Chapter Fifty-Four
Cooper
The Verge is just as I remember it. Wild, quiet, untouched.
Cold air bites at my nose, but it’s nothing compared to the dull throb behind my eyes. Shoving my hands deeper into my coat pockets, I follow the trail to the top, Lockie’s footsteps steady behind me.
Trees overhead block most of the dying sun, casting long shadows over the jagged rocks.
Lockie doesn’t say a word, just walks in silence.
I know he has opinions. Plenty of them. I’ve heard them in different hotel rooms, backstage hallways, usually when I’m pretending I’m fine, and he knows damn well I’m not.
But for now, he keeps them holstered, and for that, I’m grateful.
He doesn’t get paid to coddle me—not that I want it—and right now, I don’t need a lecture. Don’t need pity.
I just…need to be here. The one place we always came to when life felt too big.
How many times before I left did I say I’d come back? With him. Find time after the next tour, the next album, promises stacked on promises. All of them easy to make when I never had to keep them. The thought presses in, unwelcome and heavy.
“I thought coming home would make me feel better,” I murmur. “If anything, I feel worse.”
Because being back in Taunton Falls doesn’t bring relief, just devastating clarity.
The trail curves, opening to the flat grass overlooking the distant town lights twinkling in the valley below.
I freeze, Lockie coming up behind me, and I know he can feel the tension in my spine.
A lone figure’s already standing at the edge, hood up, shoulders stiff.
I don’t need him to turn around to know who it is.
He must hear our boots or something because Declan slowly glances over his shoulder, pulling back his hood, revealing the sharp lines of his face. His eyes flick to Lockie before settling on me.
“I was just leaving,” he mutters, voice rough, turning like he’s about to walk away.
“This place hasn’t changed,” I say, moving the last few steps to the railing, gesturing out to the view. “It’s like time stood still here.”
He stalls, silence stretching between us, thick and suffocating. He doesn’t look at me. Just nods.
“I saw my parents tonight,” I try again, needing him to stay, but knowing I don’t have the right to want that. “I didn’t know about the bar.”
That gets a reaction. His jaw clenches, his hands curling around the cold metal rail.
“Why would you?”
The question slips under my skin, sharp in places already wearing thin. Guess I deserve that, too.
“Because we’re…” I trail off. My gaze drops to my hands, thumb worrying at the skin beside my nail, the nervous habit I can’t seem to shake, worse with him in front of me like this.
Gaze narrowed, he tilts his head. “We’re what, Reign?”
I flinch. The way he says my stage name feels wrong.
“Best friends?” He lets out a short, bitter laugh, the sound out of place with the man I remember.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Were.” His tone’s lined with something that sounds a hell of a lot like disgust. “We were best friends. And don’t pretend like you think we still are. You’re not that naive.”
My brow furrows. “Dec—”
“It’s Declan.”
The invisible wall between us turns solid. Not something I can push against or talk my way through like I used to. Carved from concrete. Strong. Final. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Still, a small part of me thought there might be a crack. A place to start. A chance.
But the look in his eyes says everything, killing any hope.
The damage I caused, the distance I created, he learned how to live without me. And now I’m standing on the wrong side of a life I’m no longer a part of.
“Don’t act like you give a shit, Reign. You stopped caring the second you left. The second you became him.”
“That’s not fair,” I whisper, throat tightening. “You don’t know what it was like—what I went through.”
His eyes flare. “And why would that be?”
The question shreds through every excuse I’ve been holding on to for years. The ones I built so I could live with myself.
Because I didn’t want to tell you.
Because I stopped letting you in.
He huffs a humorless laugh as the words tangle on my tongue, his jaw flexing.
“I waited, Cooper. I waited for years. I texted. I called. I tried. And all I got back was silence. Voicemails that went nowhere. Messages left unread. The only way I knew what was going on was by reading interviews online.”
A sick weight drops through me. Interviews. PR bullshit, rumors, shit Liam let swirl because it kept me in the charts. He saw all that? Believed the twisted stories fitting a narrative the public wanted because I gave him nothing?
