Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
BODHI
Ever since the night of the ballet, I couldn’t shake the image of Iggy from my mind.
Standing on that stage for the first time since his life-changing injury, his face soft and open, finally at peace.
He’d rediscovered something he thought he’d lost forever.
It didn’t look the same as it once had. It couldn’t.
But when he danced, when he let himself move without expectation or grief weighing him down, he looked happy.
Iggy would never dance professionally again.
His injury made sure of that. But he’d realised something far more important.
That loving ballet didn’t have to mean performing it.
That he could hold it close in a different way.
Watch it. Feel it. Let it live alongside him instead of defining him.
It wouldn’t ever completely fill the space that had been torn open, but maybe it didn’t have to.
Maybe it was enough that ballet was still part of his world at all.
Watching him fall in love again had forced me to look at myself.
At my own situation. I was lucky. Unfairly so.
I could still do the thing I loved, even if it didn’t look like the version I’d once imagined.
Even if it came with compromises and bruises I hadn’t anticipated.
And yet, somewhere along the way, I’d convinced myself I was trapped.
Iggy hadn’t.
He’d seen it clearly from the moment I’d bared too much of myself in group all those months ago.
“You could’ve stood up to them. Anytime. Your life didn’t change. You just stopped liking the current version.”
I couldn’t rewrite the past. Couldn’t undo the mistakes or the choices I wished I’d made differently. But the future wasn’t set in stone. I still had agency. Still had a spine. I could grow a pair and stand up to the people who’d been reshaping us into something unrecognisable.
We were Noctis long before the label got their claws into us.
Before the money, the charts, the sold-out tours and shiny plaques.
We were Noctis when we were just a group of scrappy teenage boys crammed into Mick’s garage, playing too loud and terribly out of tune.
When we performed in dive bars for free drinks and barely enough gas money to get home.
It had been hard, yeah. But it had been fun.
We’d busted our asses to sell tickets for pennies. Written one awful song after another, until eventually one of them didn’t suck. We’d laughed through it. Loved it.
So when had music stopped feeling like that?
After the pizza restaurant, we’d returned to the hotel, and for the first time in days, Iggy and I slept in separate rooms. Tomorrow was our first of two shows in Milan, and he’d insisted on it. Said I needed rest. No distractions. Just sleep.
I’d argued, of course. Told him he wasn’t a distraction at all.
That I’d slept better beside him than I had in months.
That I liked waking up next to him. But he’d put his foot down, firm and unyielding in a way that felt unfamiliar coming from him.
And I respected it, even if it caught me off guard.
Alone in my room, my fingers itched. Not for my sketchbook, not for charcoal.
For a notebook. A battered, tattered thing that lived at the bottom of my backpack.
Creased, faded, swollen with years of use.
Pages filled edge to edge with frantic scrawls.
Lyrics written in stolen moments, in airports and green rooms and the back of tour buses.
Some had become songs. Many hadn’t. As time passed, fewer and fewer made the cut. Some were shared and rejected. Others I never showed anyone at all, written only to quiet the noise in my head. Because if I didn’t get the words out, they’d circle endlessly until they drove me insane.
That night, alone in my room, I finally reached for it again.
I flopped onto my stomach on the bed, notebook and pen in hand, and flipped through the filled pages until I found an empty one near the back. There weren’t many left. I’d need a new notebook soon.
As I pressed the nib to the paper, it was Iggy’s face that came to mind. His blinding smile. His musical laugh. His take-no-shit attitude.
You move like you’re counting the floor, like every step still matters.
I learned how to stand in the noise; you learned how to fall without shattering.
His pink hair blowing in the wind while we sat surrounded by wildflowers. His tears. Those green eyes rimmed red as he looked up at me and called me an asshole for giving in so easily.
You wear your scars like constellations, mapping where you’ve been.
I hid mine in the sound, pretending I could drown them out again.
His fuzzy rainbow socks. His chipped nail polish. His tongue poking out in concentration while he painted my face in art therapy. His trembling frame as he crumbled apart on an opera house stage. His open mouth as he screamed with pleasure while I took him apart, piece by marvellous piece.
