Chapter 2 #2
Connor shrugs, some of that composure coming back.
“Listen, the muse of the song, she’s a great girl.
I’ll always love her. And what she taught me about myself?
Can never thank her enough for that. I won’t say who she is, specifically, but there’s no bad blood.
I think when you’re foolish, young teenagers you kind of hold this idea that you’re immune to heartbreak, in a way.
Like if you give love everything you have, there’s no way it can turn around and hurt you.
I’ve come to realize that I’m just as susceptible to heartbreak as everyone else.
It happens, and we learn and we grow from it, healing around and preserving that love that was once there. ”
My head jerks back, smacking into Darcy’s chest from where she stands behind me. I tilt my chin up to look at her with wild anger on my face.
Darcy’s mouth hangs open as she stares at the screen. “Did he—”
“Imply I broke his heart?” I finish for her. “Yeah. Seems like it.”
“Wow. You really can’t spell manipulation without man,” Darcy growls.
A startled laugh bursts out of me, and I turn fully around to face her.
Her eyes are already on me, something soft and charged about them that makes my heart squeeze.
For half a second, as she looks at me and I look at her, all of this feels …
okay. Funny, even. I have Darcy and I’m not sure what else a person needs in life.
Then Kale shushes us and Connor starts talking again and the rage regains its footing.
“We both know we’re better off as friends,” Connor continues. “And we’ll always have a mutual respect for each other as artists. I truly believe she’s not bitter.”
Not bitter? You bet your ass I’m bitter.
I’m so bitter, I could be a lemon at this point.
And Connor knows this. He knows my every scar and bruise.
He knows how I hold grudges. He knows the dark cloud that lurks around my bones and the constant ache in my jaded heart.
And he made no secret of how unpalatable all of it was.
I used to believe Connor would be the person to know me better than anyone, but now all I know is how much he resented my dark, ugly pieces.
“And there’s a real beauty in that, yeah?
” Connor carries on, my blood boiling. “In that pain of caring so deeply about something—someone—but letting go because it’s what’s best for everyone.
That idea—that nostalgia for a love you want with a partner so badly but realize they aren’t the person you made up in your head—the beauty in letting them go, has really inspired my next single. ”
“Are you going to play that single for us tonight?” Danny coaxes. The crowd goes wild.
Connor blushes again, dragging a palm across the back of his neck. “Only if they want me to.” He flicks a wrist at the audience. The applause could rupture an eardrum.
“I think that’s a yes,” Danny says with a smile that belongs in toothpaste commercials.
Things move quickly from there, the cameras switching to the house band as they play a jaunty beat before fading out. The shot focuses on a dark stage, the lighting midnight blue, Connor’s tall silhouette looking otherworldly in the center.
With a striking flourish, the lights illuminate his face. One hand cradles the microphone as he adjusts it, the other gripping the neck of his guitar.
After a dramatic pause, both hands move to the guitar, and he starts strumming, the acoustics deep and rumbly, an accompanying piano joining in after a measure.
There’s something familiar about the melody, like a rhythm from a dream, warped somehow but tugging at a memory all the same.
My eyebrows furrow, shoulders hunching forward as I lean toward the speakers. Where do I know it from?
A gentle percussion joins in, and the notes swirl in my head, even more familiar, but swollen in a way I don’t recognize. What damn song is this?
Connor grips one large hand around the mic again, leaning in, voice raspy as he presses his lips close and begins to sing:
The cracks in my ceiling
Are a map to our memories.
The innocent first days
All the things we could be.
The tempo is slower, but realization slams through me.
It strikes deep in my chest,
A bolt from the blue.
I should lay it to rest,
But damn, how I wanted to love you.
I see red as the instruments pick up emotion, Connor stepping forward so he’s straddling the mic stand as he (over)sings the next verse:
You weren’t my dream, just an illusion,
A house but not my home.
On shaky ground with perpetual frown
I watched you tear down my delusion.
The truth twists through me like a knife, white hot and violent as betrayal rips down my spine. There’s no way he could be this evil.
There’s a guitar solo here, one I could play in my sleep, despite that bastardized beat and addition of a major key. And then he sings the next lines:
That you were the one,
Oh baby, why’d you have to run?
I feel Darcy’s and Harry’s eyes on me, my skin burning with an anger that can’t be safe for a single body to hold. I jerk to standing, hands tensed into claws at my side as I continue to stare at the screen.
“Oh, Cubby,” Darcy says. Harry puts his hand back on my shoulder, but I flinch away, his pity not helpful.
Nothing will ever be helpful.
Because Connor McCabe just stole my lyrics on live TV and is singing them to millions of viewers.