Page 45 of The Song We Lost

Move.

Always move.

Always forward.

Always away from the wreckage.

I drag a hand down my face.

My skin feels wrong.

My bones feel hollow.

My phone keeps buzzing.

Bailey’s voice is still in my head from the wedding video, singing promises like they meant something. Like I meant something.

I swallow hard and whisper the truth I can’t outrun, “I’m not letting her go.”

Dave nods like that’s a strategy.

“Then get dressed,” he says. “We’ve got a party to make.”

And I hate myself because part of me... still... still wants to believe that if I can just get in the room with her, I can rewrite the ending. Even as I stand in the ruins of everything I chose.

chapter 15

bailey

. . .

The week after the wedding doesn’t feel real. It feels like I left part of myself in the orchard, knees in the dirt, heart torn open, phone shaking in my hands, and everything after that has been a performance I keep walking through because stopping would destroy me.

Airports. Meetings. Rehearsals. Security briefings. A wardrobe fitting where someone tells me I look “fresh,” like grief isn’t a living thing under my skin. There are cameras that aren’t supposed to be there. There are fans with posters and glittering eyes who want to hold my hand and take a picture. There are industry people who say my name like it’s currency.

Externally, I am on top of the world.

Internally, I am in controlled free fall.

Rachel is with me for most of it, always half a step ahead, always calm. She keeps my schedule on her tablet and my life in her head like a map she refuses to drop. When I stare off too long, she touches my elbow. When my smile slips, she angles her body so no one sees. When someone asks a question they shouldn’t ask, she answers in a voice that sounds polite and yet is all bite.

I do not cry, or sayhisname. I don’t even let myself think about it, most of the time. Thinking leads to remembering. Remembering leads to breaking. And I cannot break. Not here. Not now. Not with the world watching.

By day three, my body starts doing that thing where it pretends I’m fine until it can’t. My hands go numb at random. My appetite disappears. My throat feels tight all the time, like my grief is physically lodged there. Every time someone asks me, “Where's Luke?” my stomach flips, but I keep my face smooth. The version of me the world buys.

I make it back to my hotel room after a long day of rehearsals and a meeting with Jackson’s team, and the door clicks shut behind me like a sealed vault.

The silence hits first.

Then the weight.

I set my bag down carefully, like if I move too fast I’ll shatter. My room is clean, expensive, and beige, it is nothing like home. There are blackout curtains drawn halfway and city lights bleeding around the edges. I stand in the middle of the room and stare at nothing.

I put my ring back on when I left the orchard, I instinctively play with it and then stop myself. My hands shake as I slide it off slowly, the metal catching on my knuckle like it wants to stay. My finger is pale underneath, indented, marked by years. It looks wrong without it. Bare and exposed. I hold the ring in my palm, and I feel physical pain in my chest.

I can't break. Not yet. But I feel hollowed out.

It’s incredible how grief can be quiet. How it can sit in you like a still lake while the rest of your life storms around it.