Page 71 of Falling

“Sorry, I can’t come with you,” I tell her.

“I never expected you to. You can’t ditch everything; I’d have your fans pursuing me across the globe if I stopped them having their night with Dylan Morgan.”

“A week,” I tell her. “Then I’m coming home.”

She smiles weakly. “Which one?”

“Whichever one you’re staying at.”

“Oh? I was going back to the flat. I’m still paying rent on the place.”

“Sky, no.” The idea of her staying in the flat I know she feels unsafe in horrifies me.

“She’s in hospital in Bristol! Where else would I go?”

The rising hysteria in her voice warns me to back off from interfering. “Okay.”

“But I wish you were,” she says quietly, “coming with me, I mean.”

I cup her face in both of my hands. “It’s killing me that I can’t. You need me, and I can’t be there; how shit does that make me feel when you’ve been here for me over the last few weeks.”

“A week and you’re done,” she says.

“Even tomorrow is too long to be apart from you.”

Realisation hits me that since the night of the break-in at her flat we’ve not spent a day apart, and I’m scared that if she leaves she might rejoin her old world again, like when she left me in Broadbeach. She pulls her phone out and checks for messages for the tenth time in as many minutes, and when the screen is blank, her mouth turns down at the corners. Gently tipping her head toward mine, I place my mouth on hers and Sky sighs, winding her hands around my neck and kissing me softly. Then I cocoon her in my arms, hating the small movement of her back as she cries.

If only I could take the pain from her, the way she takes away mine.

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