Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Dustin
I hear the door click open before I see her.
Halsey’s home. I snort to myself, realizing this isn’t my home—it’s hers.
And yet, if I have my way, she won’t be back here much longer.
I’ll convince her to stay close to us. But is that fair?
Uprooting her life just because we need her more than we need air?
Fair would’ve been not taking her away from us the way her parents did. Fair would be my people giving me the fucking messages she sent through social media. Not having my team dismiss her because they thought she was some random fan trying to score a date with The Dustin. Gavin’s words, not mine.
My social media team didn’t even think of asking Gavin what to do with the information.
Nope, they just took a screenshot, logged and deleted it, like any other message that could potentially become a stalker.
I had no idea we had a database with that, or that I have had stalkers in the past. The things one learns while trying to figure out an internal fuck up.
I think about the idiots who made that decision. It’s not like I can even fire them. They don’t even work for me anymore. One’s living in Idaho now, teaching. The other? In Hawaii, bartending and escorting beautiful women. Living the dream, apparently, if his social media is anything to go by.
The old me would’ve gone after them, made sure their lives fell apart. But now? I can’t bring myself to waste the energy. There’s no point.
The door shuts softly behind her, and Halsey moves through the room with a quiet calm. She drops her purse on the table, the thud barely registering as I take her in. There’s something in the way her shoulders relax, a quiet calm in her eyes as they meet mine. It’s over.
She really did it. She quit.
“Hey,” she greets me, her voice soft, no trace of anger or bitterness. Just . . . quiet acceptance.
“Is it done?” I ask, standing up from the couch, stretching as I glance at her. This question isn’t just about her quitting—it’s about us, about everything that comes next. At least, that’s what I’m hoping for.
Halsey leans against the wall, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, like she’s holding herself together. Her eyes flicker with something I can’t quite read, but it feels heavy, complicated.
“Yeah, I . . . I quit.” Her voice is steady, but there’s a subtle strain in it. This wasn’t easy for her—she’s never been the type to walk away from anything, especially not something she’s fought so damn hard to build.
But she did it. For Santos.
Part of me wants to believe she did it for me, for us too.
That she’s come back for more than just helping him, but the thought feels too big, too improbable.
Why would she care about me now? I’m not the guy people hold on to.
I’ve never been that person. I’m the guy who lets everyone down, who disappears when they need me the most.
She’ll figure that out soon enough. She’ll see that I’m nothing like the Dusty she remembers.
She’ll see what I’ve become—broken, unreliable, someone who couldn’t even hold his life together when everything fell apart.
And when that realization hits her? I don’t know how I’ll survive it.
I tried living without her once, and barely made it through.
This time . . . this time, I’m not sure I’ll make it at all.
I take a step closer, careful, as if one wrong move could break whatever fragile thing is between us. “Thank you,” I murmur, my voice low. “I’ll make sure you don’t regret it.”
Her eyes meet mine, and for a second, something flickers there. Something I can’t quite name. “You’re not surprised, are you?” she asks, her tone almost accusing, like she’s daring me to admit that I knew this would happen. That I expected it.
I wish I could tell her no. That I’m shocked she’d walk away from everything.
But the truth is, I always knew. I always believed, deep down, that she was the one person who wouldn’t leave us behind forever.
She’s loyal to at fault and more to those who she loves and I’m hopeful that there’s still real love in her heart for us. That love should glue us back together.
“You did send a text,” I reply, keeping it light, then add, “And I had faith you wouldn’t leave him hanging.”
“It’s not just for him,” she says quietly, her gaze shifting to the floor. “It’s for you and for me, too.”
She doesn’t add more, and I don’t press. She shifts her stance, arms still crossed, processing everything, thinking about what comes next. I’ve learned when to let her have that space.
Finally, she exhales, her posture softening just a little. “What is really happening between you two, Dust? You say you aren’t together because you can’t, but I’ve seen the pictures. You two, hanging out. I don’t think it’s just—”
“Friends with fucking benefits,” I cut in, the words escaping before I can catch them. “A lot of fucking benefits. No flowers, no poems . . . that was always reserved for you.”
Her eyes flicker, and for a moment, the silence between us is deafening, louder than anything we could say.
“You love him,” she says softly. “I don’t see why—”
“Stop,” I cut her off sharply, my voice low but firm. I can’t go down that road again, not now. “Like I told you yesterday, the fact that he’s still in the fucking closet, hiding who he really is—that’s a major issue between us.”
“But if he weren’t?” she presses, her voice gentle but relentless, digging at something I’ve buried for years.
If he weren’t, how would things be? I don’t know. We’d still be missing her, the one piece of us that kept everything together. Maybe we’d be more aware of her absence, maybe we’d just end up blaming each other for the emptiness she left behind.
“You want to pull yourself out of this equation? Make it just the two of us—me and him?” My tone hardens, frustration creeping in, though I’m not sure where it’s coming from.
“We—the three of us—are one soul. We always have been. That’s still true, even with you gone.
Everything that’s happened since you left?
It’s just a symptom of this shitty life, of all the pain we’ve been carrying. ”
I pause, letting my words settle. “Santos and I—we’re surviving. But we’re not whole. Not without you.”
Her words, her questions—they hit me deeper than they should.
I want to brush them off, but they linger, twisting something inside me that’s already fragile.
I love Santos. I’ve loved him since we were teenagers, since we were too young to understand what any of it meant.
But the truth? The truth is, I’ve always loved her too.
We were a throuple, that’s three, always three.
