Page 186 of Goodbye Note

tell me you’ll be waiting in my hotel room

barely waiting for the Door to close

do your hands shake when they go for my belt?

destruction meets seduction

chemistry like a bomb

ready to combust

and still, i’m playing with matches

light you up

blow you—out

suck my lip

and i’ll sing every gasp for them to hear

taking Everyone out with just one kiss

we can’t survive on the outside

the worlds not made for ones like us

but we never made it that far

pretend you don’t know me after checkout

what do all those one nights mean to you?

I’d never performed it live. I couldn’t bring myself to before. It was too raw, filled with so many emotions from all our ‘one nights’ when missing each other got too hard. I’d written it after I found out Lindsay was pregnant.

It was mean, but I wanted to hurt him for showing up here, for agreeing to this fucking tour, for a lifetime of loving him I didn’t know how to stop.

FIFTY-TWO

VARIAN

No.

My heart lodged itself in my throat in an attempt to choke me to death. Arik lifted his arm above his head to wave goodnight to the crowd, and just before the lights dropped and he went offstage, he lowered it again. But his sleeve rode up, exposing the bottom corner of a tattoo peeking out below his sleeve.

One I’d never seen before.

One fans had never seen before.

I’d know if there were pictures of it because I had the image burned into my brain. I knew what it was instantly.

It was the bottom edge of a heart.

The heart I’d drawn on his arm the morning I left.

And he’d kissed that place before he’d started playing. I bet if I went and looked, he did it before every show.

How long had he hidden this?

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