Crescent ran the last few steps to me, a confused look on his face. “Hey, what are you doing?”
My fingertips went cold and numb, along with my toes. “Um, Jude is taking me to my parents’ house.”
He shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed. “Your parents house? El, you haven’t gone back there in years. Let me go with you at the very least if you’re really wanting to.”
“No, Cres. I’m moving back in with them.”
I watched the color drain from his face, a ghostly white flowing down to his neck. “W-what do you mean?” He laughed, the sound full of nothing but pain. “You live with me, though. Like, you have for the past few years. I don’t understand.”
Thinking back to everything Jude had said, the love he’d given me, the future he’d laid out for me, I tried to keep my resolve. I didn’t want to break Crescent. I didn’t want to lose him like this, but what choice did I have?
Pick Jude, or pick Crescent.
Pick love, or pick friendship.
Pick a lifelong commitment, or pick a friendship that could fall apart at any moment. Just like Jude had said. Crescent would leave me one day.
I mean, they all had their own lives. Their own things they wanted to do. Who was I in the grand scheme of things?
Nothing.
No one.
Nobody.
I took a deep breath through my nose. “I’m not coming home, Cres. And I can’t be your friend anymore. We’re done.”
“But—”
“Stop, Crescent. Please. I’m done. I’m going to get in the car, go to my parents’ house, and that’s that. Okay?”
Tears welled up in his eyes, painting a gloss over the golden color of them. I stood there, watching, as he began to nod. As he started to accept it without fully understanding it. I knew he couldn’t understand—neither could I, honestly. I just knew I had to do this. I had to, or there would be hell to pay.
Without another word, I turned around. I turned my back on my best friend and the first family I’d ever truly been a part of.
As I got into the passenger seat, I thought about the blank canvas in my bedroom. My old bedroom. How I never got to lay my hands on it, and how it’d probably stay blank for the rest of my life. However long that would be. My soul would stay there, safe and sound, until the end of time. With the pieces of myself I’d let go of for the hope of something I wasn’t sure existed just yet.
Jude promised me something better. I had to hold on to the hope that he meant that, or I’d surely lose the rest of myself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Elio’s cheekwas warm against my chest. I ran my fingers through his hair over and over, trying to lighten the weight deep in my bones. My earbuds were on my nightstand, probably dead. I’d gone the whole night without them. It wasn’t easy. I’d kept waking up from nightmares of all kinds, and once I was conscious, I’d hear remnants of the voices from them.
Whispers, or screams, or booming voices demanding something impossible from me. It was always different, yet always terrifying.
Elio shifted, sighing against my skin. Could he hear my heartbeat as loud as I could hear him? Without my earbuds, everything sounded so crisp and clear. “I went to my old room last night.”
“Did you?” The suncatcher in my window was casting a rainbow over the entire room. I traced the colors with mygaze, following them across the walls.
“Yeah. You guys kept everything the same.”
“We did, yeah. Not one of us ever forgot you.”
He didn’t move for a second, didn’t even breathe. “Yeah. I saw that some of my stuff had been moved around.”
I ran my hand down his back, moving my fingers beneath the hem of his shirt to feel the skin there. “I used to go in there and lie in your bed sometimes. It almost felt like you were with me when I did that. I’d stare at the canvas, wondering what your plans were for it.”
A shadow startled me. It popped up right behind Elio, staring down at us as if it could see within us. I wondered what it saw—what evil, horrible part of my very core it could detect. “I never forgot the look on your face the last time I saw you. I hate how I left. I hate that I left at all.”