It’s all of us together—me, Santos, and Halsey.
And when they took her away, they ripped out the piece that kept us whole.
I glance at her, seeing the same fire in her eyes that was always there when we were kids—the spark that pulled me in from the start.
She has to understand that she can’t leave or that if she leaves us .
. . I keep telling myself I don’t need her.
That I can live without her. But that’s a fucking lie, isn’t it?
I sink back into a memory, one that’s so vivid it feels like it happened yesterday.
We were fifteen, San and me. It was Hals’s birthday. She was born in the middle of July when it was always hot and sticky. Time moved slower then. We snuck out to the lake—just the three of us—because that’s what we did. No one else mattered when we were together.
The sun was setting, casting an orange glow across the water.
Halsey stood at the edge of the dock, laughing at something Santos said.
She was barefoot, her curls wild from the humidity, her skin glowing in the fading light.
I couldn’t stop staring at her. My pulse raced, but it wasn’t the same rush I felt around Santos. This was different. Softer.
We always spent the day talking about stupid stuff—home drama, music, our dreams. But that evening, everything felt different. There was something in the air, like we were standing on the edge of something we didn’t quite understand yet.
Santos was the first to jump into the water. He swam out a little, calling for us to follow him. Halsey turned to me, her eyes bright with that familiar glint that pushed me to do almost anything, and before I knew it, she grabbed my hand.
“You coming? It’s late, but nothing is going to happen. Don’t be scared,” she asked, her voice soft, not teasing like before. There was concern in her tone, like she could sense the hesitation gnawing at me.
I was scared.
Not of the water. Not of Santos. But of her.
Of Halsey.
My feelings for her terrified me. I’d always loved her in some way, but that summer? Something changed. I was falling for her—hard. And I didn’t know how to stop it, or if I even wanted to. Every glance, every touch, pulled me deeper into something I wasn’t prepared for.
But it wasn’t just Halsey. I was falling for Santos too.
That was the real fear. This wasn’t just some simple crush.
It was messy and tangled and intense, like we were caught in a current we couldn’t swim out of.
My heart felt too big, too full, as if there wasn’t enough room for all of it inside me.
It was all so complicated, yet so natural. My emotions were spiraling, wild and out of control, making it almost impossible to breathe. The love, the fear of losing them, the memories of losing my parents—it was like being dragged under, gasping for air, not knowing which way was up.
She tugged at my hand, pulling me toward the edge of the dock. “You and me, Dust. We can do it together,” she said, her voice steady, like she was offering more than just a jump into the lake. Like she was promising we’d face whatever this was—together.
“I don’t think I like falling,” I admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper. But I didn’t mean falling off the dock. I meant falling in love.
It was terrifying.
What if I fell too hard and lost them? What if I loved them so much and then, they slipped away, the way my parents had? I didn’t think I could survive that.
“Trust me,” Halsey said, her eyes locking onto mine. “I love you, and because I do, I’ll always be with you. And if we can’t swim, Santos will keep us afloat.”
She wasn’t just talking about the water. I knew that. She was talking about all of it—about us, about falling, about Santos loving us too.
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to trust that we could do this—together.
I looked at her, her curls catching the last glimmers of the sunset, her eyes soft and full of something that made the fear seem smaller. My feelings for her, for both of them, were stronger than the fear. I let go. I jumped with her.
The water hit us in a cool rush, the shock of it chasing away the heat of the day.
When we surfaced, Santos was already swimming over, grinning like he always did.
He splashed us, sending waves of water crashing around us, and for a moment, everything was easy.
We were just kids again—laughing, playing, floating together in the lake, like nothing else mattered.
But deep down, I knew everything had changed.
Later, as we lay on the dock, drying off in the fading twilight, Halsey rested her head on my shoulder.
Her arm draped across mine and Santos’s chests.
He was holding her hand, playing with her fingers the way he always did, his quiet intensity fixed on the stars above.
I was sandwiched between them, their warmth sinking into my skin, my heart racing with something I couldn’t name but knew was deeper than anything I’d ever felt before.
“If we were stars, what stars would we be, Hals?” Santos asked, his voice low and soft, cutting through the stillness of the night.
Halsey smiled against my shoulder, her breath warm on my skin. She gazed up at the sky, eyes scanning the constellations like they held some hidden answer. “We’d be Alcor, Mizar, and Alkaid,” she said thoughtfully, her voice almost dreamy.
Santos turned his head slightly, curiosity flashing in his eyes. “Why those?”
“Because Alcor and Mizar are binary stars. They look like one, but they’re two, orbiting each other so closely they’re forever connected. And Alkaid . . . it’s the third star, close by but standing alone.”
“So who’s who?” I asked.
Halsey paused, her fingers lightly tracing the sky. “You’d be Alkaid, Dustin. Strong and steady, always there but sometimes feeling alone. I’d be Alcor, the smaller, quieter one, and San . . .” She turned her head, meeting his eyes, “You’d be Mizar—the one who holds it all together.”
Santos’s grip tightened around her fingers, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Mizar, huh?”
She nodded. “Yeah, the one that keeps everything orbiting. The one that makes sure none of us drift too far.”
I stared up at the sky, the stars blurring into one as the enormity of it hit me.
We were more than just kids fooling around, more than just friends sneaking out late at night.
We were something bigger, tied together by an invisible thread.
Like stars, always close—even if the world tried to pull us apart.
The night deepened, and with them beside me, it felt like we could’ve reached the stars themselves.