The ground spins.

“She’s not?” I ask like a dumb person.

“No,” Wes repeats. “Remember when you asked me if it’s too late? It’s not, here is proof. But, Zay, look at me for a second.” His ocean blue eyes pore into mine. “You need to calm the heck down before you meet her. She’ll be here any second, and, for the love of—Please try to play it cool.”

He keeps looking at me, that intense gaze of his willing me to pull myself together, before he finally has to leave. He’s already wasted too much time talking to me while his crew waits for him, but he jogs back to the shoot as if it’s no big deal. That’s Wes: effortlessly cool, no matter what.

I, on the other hand, have zero chill.

‘Try to play it cool,’ he said. Yeah, there is no chance that’s happening.

I join the small group of people gathered to watch the scene being filmed. We just sit there, not making a sound, as Wes and Ari perform a spectacular set of choreographed fencing match in the shallow water. They are both wearing Regency clothes, Ari’s hair tucked into a wig to make her look like a rakish gentleman. She is almost as tall as Spencer, and from afar, they do look like dueling gents.

This scene is so hot, I gotta find myself the book it’s based on , I think. Eden will love it, I bet .

Then I remember that I’m no longer talking to Eden. I focus on the scene being filmed in front of me, trying to block out all other thoughts.

Ari and Wes work so well together: tireless and coordinated, they move as one, their bodies perfectly in sync. I know Spencer’s work ethic is legendary, but I’ve never seen him in action before. My jaw is literally on the floor.

Twenty minutes later, the director gives them a timeout and they flop to the ground, gasping for breath. During the break, Theo arrives and I jog over to give him a tight hug—which he hates. But this once, he returns it and I look up, surprised. Oh. Now I see the reason Theo has gone soft .

Eden is walking behind him. They came together.

“You-you look like an angel.” The words are out of my mouth before I can even process that she is here.

Everyone around us freezes.

Smooth. Just like Spencer instructed.

Theo chuckles lightly and everyone sort of laughs, diffusing the tension. They give us some space, and I just stand there, rooted to the spot, terrified that Eden will walk away from me. She doesn’t.

“You’re blushing,” she says, looking down. Were her eyelashes always this long? They are reddish-brown to match her hair, turning almost white in the sunshine and sending soft shadows down her freckled cheeks.

“I should be; that was extremely awkward,” I tell her, trying to take in a normal breath.

“I liked it,” she smiles. Look at me. “Made me feel as if I’m in one of your songs.”

“You are in one of my songs,” I reply. “Several of them.” Then I think about Heartbreaker , and I wish I hadn’t said anything. It’s such a bitter song.

She is still looking at her shoes. I am trying so hard not to kiss her right now that I can’t think straight. I bet that would make her look at me. No, stop.

“I wish I could rewrite them,” I say and she scoffs lightly. I clear my throat. “Spencer just told me about what happened with your poems.”

Eden turns her face around until all I can see is a waterfall of curls over her slender neck, and I want to kick myself when I remember what she wrote in them about me. About how I hurt her.

“I read a few of the new ones, just now,” I say quickly, reaching out a hand to touch her elbow. “As many as I could. I’m sorry—I know you meant to keep them hidden. I just… I couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s ok. Everyone in the world has read them, it seems.”

“Am I everyone, Eden?” I am shaking slightly. Not slightly.

This is a knife to the heart. I am not everyone, am I? Then again, maybe I’m nobody now. To her.

“Eden, is this you?” I pull up the So You Don’t Want To Stay poem on my phone. “Do you… Did you think like that. Do you think about leaving?” Leaving me , I think, but I don’t say it. I feel like I’m about to drop to my knees and heave my guts out from raw fear.

“No,” she replies at once, her voice curious, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that the thought of losing her destroys me .

How can she not know that everything else is bearable—everything but that. I have been coddling myself all this time, holding on to the pain. But this… This would hurt. Losing her.

“So you never felt that way?” I ask her.

“I did not. But my therapist said I was high risk.”