“It felt like a one-way friendship, so I stopped trying. Stopped hoping. Because the Cooper I knew? He was gone.”
My head shakes on instinct, and I step toward him, trying to reach for him.
“I’m still me,” I say, even if it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself.
“No,” he says, pinning me where I stand, making me halt. “Not anymore. Cooper was gone the second Reign signed that deal.”
The name rolls off his tongue like poison, once again.
“Stop calling me that,” I snap. “I never wanted to be just Reign. But that’s all I am now. To everyone. My label. My manager. Even my friends only see him. I was never meant to be that to you. I was—”
I let out an exasperated laugh, thrusting shaking hands into my hair and tugging hard.
But it’s not like I can feel the sting anyway.
I’m far too numb for that. “Nobody cares about Cooper when they could have Reign. You want AMAs tickets? Text Reign. A feature, a favor, a goddamn selfie? Reign will hook you up.”
The prickling behind my eyes is the icing on the fucking cake. I swipe at them angrily.
“Why would they care about Cooper when Reign’s the better deal?” I whisper, the pressure inside me finally pushing everything out.
“I cared, Cooper! I kept checking in. Kept showing up. Even when it was clear you weren’t coming back.”
His words don’t fit the narrative I’ve become conditioned to.
“This isn’t what I thought my life was going to be. Losing myself. Losing you.”
His gaze drops for a fraction of a second, like my admission hits somewhere he doesn’t want it to. Then he drags it back up, forcing himself to meet my eyes.
“You didn’t lose me,” he says quietly. “You left me.”
Silence rushes in, loud and brutal. I swallow hard, fighting around the burn in my throat.
“I didn’t—” I choke on the words.
“Didn’t what?”
I drag in a breath that doesn’t seem to reach my lungs, my thoughts tripping over each other.
Where do I even start? I felt like I didn’t have the right to reach out when everything in my life was exploding upward and his had come to a dead stop. I was soaring and he was…falling. What does it even matter now anyway? Look where I am, what I’ve become.
But I have to try.
“When I got the deal… the early stuff felt the same. I was still grinding, still writing, still pouring everything into making music work. And I knew it could all disappear in a second. One bad single, one album flop, and I could be dropped.” My breath fogs out in the air as I exhale.
“That part felt fair to share with you.”
My chest tightens as the truth presses forward, heavier now.
“But then it didn’t stop. The singles kept coming, the numbers got ridiculous. Platinum records, sold-out shows, festivals, tours. And suddenly, my life looked like everything you were supposed to have.”
Declan’s jaw locks, tendons standing out in his neck, hand curled tighter around the railing as he listens.
“You were meant to have it all.” I continue, voice roughening with each word. “The NHL contract, the records, the Stanley Cup. All of it. You were supposed to be the one the whole town bragged about. And then it was just…gone. Overnight.”
I shake my head, a bitter breath tearing out of me.
“And I panicked.”
“Panicked?”
“Yeah,” I admit, quietly, gaze dropping as shame burns hot in my chest. “And maybe fame got to my head, but every good thing that happened to me felt like I was rubbing it in your face. Like I was bragging by just existing. Calling you from a tour bus to say I’d gone platinum when you were rehabbing a knee that would never be the same?
Sending you videos from sold-out arenas while you were figuring out what to do next? ” My voice breaks. “I couldn’t do it.”
A sound escapes Declan, a resentful scoff that makes me flinch, but I keep going.
“I’d type the messages. Sit there with them before deleting everything because it felt cruel.
And after a while…after a while, it wasn’t just guilt anymore.
I was drowning. Recording, rehearsals, flights, expectations.
I kept telling myself I’d answer later. Tomorrow.
After the next thing.” I meet his eyes, forcing myself not to look away from the anger burning there. “Then it got too far gone to fix.”
Silence stretches between us, cold and heavy.
“I was in over my head, Declan.”
His shoulders lock, eyes going dark, unreadable, and my stomach drops.
This isn’t the boy who’d let me climb into his bed after a bad game so I could cheer him up. This isn’t the boy who trusted me with everything, the one who made everything feel lighter, who believed in me long before anyone else knew my name.
This is the man my silence made.