Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

forty-nine

Wembley

Before the show at Wembley, we spend the entire day sound checking the stage. We always use Saint Hope for the mic tests, because it’s the most demanding and versatile of all my songs.

The song echoes over and over in the empty arena, until we can get the sound just right.

“Look, Isaiah,” someone tells me, and I look.

It’s Eden.

She’s on the empty stage, parts of it still under construction, and she’s jumping around and dancing to Saint Hope . Dancing to my voice streaming over the megaphones.

I just forget everything I was doing and stand there, mesmerized as she runs around the huge stage like a little kid. But no. She never did that as a little kid, did she?

Tears clog my throat. I have never seen anyone as excited or exuding as much pure joy as Eden is right now. Everyone, the stage workers and the sound crew, stop what they were doing and sit around to watch her quietly, smiling up to their ears. Eden, oblivious, keeps dancing as my voice croons the lyrics I wrote for her in a melody we started composing together.

As the recording goes into the first bridge over the speakers, I catch the eye of one of the sound guys, and I motion to him to cut the track and give me sound on the mic I’m holding in my hand.

He does it, and the music stops. I pick up where my voice left off and go into the next verse seamlessly. Except this time my voice isn’t coming from a recording. It’s coming from me. I climb up to the stage, still singing, and Eden stops dancing as she realizes I’m singing live. She turns around to look for me.

She finds me, as she always will, right behind her, looking at her .

I thought her smile couldn’t get any wider, but it does. It does, the minute she sees me. I keep singing as I motion to her to keep dancing. Her eyes sparkle brighter than the spotlights.

So I walk up the stage, watching her. Watching the girl I love jump around, run from the one end of the stage to the other, dancing for me, with me, because of me, as I sing to her the lyrics of Saint Hope .

…

Tomorrow, this stadium will be flooded with people; it’s sold out several times over, after all. But right now, it’s just us two. Nothing and nobody else exists. I never take my eyes off her as I sing, and she glances up at me, sending me a kiss through the air. I’m already writing this moment into a song in my head, even though I am currently singing a different song to her.

My head is drowning in songs.

I want to keep doing this my whole life , I realize. I know it with a certainty I’ve never felt before. I have found what I want to do with my life: I want to keep singing to her as she dances. That’s all.

I do not expect this to be easy.

But I know it will be worth it. It is worth it already. And we haven’t even started yet.

…

I am a different man on stage tonight.

The crowds are something else, the loudest they have ever been. And I am singing to them with my heart full, my voice not breaking, my eyes wet only with happiness.

I close my eyes and sing T he Coal live for the first time:

The coal

The coal

The coal has touched my lips.

Why have you forsaken me

In my hour of need?

As I keep singing, listening to the fans’ voices croon the lyrics along with me, I collide with the light. It just washes over me in waves, obliterating all the darkness of the previous years. I collide with the fire that started with just this tiny, smoking, almost burnt-out coal. But it’s not dead now—I’ve stoked it into flames, into an inferno. Its warmth floods me. I’m swimming in it: Love. Purpose. Light.

Why have you forsaken me

In my hour of need?

And then, somewhere in the crowd, I see us: teen Eden and Isaiah, as we were then. Two kids, broken and lost. No one to save us but each other. Teen Isaiah looks straight at me as I sing, and in my mind, I see his lips move.

He is saying: ‘meet me in the woods’. Next to him, teen Eden, that little frail thing with stick legs and dyed hair and empty, sad eyes, looks at teen Isaiah, and then her eyes meet mine as well. My breath catches.

The song is done. My eyes are full of tears.

I wanted to be the one to save you , I think at her. I’m sorry I didn’t. But I am here now, and I will keep saving you until I die.

“Dude, you ok?” Jude asks anxiously. He saw that faraway look in my eyes, and he’s worried I will fall apart on him again. I’m sorry to have done that to him. I regret it.

“Lost my mind a long time ago,” I reply and he smiles. He thinks I’m joking, and I kind of am and also kind of not.

Teen Isaiah turns and grabs teen Eden’s hand. Behind them, instead of screaming fans, I see our woods, swirling with mist and dead leaves. Golden evening light illuminates the two teens’ faces as they smile at each other, and then climb to their feet, to go on one of their adventures. Which day will they live now? The one where they talk about books? The one where they listen to Beethoven’s Symphony and fight not to kiss each other breathless?

Whichever day they are going to live, it will be perfect.

I am back in Massachusetts, at that prep school, breathing in the air of that day.

I blink, and a group of shrieking fans are screaming my lyrics back at me right by the stage lights. Isaian and Eden are gone, and yet they are still here.

I know they might never leave me completely, these ghosts, and I’m not sure I want them to. They won’t be something that haunts me forever; eventually, they will become the past, which is as it should be. They will become how Eden and I started and who we used to be. Who we had to be in order to be who we are now.

I glance up at the VIP tent; Eden is singing her heart out, dancing in place. Her slender body moves with the grace and freedom of a woodland nymph—she who had been taught never to leave that house. I continue singing, only for her. In my head, I am writing a song again. Maybe I’ll call it ‘This Is How It Ends’ . It ends with us singing to each other about hope.

It ends with her singing the lyrics to Saint Hope with me, me looking at her from across the stadium, pointing to her, her pointing to me.

Saint Hope, I lost you

Saint Hope I found you

You are the thing with feathers

That found my broken soul

The entire sold-out stadium is singing the lyrics with me, their voices a shapeless, echoing sound that drowns the night sky in music, but I only hear Eden’s voice. I’ll kiss the breath out of her as soon as I get off this stage.

She is not hiding from me now. Her eyes are glued to my face. Mine to hers.

I sing like that, looking at her, being looked at by her.

This is how it ends , I think.

But wait, no.

No.

It starts.

Is it too late to start believing?

‘It’s never too late,’ Wes’ words echo inside my head. ‘But it is time.’

Finally, I know that they are true. It is time.

This is how it starts.