I flinch at the thought, but she just keeps speaking in her calm, new, grown-up voice.

“I never had those thoughts,” she says, “but I can understand those who do.” She means Teddy. I nod. “He… is struggling. We kind of bonded over that. Actually, he was the one who talked to Wes Spencer about giving me a job. Can you imagine? Just because of this one poem. About me sharing with the world that some days, I found it hard to face each morning. Still do.”

My heart stops at her words. Please, God, no.

“I know what it’s like,” she adds.

“Yeah,” I say in a strangled voice. “You do.”

And I thought I was struggling. And all this time… she was facing this. She was surviving this. Fighting this.

“It’s beautiful, Eden.” My throat is clogged with tears. I swallow them down, but they spill down my cheeks. “Your talent, Eden. My God.”

“Thanks,” she replies. “It… it came from the deepest part of my soul.”

“I know,” I reply. “It pierced mine. You pierced my soul.”

She makes a dismissive sound, which only urges me to repeat myself.

“Every syllable was like a punch to the gut. I already knew how talented you are, but these poems are exquisite. I wish they did not come from so much pain, but reading them, I realized… Eden, you wear grief like a damn crown. I wish—” I push a hand through my hair. “For the thousandth time, I wish I had known what you were going through back then. And I want to tell you, about what you wrote about me kissing other girls, Eden, I swear—”

“We don’t need to talk about that now, Isaiah.” Her voice is so sad as she interrupts me. So sad I want to die.

“No, we do need. I need you to know—Please don’t be in pain because I kissed other girls. They were far fewer than the tabloids said, and you—” My throat is dry again, making it hard to speak. “You have to know that whoever I was with, I was always looking for you. Everywhere I went, everything I did, every stupid decision I made with every girl who couldn’t even begin to compare to you… I was looking for your lips, your eyes, your hands, your fingers. The wa y you made me feel. The way you always make me feel. I never found it, not once. I was yours, even then.”

“I didn’t mean to sound bitter, writing about these things,” she says wistfully.

I don’t think she believes what I just told her. I don’t even think she heard me properly, and it’s so frustrating, but I know Eden’s mind is winning right now. At least, the abused part. It won’t always win; its days are numbered. But right now it’s winning, and it’s destroying me.

“You didn’t,” I reply. “You sounded real. I don’t know how people are reading these words and aren’t completely wrecked afterwards. So many must have read them and felt seen.”

“Olivia of Asteria read them,” she says suddenly.

She is still avoiding my eyes, which is making me crazy. ‘She is not over you.’ But maybe she is, though? I mean, Spencer is a known idiot.

“You know, the Crown Princess?” Eden asks.

“I know who Olivia of Asteria is,” I reply distractedly.

“Yeah. She has asked me to go to Asteria and recite my poems,” she says, still keeping those eyes of hers down. They are the one part of her that is exactly like it used to be. They look like those two autumns we spent together . “I don’t know if I should go. Or if I can do it. What do you think?”

I snap out of my trance. Is she asking my opinion?

“Of course you can do it,” I say. “Of course.” Genuine doubt wrinkles her brow, and I can’t hold myself back any longer. I place my hands on her shoulders and turn her gently. Look at me. My skin is on fire, that familiar white-hot jolt running through me, the one I only feel when I’m touching her. “But do you want to?”

“If it ends up helping someone, even one person, then I want to,” she replies, and I smile.

“That was an Eden reply if there ever was one.”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“You always want to help everyone,” I shrug. “You always want to save others—even when they don’t deserve it.”

“Everyone deserves help,” she says, sliding down her hand to clasp my fingers. Mine latch on to her hand as if it’s a lifeline. “Everyone needs help, whether they realize it or not.”

“Why are you not looking at me while you’re saying this?” I whisper .

“I can barely look at anything else,” she whispers back and my heart stutters. “But I keep thinking about how Solomon broke your family, your future, and your heart. How he… Because of me.”

Ok, now I really need her to look at me. I tip up her chin with my finger. Her eyes are pools of grief and regret.

