My guitar rests against the wall, angled just right, like it’s tired of waiting for me to pick it up again.I haven’t touched it in hours.It’s there, patient and silent, holding the kind of stillness that feels like judgment.
I can’t reach for it.Not when my hands are still carrying her voice.
She said, “You mourn the version of yourself that believed love was enough.”
That line won’t leave me the fuck alone.It’s lodged deep in me—unyielding, relentless—scraping across every nerve as if it’s trying to hollow me out from the inside.
I want to drown it in whiskey.Swallow it until the words lose shape, until her voice bends into static, and I can finally forget how it made me feel.But that’s what the fucking rehab was about, wasn’t it?Keep your nose clean.Keep your cabinets bare.Keep your head down and your demons leashed.
How the fuck am I supposed to live in a world without the one thing I used for years to calm the fire that starts in my chest and works its way down?I used to be able to take the edge off.Now the edge just keeps cutting.
This—this restraint—it’s the closest thing I’ve had to discipline in months.I’m clinging to it like it might save me, even though part of me knows it won’t.I’m terrified that if the lines start to blur again, if I give in and let everything bleed, I’ll write something too honest.I’ll say too much.I’ll pull the thread on a feeling I’ve barely kept stitched together.
ChapterThirty
Roderick
The urge to do something—anything—pushes me out of bed.My muscles are tight.My skin’s buzzing, as if I’m coming down from something I didn’t even take.The air in the room feels like static and nerves.I head to the stereo Cleo bought me last month.One of those all-in-one systems with a tape deck, CD tray, and turntable stacked on top.
I rummage through the plastic crate I shoved in the corner and dig out the few albums and cassettes I have.Most of my collection is still at the band’s house—if they still have it.And, fuck, I don’t even know how to call the guys and ask for it back.What do I say?“Hey, sorry I fucked up everything with the band, and also, can I have my vinyl, my dignity, and the rest of my songs?”Yeah.Not likely.
And I found it on a tape.“Where the Wild Roses Grow.”
The opening notes drift through the room like silk soaked in venom.It’s soft, sweet—but it lingers, seeps in, coats the air like perfume from a lover you shouldn’t miss but do anyway.Nick’s voice slides in slowly, curls like a knife wrapped in lace.His tone is seductive and damning, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you and does it anyway.
I close my eyes.Let it breathe.Let it bloom inside my ribs like a fucking thorned vine.
It doesn’t soothe.Nope, it brands, demands, and owns every inch of me by the chorus.
And, fuck, it sounds like her.
This is what it feels like to love something dangerous and pretend it’s simplistically beautiful.To mistake surrender for intimacy.That was Kit.Every note of her.And me?I was the fool who thought I could hold her without bleeding.Or maybe I was too young and naïve to believe love can make you bleed.
Maybe I deserve every note and raging lyric that comes out of scornful songs.Maybe Kit wanted to scream like that once and didn’t know how.The thing is, I expected her to come back—to forgive me.
She didn’t.The girl who made me believe in something as fucking fragile as peace never gave me a chance.While I waited, I tried to forget, to go numb, to ...erase everything that happened between us.
And now?I feel her in the space between tracks.Not as memory.Not as guilt.She’s here—woven into the quiet, spine to mine, her breath catching just a half-second behind mine.The ghost of her is more honest than most people in my life.
She exists in the gaps.Within the distortion.In the breath between lyrics.She’s not just someone I loved—she’s the unfinished song I never got to play live.
If I close my eyes, I see her.Cross-legged on the floor of the music room back at her father’s house, one socked foot tapping to some beat only she could hear, wearing a T-shirt three sizes too big that slipped off one shoulder and made me forget the fucking scales I was trying to practice.
“Try it like this,” she’d whisper, handing me a cello bow.“Play the silence, not the sound.”
And I did.I fucking did.
That was us, playing music, talking about music, or ...making music.Like when I would play and she’d curl into me backstage.Her fingers tracing lyrics on my ribs, humming something half-remembered while I tuned a guitar we didn’t need for another hour.
When I visited her in New York—those stolen weekends when I flew out just to feel her breath on my neck—we barely made it out of the hotel room.We’d play first—always.Sometimes for hours.She’d sit beside me, cheek pressed to my shoulder, her voice melting into the notes I played with my guitar.Until I didn’t know where she ended and I began.
And after?
She’d crawl into my lap, her mouth tasting like coffee and lipstick, her hands under my shirt before I even stood up from the bench.We’d stumble to the bed, laughing, breathless, desperate.I’d bury my face in her neck and whisper things.We were loud, tangled up, and fuck, we were alive.
There was one morning—sunlight spilling through the window, her leg thrown across mine, sheet knotted at her waist—she looked at me and said, “I hate that you have to leave—I hate that I’ll miss you and that I’m the happiest with you.”
“I’ll come back, Kit.I always do.”And I’d kissed her like that was a promise.Like I’d make sure she never had to hate it again.