You remind me I’m breathing; I remind you you’re not broken.
We don’t need to be fixed; we just need to begin.
The page filled quickly. Some lines perfect, others scratched out and rewritten, better the second time around.
If loving you is dangerous, then let it be slow.
Let me learn your gravity before I let go.
My hand stilled.
I stared at the words, at how easily they’d come.
How naturally they’d spilled from somewhere deep and honest and frightening.
Love. A word I’d only ever associated with my mom.
With my bandmates. With music. With things I was willing to put before myself.
Hell, once upon a time, I’d probably even loved drugs.
Loved the way they made me feel. Made me forget.
But this was different.
This wasn’t the love of a child clinging to the woman who raised him. Or the loyalty between brothers who’d bleed for one another. It wasn’t the rush of a perfect set, or the roar of a crowd screaming my name.
This was quieter. Steadier. Scarier.
Did I love Iggy?
We’d started as reluctant friends, when he’d barged into my life with sassy remarks and clouds of sweet-scented vapour.
Became each other’s anchors when the cravings hit hard, when group sessions dug too deep, when recovery felt like a mountain with no summit in sight.
We’d found our way back to each other after rehab, growing closer without really noticing, spending more and more time together until this became us.
We’d promised to look out for one another. To stay honest. To hold each other accountable. To prove again and again that we weren’t broken, just dented. And that dented things could still be whole.
So when did it change?
When had it become more than the obvious? More than a kiss and a grind in the KitKatClub. More than sixty-nine in a maintenance closet. More than a fuck in the middle of the night.
When had I fallen in love with him?
The most beautiful part was that I couldn’t pinpoint it.
There was no lightning strike. No single moment I could circle and say there.
Only the quiet certainty that it had happened.
That somewhere along the way, I’d opened my heart to a pink-haired, chaotic twink with a foul mouth and a head full of dreams. I’d fallen for his clashing colours.
His endless talking. His over-the-top dramatics.
I knew Iggy then, and I knew him now.
And somewhere in the space between who we were and who we were learning to become, love took root. Slow. Careful. Still growing.
We weren’t fixed. We were healing.
Together.
And I fucking loved him.
The next morning, I messaged Riff, asking him to gather the guys and bring them to my room.
Given what I wanted to discuss, I’d decided to keep Clara in the dark for now.
While she genuinely cared about our well-being and would fight for us where she could, at the end of the day, she worked for the label.
If she heard anything that could potentially damage the band’s reputation or our relationship with them, she’d be obligated to report it up the chain.
I didn’t want to put her in that position.
Not until I knew the others were on the same page as me.
Riff waltzed into my room first, followed by Mick, Ghost, and a pale-faced Thump. Based on the smell of beer and regret clinging to him like a second skin, it was obvious he was hungover. He must’ve camped out in the hotel bar until the early hours.
Riff dropped onto my bed and reclined against the pillows.
Thump immediately crawled between his legs, curling up and resting his head on Riff’s thigh like it was instinct.
Riff’s fingers went straight into Thump’s hair, massaging his scalp, and Thump started purring like a damn kitten.
Mick took the cuck chair, while Ghost perched on the edge of the dresser opposite the bed.
I stayed by the window, the notebook in my back pocket feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“So,” Riff said easily. “What’s up?”
On the surface, he looked relaxed. Totally at ease, one hand carding through Thump’s hair while our drummer hovered somewhere between consciousness and sleep.
But I knew Riff better than I knew myself.
I caught the tightness around his eyes. The stiffness in his shoulders.
The way his free hand curled into the rumpled sheets.
He thought I was about to tell him I’d relapsed.
He’d never say it out loud, but the fact that it even crossed his mind made shame settle heavy in my gut.
“I wanted to ask you guys something,” I said, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “About the band.”
Ghost frowned, arms crossing over his chest. “Okay?”
“Are you happy?”
There. I’d said it.
Thump lifted his head from Riff’s thigh. “I mean . . . the last few months have been rough, sure. But I wouldn’t change anything. Not with you guys.”