“Listen to me, please.” There is so much authority in my voice that she does. “No one broke my heart but me. I broke my own heart, Eden. I am the heartbreaker.”

I see the familiar paleness spreading down her cheeks and neck, and I know she’s about to have a panic attack again. I quickly wrap my arm around her waist and bring her body close to my chest. Warming her suddenly cold skin between my hands. Her eyes look into mine, huge, terrified. I will not allow this to happen.

So, I add:

“Until I read your poems, of course. Then they broke me.”

The hint of a smile touches her lips. She takes a breath, then another.

“That’s what everyone says,” she says, then her tone changes, goes quiet and serious. “I don’t know the kind of grief you felt at losing your dad and grandfather,” she adds in an emotional voice that literally breaks me in half. “But I did lose someone too. Someone I thought was my dad. I mean… He was all I knew, then. He was…” She can’t continue, and I don’t care who is watching.

I pull her to me fully, bodily, and hide her face in my chest. I hold her against me until she stops crying.

…

We watch the rest of the shoot together, along with everyone else, and after it’s done, Wes and Ari have to go change into dry—not to mention contemporary—clothes.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Wes tells us, “we’ll have dinner together, ok?”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur under my breath, and Wes chuckles, winking at me.

“Way to be cool, as we discussed.” He slaps me on the back.

The waves roar behind us as the tide comes in, and we stand there, watching the two of them walk away, talking quietly to each other, exhausted but happy. Intimate. The way only couples who really know each other well can be. Wes is completely drenched, his white Mr. Darcy shirt clinging to his chest like second skin, but he drapes two towels and a robe over his girl first .

Theo and Oliver Sikks—Ollie—come over to talk to Eden, and I try not to act too desperate. Apparently, I fail, because the guys look at each other and leave us alone after laughing softly to each other. Yeah, I’d like to see how they behave when they fall completely head over heels for a girl.

They’d probably be worse than me, although I honestly don’t think anyone can be worse than me. Worse at being completely in love with a girl.

“Want to walk with me?” I ask Eden, my voice shaking with need.

Keep it together.

But I can’t. I’ve known I was done for since pretty much the second or third time I saw her, but I was a teen then, and this is now. Now, I am a man. A man who belongs to her.

“Ah,” she says, tilting her head back and taking a deep smell of the ocean. “How very Persuasion coded this place is.”

“I wish I didn’t know what that means, because that would make me so much cooler,” I laugh.

“It would not.”

“The thing is, I know exactly which scene you are referring to. That scene in Lyme, where Captain Wentworth tries and fails to pretend he doesn’t care that Anne is standing two feet from him, by the waves?”

“Exactly right,” she smiles up at me. “I taught you well.”

“’Forced me’ would be more accurate, but either way, here we are. Knowing all of Austen’s heroes as if they are part of our family tree.”

“They might as well be,” Eden says, “for all I knew about my family until recently.”

I stutter. Since when can she laugh about it? Is it ok to? Are we allowed—well, she is. She can do anything she likes. And, apparently, what she wants to do is laugh at the whole sordid mess.

“Are you still breathing over there?” Eden asks, eyes still shut. “Did I shock you?”

“You did,” I admit. We start walking along the shore, the waves spraying us with salty water. “I think you might be the only person who can shock me at this point. But boy, do you steal my breath.”

“Do you not think I can get better?” she asks me and I stop walking.

“Look at me please, Eden.” She does. I swallow, picking my words correctly. Please, God, don’t let me mess this up. I’ll only get one chance . “I have never once thought of you as someone who needs to ‘get better’. I think you are amazing and strong. And brave. And that you can do anything you decide to do.”

She takes a deep breath, and I can see her brain fighting what I am telling her. I’ll say it again and again, until she believes me.

“You are not someone who needs ‘to get better’,” I repeat. “But you are in pain, and I can’t stand it. I know it won’t last forever. It will get more bearable, more manageable. I don’t know if it will ever completely disappear, but you are living your life in spite of it, with it, and that amazes the hell out of me.”

