The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys #1)(13)

And in her hand was my guitar.

My body weighed a thousand pounds, but in that moment, a heavy burden lifted off of my soul.

“You promised…” I croaked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, trying to smile around shaky, watery words. She laid the guitar on my lap. “Do you even like guitars? I had no idea. This is a get-well present. I saw it in a window and decided you had to have it.”

A dam broke and sobs shook her shoulders. I couldn’t lift my arms to hold her as she buried her face against my side.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I should’ve…done more. I want to be a doctor for God’s sake, and I didn’t know. I didn’t see the signs.”

“You saved me.”

Violet abruptly sat up and took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “No. I called 9-1-1. But it wouldn’t have gotten that far if I’d done something sooner.”

I shook my head against the pillow. My fingers reached for the guitar, feeling its smooth wood, and the weight of it on my lap. Dad gave it to me when I was ten years old, in the good times. The first time I held it, I’d felt as if some part of me that I hadn’t even known was missing, had been restored.

Violet had been right—pawning the guitar had been like tearing off a limb and handing it over to that sweaty guy behind the counter. I didn’t think I’d ever hold it again.

And now it was back. Now I could play for her all the songs I’d been writing in her room, with her sitting not a foot from me, oblivious to how perfect she was…

“But I’m never going to be so ignorant again,” Violet said, putting her glasses back on and sitting straight. “Type 1 diabetes means insulin shots and monitoring your glucose and keeping track of your diet. I’m going to study up on it. I’ll learn how to do the shots and the finger pricks and how to read the monitors and make sure that you stay level. And I’m going to make sure you do it, too. That you take care of yourself so that you don’t… You don’t ever…”

Hiccupping sobs took over and the tears came again.

“Vi, don’t…”

“I was so scared, Miller,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Guilt that she had to see me like that ripped through me, even as hope bloomed in my chest. Her tears, her anguish… They can only mean one thing.

She loves me too…

Then a nurse came to do a fingerstick and showed me how to gather the drop of blood into a reader that measures the sugar levels. Vi watched closely, mentally taking notes.

“Can I see it?” Vi asked when the nurse was done. “I’m going to be a doctor someday.”

“Throw it in the bin when you’re finished.” The nurse gave her the fingerstick and left the room. Violet waited until she was gone and then punctured her own finger.

“What are you doing?”

She took my hand ,pressed the ruby red drop of blood on her fingertip to mine.

“Promise me,” she said. “Promise me, we’ll always be friends. I can’t lose you again. Not ever…”

Always be friends.

I wanted to laugh and tell her how impossible that is. How I crossed a boundary the night we met. How all the broken pieces of my life come together when I’m with her, even for a little while. How we’d been hanging out for months and every minute I tried to find the courage to tell her that this poor homeless kid with nothing to offer would die for her.

I swallowed hard, swallowed down what I want to say, because I’m thirteen and I’m not supposed to love a girl like this. So soon. So completely.

“I promise…”





Part II





four years later





Chapter One





“I promise…”

The bus hit a pothole, jostling my forehead off the window and jarring me from my thoughts. From the memory of that morning in the hospital that was the best and the worst, because the day I knew I loved Violet was also the day I let her go.

“Stupid fucking promise.”

I glanced around at the mostly empty seats; it was dark, and no one seemed to have heard me. Or cared if they did. My guitar case sat on my lap, and I gripped it tighter, nerves lit up.

We now lived at opposite ends of the school district. Turns out, my hospitalization and diagnosis four years ago had an upside. A charity program worked with the hospital for kids like me and their families to help get us on our feet so that I wouldn’t die in the back of the station wagon trying to inject my insulin. They moved us out of the car and into low-income housing in a shady neighborhood on the rocky cliffs overlooking Lighthouse Beach.

I took the bus to see Violet instead of hiking through the dark woods at night, but I still saw her as much as I could. As much as she had time for, which felt like less and less with every passing year.

She’s slipping away because you’re a jackass with no backbone.

After Violet brought my guitar back, she asked me to play for her every night that I snuck into her room. I’d never played in front of anyone before. She was my first. Sitting in her room at night, we’d study or talk, and then she’d ask me to sing. So I did. Instead of telling her how I felt, I sang and played, and she never knew. Never suspected. She thought she was too nerdy for a guy to actually like her and I was too chickenshit to tell her how wrong she was.