Page 3 of Haunt Me

“What did you say?” I whisper, but no sound comes out. The blood has drained from my face.

Closure.Did she say closure?No.No, please no. Anything but that.

“This is your best show yet,” she tells me. “And the rain too… Just magical. Someone was praying for you for all these miracles to happen at once tonight. And that song was so freaking brilliant.” She’s talking aboutPierce Me. Which premiered worldwide tonight, on this stage. For her. “No one has ever written a song like that before. The lyrics were sheer poetry, and the melody… It’s so wonderful I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you do.” My voice is barely audible and I don’t know if she even hears me. “Look, stop… Stop saying all these amazing things about me. Just call me a jerk, would you?”

She doesn’t.

“You’re the amazing one,” I whisper, “and I’m the jerk. It’s the other way round.”

I don’t think she’s listening. I can’t imagine she’s been used to hearing good things about herself. To feeling like she deserves good things. I wish I could change that. Ineedto change that. It’s a physical need, like dying of thirst or of lack of air.

I need a second chance. Well, I got a second chance and I blew it. I need a third, a thousandth. I need a miracle.

Is it too late to start believing—?

“I’ve never been out so late in my life,” Eden says in a low voice. “It’s almost dawn. And I’ve never felt the rain on my tongue. It’s nice.”

I don’t know how long I’ve been crying—I haven’t realized it until now.

“You’re breaking my heart,” I try to say, but what comes out is: “You’re breaking me.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever meet you again,” Eden murmurs, those honey-gold eyes of hers roaming over my face as if she is memorizing every single feature. As if she is saying goodbye.

No!I want to scream, except I am ten feet underwater. Drowning.Someone, stop her. Someone, stop this.Water fills my mouth, and it’s rainwater, but it might as well be an ocean. I am not breathing anyway.

“Bye, Isaiah,” Eden says.

And she turns around and leaves me on that stage, soaking in the rain.

…

The crowd is still roaring my name five minutes later. Their cries of ‘Issy Woo’ drown out Jude and Miki’s gorgeous music, as I slowly sink back to my knees, where I belong.

Utterly, desperately, completely alone.

“I hope I haunt you!” I shout at Eden’s retreating back, not caring who hears.

“I hope you do,” I think I hear her whisper, before the darkness closes over my head. I’m sure I imagined it.

I’m the one who will be haunted. By the hope that I really did hear her say that.

I know the truth now.

I know that she never left me.

I know that she never broke me. She never broke us. Life did that.

And me. I broke us too.

If anyone is the heartbreaker here, it’s me, not her. I broke my own heart, and hers. And I have no idea how to put what I broke back together.

“Waiting for you, Isaiah,” Skye’s panicked voice pops in my earpiece.

When did they put the earpiece back in?

I can’t seem to get back up on my feet. I can’t answer Skye. All these people waiting for me, and I can’t open my mouth. I can have pretty much anything I want in the whole world, except for her. She is the one thing I want and the one thing I can’t have.

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