She just looks at me, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. Maybe no one has ever put it to her this way, although if her therapists haven’t, I would like to strangle them. Or maybe they have, but coming from me, it’s sinking in. I hope that’s true, even though I am an idiot who can’t express half the things he feels right now.

“I think you are perfect as you are,” I say. “So, no, I don’t think you need to get better. But I think you are getting even stronger and more amazing with every passing day. With every victory. I am… I have no words to describe what it feels like to see you blossom into this gorgeous woman, even from afar. You strike me speechless, Eden.” These last words are a hoarse whisper. I am overcome with so much emotion, I can barely say them.

“By ‘afar’,” Eden observes dryly, “I’m guessing you mean the sneaky texts Fee sends you.”

“Not so sneaky, it seems.” I smirk.

“She tells me everything before she sends off her little texts to you. Asks for my permission, if you can believe it.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

We walk quietly for a bit. Eden takes off her shoes as we walk closer to the surf. I pick them up and carry them in one hand, wordlessly. Eden bends down to pick up a shell from the wet sand; it’s broken in half.

“Did you know that you can still break after you’re broken?” she says, turning the broken piece over in her fingers.

“Eden…” I cover her hand with mine. My fingers are almost twice as long as hers, closing around her fist. Her skin is ice cold.

“Into more pieces,” she adds.

“If we were to choose what breaks us,” I say, “I would choose you.”

“I may not have the ability to choose,” Eden replies, “according to my therapists.”

Her hand is shaking. Mine is steady, holding tight .

“I don’t know if they’re right,” I say. “I mean, I know you can choose. You’ve been choosing things since you were a kid. You chose to be brave in a situation that scares the crap out of me. You chose to be kind in the face of such cruelty. And now, after everything, you choose to fight instead of becoming bitter. You have in front of you the alternative, what you could have become: Me.” She opens her mouth to interrupt me—contradict me—but I keep talking. “And you haven’t become that—you’ve become the opposite. That’s a choice. That’s you choosing it, day in and day out, for years.”

She looks up at me, her eyes shining with tears. She’s listening. I am not a praying man, but I would beg heaven on my knees right now that she believes what I am telling her.

“You,” I place a palm on her cheek, holding her like the most precious thing in the universe, “have become you because of all your choices—and if that isn’t proof that you are making the right choices, I don’t know what is.”

“I want to believe you so badly,” her voice trembles.

“Believe me,” I fix her with my gaze. “You don’t need the ability to choose; you have that. What you need is time.” I lean down. She trembles when my lip brushes her ear. A delicious shudder travels down her whole body, leaving her breathless. “And, baby, I have nothing but time.”

I tip up her face with my thumb, and lower my head towards her, drawn by an invisible force. I am fighting to keep my eyes open, but I am already lost. I can’t help the surge of heat that convulses through my whole body, and I have barely touched her. She grabs my wrist lightly, making me stop. My eyes snap open. Eden brings my hand to her lips and quietly kisses my fingers. I inhale sharply, shivering from head to toe.

“Food is here!” Ollie screams from somewhere behind us, and Eden jerks, letting go of my hand.

The spell is broken.

“Coming!” she calls and starts running towards the huge, white tent they have set up for us.

I look out into the sea. The sun has just set.

…

Wes raises his glass. We are sitting in groups at three big tables covered in white, set with fine cutlery and crystal glasses, as if we are dining at the Ritz. The darkening sky is bathed in the last of the sun’s pink light, and there are torches lit all around the tables, blazing orange.

I am two seats away from Eden; this is pure torture. Opposite me sits Wes, his hand resting on the back of Ari’s hair. He’s lightly playing with her brown curls, as if he’s not even aware he is doing it. But she turns to look at him, just once, just slightly, and he abandons his glass and looks like he’s one breath away from losing all control and gripping her hair just to tilt her head back and lower his lips on hers.

