Page 109 of When the Stars Rise
I nod, too heartsick to speak.
Dean grabs me by the shoulders. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”
I lift my eyes to his.
“You’ve got this, Hayley. It’s going to be okay.”
I know it won’t be okay but I nod again just to appease him. When you’re a performer you have to put all your personal issues aside and I know that’s what I’ll have to do tonight but right now my stomach is churning and there’s a freight train racing through my head.
All I can see is Noah hurling himself off a bridge. Dangling over the side of it while he cuts the other guy’s ropes…
A knock sounds on the door, and Liam pokes his head in. “You ready?”
“We’ll be right out,” Dean says before focusing on me again. “You’re going to be okay. Once you get on that stage, you won’t be thinking about any of this. We’ll deal with it after the show.”
I nod and lick my lips, tasting the metallic coppery tang of blood. “I just need a few minutes alone.” He opens his mouth to protest. “That’s all I need. Just give me five minutes alone and I promise I’ll be good to go.”
He hesitates and then nods. “Stay off your phone. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
When I’m finally alone, I try to breathe through my nose, but the room is spinning and I can feel all the blood drain from my face. I bend at the waist, holding my stomach, and put my head between my knees.
Why do you keep doing this to us, Noah?
Only last night, everything had been so perfect. We were moving forward, and I naively believed that everything would work out this time. He promised me that everything would be different. Hepromisedme.
I thought that we could finally have it all. Together, we would make all our dreams come true. Plan a future that would be better than our wildest dreams.
We would be unstoppable. Invincible. A force of nature.
I always used to believe that our relationship was built on a rock-solid foundation of mutual love and respect.
But we’re not invincible, and our rock-solid relationship is built on a crumbling foundation of lies.
He lied to me.Noah lied to me. Blatantly and unashamedly. So casual about it that I never suspected a thing.
BASE jumping? That’s a whole other level of insanity.
Why isn’t anything ever enough for him?
Now, I really do believe that Noah has a death wish. I lift my head and squeeze my eyes shut to hold back the tears.
But what hurts the most is that he lied to feed his addiction. When will I ever learn? Third time’s a charm, my ass. He’s too intent on burning our relationship to the ground to put in the effort to make it work.
One month. He couldn’t even goone monthwithout getting his fix.
He saved a life, and he’s being lauded as a hero again, and I know this about Noah. I know he has a hero complex. He’s always been my white knight.
But only last night, we vowed to each other that this time would be different when all along he was lying to me.
I rub my hand over my chest. It feels like it’s cracking in two.
God. It hurts. It hurts so much that I can’t even breathe.
Addicts lie all the time. They will say and do whatever it takes to get their next fix with no regard to how much they hurt the people they love. Dean told me that once. We were talking about his drug and alcohol dependency, but I think he was also talking about Noah.
I never wanted to believe any of that applied to Noah. He was always so devoted and loving. That’s not the behavior of an addict, right?
But thinking back, I only saw what I wanted to. I enabled him. Excused his actions. Desperately wanted to believe that he was still the boy I first fell in love with.
