I kept reaching, desperate, until I couldn’t recognize the woman in the mirror anymore.She looked ...hollow.
I’m trying to change that.
Not hard enough because I’m still with Timothy, but I will find a way to be okay on my own someday.
I’m trying to peel back the layers.Trying to find the girl who didn’t mind her voice cracking when she sang.The one who loved recklessly and wrote lyrics in the middle of the night because they needed to come out.I want to be her again.Or maybe some newer version—one who still carries the wreckage but knows how to build something out of it.
But can I ever really be her again?
I don’t know.
That’s probably what scares me most.
Because this stranger on the internet ...he’s bringing all of it back.Each message we exchange peels away another layer, digs under my skin in the best-worst, most addictive way.I tell myself not to read them more than once, but I always do.I read them like I’m tracing scars.Like I’m feeling for old pain to make sure I’ll survive this time.
And I hate how easily I slip back into that version of myself—the one who was open.Hungry.Raw.The one who allowed herself to be loved.The one who let him love her.Because no one else has ever made me feel seen like that.With Roderick, I didn’t have to translate my thoughts.I didn’t have to explain myself.
He understood me.Like we spoke the same secret language, and the pauses between us conveyed more than words ever could.
I read this stranger’s message and I feel it again.That ache.That remembering.That wild and furious need to be heard.To be touched.To be understood in a way that has nothing to do with roles or expectations, or how much I can give without breaking.
This is insane because this man shouldn’t feel this familiar.
He shouldn’t feel like temptation.
But fuck ...he does.
He’s lingering too long in those moments when his words echo repeatedly inside my head, like a favorite line of a song I didn’t realize still lived in me.A song that wants to come out.
Would I ever let anyone listen to my music?I ask myself that more often than I’d like to admit.Most people would assume I already have, that because I’ve been behind chart-topping songs, because I’ve produced and coached, and refined what others bring to me, that I’m already sharing.But it’s not the same.None of it is really mine—or personal.
Helping someone finish a verse they’re stuck on is easy.Shaping someone else’s heartbreak into something melodic and neat—that’s what I’ve built a career on.But I don’t share my music.
I don’t open the drawer where the real lyrics live, the ones scribbled in the middle of the night when the ache gets too loud.The ones I write for the girl I used to be—the one who played barefoot, skin buzzing with sound, who didn’t care if it was good, only that it was honest.
That girl is buried deep somewhere, beneath years of emotional budgeting and professional polish.She doesn’t come out for just anyone.I don’t let her.She scares me.She feels too much.She loves too hard.She remembers too clearly.
Yet, there are nights when I sit at the piano and my fingers move before I decide to let them.The sound that follows spills out uneven, aching, unrehearsed.It sounds like what I don’t say out loud.It sounds like when I’m missing him.When I’m missing Roderick.
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine he’s in the next room.Imagine he’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, pretending not to watch while his entire body is tuned to mine.I used to feel him listening—before I even knew he was there.
There’s a physical reaction to remembering Roderick that I don’t know what to do with.It coils low in my belly and spreads through me like a pulse.A heat.Like a bruise being pressed harshly.Almost as if he’s still in the room.Like he never left.Like my body remembers him better than I do.
That’s what scares me most.
Because, sure, I miss her—this girl who writes only for herself, who bleeds into keys, who doesn’t ask if it’s too much.But I also miss him—the boy who made me feel like I was worth listening to.Worth staying for.Worth loving.
I don’t know if I’ll ever let anyone hear what that girl plays.Her songs are too personal.They don’t follow structure.They ache in places I’ve worked hard to hide.Letting someone else hear them would be like ripping the skin off my chest and asking them to be gentle.It feels stupid.It feels impossible.
Yet, every time I open this stranger’s messages, every time he talks about what he lost, every time he makes my fingers twitch for the piano, I feel her stirring.
I feel the music building in the background of my thoughts, urgent, fragile, and fucking alive.I wonder if he knows what he’s doing to me.If he feels it too.If he knows he’s not just reminding me of who I was, but pulling her to the surface—note by goddamn note.
I should stay quiet.I should ignore him, but the old me is daring me to write him back.
ChapterTwenty-Six
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