Great . Now I’m imagining myself and Eden in their place, and a cold fist clenches around my heart. I put down my fork. Ari clears her throat and Wes seems to wake up. He picks his glass back up, and raises it for a toast.

“This is to thank all of you,” he says, “for working with me, on this and other projects.” He glances briefly at each of us: He is right. All of us have either created music or films with him. Worked with him on several, significant productions. Spencer points to Eden with one finger, the rest still wrapped around his crystal glass. “Here is to what’s coming,” he says, winking at her.

Ollie nudges Eden—he is seated on her other side. “Your last chance to get out,” he tells her in a theatrical whisper.

Eden turns to him. “Out of what?”

Everyone laughs, including Spencer.

“Out of getting you to work with this lunatic,” Ollie replies.

Eden blushes furiously, but her eyes are dancing, all happy.

Theo introduced her to Ollie earlier—I watched. Nearly had an aneurism, but I stepped away and managed not to say anything.

Even now, my heart constricts at the thought of her admiring any guy, but here she is, seated between two of the universally-acknowledged ‘sexiest men on the planet’. On one side of her is Theo, a billionaire whose rock-hard abs have graced more than one underwear billboard in Times Square. And on the other, Oliver Sikks—a tall, dark statue of a man, who has been a soap-opera idol since his teens, adored by billions of girls, and now about to join Spencer on the cast of his Regency show. Yes, that’s all I need, Eden looking on while Ollie takes Wes’ place in that white soaked shirt.

Suddenly, even though we are outside, there isn’t enough air.

I know it will happen, sooner or later. Eden will meet someone and she will fall for him. And he will live and die for her. Most of the people sitting at this table already seem ready to defend her with their lives, should she need them to. I don’t know if she sees it yet— if she realizes with how much awe people look at her. How much they love her the minute they start knowing her.

But she will eventually.

And she will pick someone, the best one there is.

And I will watch. And I will die.

I get up and pretend that I need to use the restroom that’s a three-minute walk from here. I splash water on my face and push my fingers so deeply into my eye sockets, the bones of my skull hurt.

When I get back, Spencer is talking animatedly with Eden about the scene he just filmed. He is asking her opinion about Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and then the conversation veers to other historical details about the Regency era. Then they start talking about books: the Brontes, the Dickens. He asks her what her favorite retellings are and then he proceeds to make a note of her answers on his phone.

Weston freaking Spencer. I bet he’ll make movie adaptations out of every single book she mentioned. Then he sends her his script and asks her ideas on it—still carefully taking notes whenever she speaks.

The servers are already removing the plates and preparing to serve us dessert. Well, not ‘already’. Apparently, we have been sitting here for over two hours. Outside the white tent, the sky is dripping with stars.

I don’t know where the time went. I have done nothing but watch Eden all evening. A few minutes later, she starts talking to Ari, and I start to shamelessly eavesdrop, but I lose my train of thought. The words they are saying start running together. I am looking at Eden’s lips as she licks the frosting off her dessert spoon.

They are pink… no, peach. The night covers them in velvet, but I remember how they taste, like soft, sweet, ripe fruit. The kind that you only have to barely touch with your teeth and it starts dripping with juices and the—

“Isaiah, are you with us?” Spencer’s voice drags me to the present.

“Yeah,” I say, a little breathless. “Right here.”

“You were looking like you were about to pass out,” Wes shrugs.

I bring my attention back to Eden and Ari’s conversation. They are, of course, talking about Spencer. What else is new?

“I know what you mean, Eden,” Ari says. “You never forget the face of the person who saves you from drowning. ”

Spencer shivers and runs a hand down his throat as if he’s distressed.

“It’s the same for me,” Eden says and she glances towards me. I think I briefly die and then come back to life.

“Is it ok to tell you something that might have to do with your… story?” Ari asks tentatively, and I almost jump across the table to tell her to stop talking, but Spencer brings his finger to his lips.

Eden nods, smiling. “I would actually like that,” she says.

Oh. I guess I am the one who should shut up then. Freaking Spencer, being always right.

“My mother did not want me,” Ari says, and my head snaps up. She what ? “She still doesn’t want me, I should say,” Ari smiles ruefully, and Spencer’s hand snakes up her elbow. He threads his fingers through hers as she keeps talking to Eden. “She doesn’t want anyone to know that her daughter is a stunt woman, or anything as unglamorous as all that.” Ari shrugs. “It hurts. And the only thing that hurt more was when I tried to pretend it didn’t.”

“It’s true,” Eden agrees. “People seem to expect you to get over it at some point. But what if you don’t?”

“What if you don’t?” Ari echoes. “As if such a thing is easy to get over. It’s not. The only remedy is the truth, and it took a lot of therapy for me to be able to say it: My mother did not want me.”

Eden’s eyes are alight. “Meanwhile, I think my so-called dad wanted me too much, one might say. It wasn’t much better, I assure you.”

“It was much worse, actually, from what I hear,” Ari tells her, watching her reaction.

They both chuckle softly, and I realize they understand each other in a way I will never be able to. I turn my face to the side and start talking softly with Spencer about nonsense, letting them talk in privacy.

They talk and talk as the moon rises in the sky. Theo, Ollie and a cute girl called Katia, who was introduced to me as Ari’s friend, take off for a walk along the beach. Theo is obviously admiring Katia—he has a weakness for unbearably beautiful women—but I think Ari would break both his legs if he tried to even flirt with her. I, on the other hand, am glad that Theo is taking an interest in life, for once, even though that interest is life-threatening. Absorbed in my thoughts, I don’t even notice that the clouds have covered the moon and it’s started drizzling. And then I hear the screams .

Spencer looks sharply towards the black water. There is almost nothing to see but waves cresting white towards the shore. He shakes his head, then laughs softly. I don’t.

In the light of the torches, I can just about make out three heads bobbing in the shallow water: Ari, Katia and Eden. Their clothes lie in a pile just out of the water’s reach, and the girls have jumped in the freezing ocean in the rain. I don’t think; I run.

I’m up to my waist in water when I reach Eden.

“Isaiah!” she squeals, her teeth chattering. She is wearing only her underwear, and Ari is right next to her, but I can’t quite catch my breath. And not just because the water is nearly freezing. “Did you want to come for a dip too?”

“I di—didn’t want you to be scared of the water,” I stutter. Saltwater sprays my lips, my hair. I grab her and steady her against me as a wave covers her head. She emerges laughing.

“You could have taken off your clothes first,” she tells me, spitting water.

“Didn’t I?” I look down. My shirt is plastered to my skin. “Crap.” Still, I don’t let her go.

I lift her against me, so that the next wave won’t go over her head, and she laughs when it leaves her cold and breathless. She is sitting on my thigh, and I’m not going anywhere.

I hold her firmly as her body shakes, but she is laughing, and I am not. I can’t feel anything else right now but worry about her getting in too deep, drowning while the other girls are better swimmers, or her heart not being able to handle the cold. Then I think about her being in danger and Theo or another guy getting to her first, before I can be there for her… I think about losing her.

Meanwhile, she is having the time of her life, screaming in laughter, dipping into the cold ocean with her friends, something most girls have done several times over by the time they are twenty-one; and here I am, holding her tightly against me. I am literally holding her back.

I can’t let her enjoy it.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe it’s not a good idea to be around her right now.

Maybe I can’t let her breathe, just because I can’t. And that’s unfair.

“You always look out for me, Isaiah,” Eden smiles, lifting up her face to mine. Her lips are so kissable with the water dripping from them that I turn my head away. “Thank you. ”

“Don’t freaking thank me,” I say bitterly, hating myself more than I ever have before. “And call me Zay, would you?”

“I would not,” she says. “You know why.”

Now I am shaking so badly I can barely keep myself upright in the water.

“Let’s go, you two,” Ari tells us, “out! You’re not used to the cold like us Greek girls. Come on!”

She and Katia are running out of the water, reaching out their hands to Eden, but that’s not happening. I sweep her up in my arms, lifting her body clean above the waves as she screeches at the cold mist of seawater on her skin, and I run over the waves to the shore. I grab the towel from Theo’s stupid hands and drape it around Eden’s shoulders myself. As if I’d let him put it on my girl himself.

Except, she is not my girl. But she laughs up at me as if she is, and right now, I don’t remember what’s dream and what’s reality.

Wes and Ollie have jumped into the ocean too behind me, except they had the presence of mind to take off their shirts and shoes first. Only I wasn’t jumping in because I’m cool like them. Oh no.

I was not being cool, not even in the slightest. I was being desperate.

I came here to see Eden and it wasn’t nearly enough. Two lifetimes wouldn’t be enough, but I’ll never get them, will I? The best I can hope at this point would be to be friend-zoned from here to kingdom come, and I honestly think I might die of disgust if that were to happen. Yeah, desperate doesn’t begin to cover it.

Eden is struggling back into her clothes, her skin damp and cool, and this is the worst possible moment for me to have to go. But I do have to go. I’m out of time.

And as my security guards come to collect me—I am majorly out of schedule—I look longingly at Eden. She just waves at me, and then she is gone, running up and down the dark beach with Ari, their arms wrapped around each other’s’ waists, trying to warm up. I want to lie down on the beach and never get up.

Instead, I order my feet to start walking towards my driver.

“You are holding your breath,” Spencer’s voice calls after me. He runs from the water to catch up with me, towel draped over his bare chest.

“Am not,” I reply like a child .

“You are. You are holding your breath for her to tell you she’s going to come to your next show. And the one after that. And the one after that.”

I try to look unbothered. “It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to ho—” I stop myself before saying the word ‘hope’. “To guess that since she came all the way to Europe, she might stay a few days longer and fit in a show or two.”

Wes laughs and shakes his head, spraying me with droplets like a dog. “I knew it! You are an open book, Zay, for all your black clothes and mysterious looks on the stage.”

“You take that back right now.” I stop walking. “I am not an open book!”

“Not to mention an imbecile.” He just keeps going.

“In English, please?”

“That was English, my half-witted friend. It means incredibly stupid.”

“Why am I incredibly stupid this time?”

“Because,” Wes stops as well, and turns to face me. “Eden gave up a palace to come here, and you are just standing there, pale as a corpse. She was supposed to be in Asteria today, by special invitation from the crown. Apparently, they are hosting a stately dinner where Princess Olivia will announce stepping up to the throne to her intimate circle of friends. They call it ‘an unofficial announcement’, but the event will be televised and broadcast all over the world. They were supposed to be having a formal rehearsal as we speak. Eden is a guest of honor, one of the few non-royals invited.”

I just gape at him, trying to wrap my mind around what he is telling me.

“She and the princess have gotten very close, apparently,” he goes on. “They have been talking on the phone for weeks now.”

“Did Eden tell you all this?”

“She did,” he nods. “She told me she told you as well.”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t realize—”

“You are too preoccupied by your own pain to understand what is happening in her life.” His tone isn’t judgmental, but maybe it should be. “She is moving on, that’s what’s happening.”

I swear, if it was anyone else than stupid Spencer standing in front of me right now, telling me this, I would have sank to my knees, but I won’t embarrass myself in front of him. Not any more than I already have, that is .

“At the same time,” Spencer lays a hand on my shoulder as I turn to go, “you should know that Eden told them that the rehearsal of the royal dinner would have to wait, because she wanted to come here, to see you.”

“What?” I miss a step, and nearly fall flat on my face. Wes holds me up. “And they agreed?”

Spencer shrugs. “Apparently, Olivia likes her. Loves her.”

“She is not the only one,” I murmur under my breath.

Spencer lets out a frustrated sigh and slaps me on the back.

“Isaiah,” he says, and I think he says as a way of saying goodbye, but then he adds something: “Sixty twenty-two.”