Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(81)

His eyes widened. “Did it work?”

“Maybe…she does seem to be your favorite.”

“That she is.”

“Who got her for you?” I asked.

His smile softened. “My mom. My fourteenth birthday. I’d worked all summer saving up for it, but I didn’t come close to making a dent. Turned out she’d been picking up extra shifts all along so she could give it to me for my birthday.”

“She didn’t tell you what she was doing?”

He shook his head. “Nah. She wanted to see me work for it. For it to mean something when I finally had it. She always wanted me to understand the best things take effort.”

“Did it? Mean something?”

I already knew the answer. But I wanted to hear him say it. For him to let me in a little further.

His spirit dimmed, and he shifted in discomfort. “It meant everything until it cost me everything.”

In confusion, my brows drew together. “I don’t get it, Lyrik. It’s like everything is wrapped up in your band. The guys are your family, and then in the next breath, it seems like you view it as the greatest burden. Does it not make you happy?”

A sigh filtered from his nose. “I don’t know, Blue. It does. We all worked so damned hard for it, and being on stage…writing songs and having people sing them back to you like they get what you were trying to say? There’s something indescribable about that moment, when you catch someone’s expression while they’re mouthing the words in the crowd. And you think for a fleeting moment they get it. That they’re feeling the exact same thing you felt when you wrote it. Feeling like it just might make a difference. But everything comes with a cost.”

“And you regret paying it?” I hedged, digging in deeper, knowing I was traversing dangerous ground. But God, I wanted to know. I needed to understand if I stood any chance of taking some of it away.

He raked an uneasy hand through his hair, the words choked, barely making their way free. “Wasn’t really left with much of a choice.”

Chaos whipped through me with his admission.

His.

Mine.

Our storms gaining speed. Building and intensifying and baring down. Their paths set on a collision course.

I watched the thick roll of his throat as he swallowed hard, his attention trained on the road. “It was all the choices I made leading up to it that stole it. What ruined it. Warned you I did, Blue. I always take the little bits of good I’m given and wreck them. Don’t know anything else.”

His confession trembled with vehemence. It left me unsure if he’d intended the words for me.

Tentatively, I reached out and touched his arm. “Your songs…they made a difference to me.”

You make a difference to me.

I wished I were brave enough to say it.

Brave.

I wanted to be.

He looked at me, that gorgeous face stricken with pain. “Where’re you from, Blue?”

My entire being flinched, and slowly I shook my head. “Not here.”

“Think I already figured that out.”

He was the first person since I’d run who’d sought me out. Searching to find the girl buried beneath the rubble—those tumbled stones covered in brash and hard and bitch.

“Tucson,” I finally admitted toward my lap. So low I was sure there was no chance he could hear.

“Arizona,” he responded softly. Obviously mostly for confirmation, because he was nodding slowly, as if he were trying to compartmentalize what I was telling him. Committing it to his reality.

He cut those penetrating eyes toward me. “Why hide?”

For a second, I squeezed mine shut, trying to make sense of things. Finally, I looked back at him, at his profile, at the hard, defined curve of his jaw to the soft pout of his mouth. “What are we doing, Lyrik?”

“Talking,” he said, but from the way he blanched, he clearly knew I was asking more.

Maybe it was simply because Lyrik was driving us toward his childhood home that reminded him we really didn’t know all that much about each other. Both of us were ignorant of the tiny, inconsequential details of the other’s lives that added together to become something significant.

The foundations of who we were.

I guessed it was the sum of them, the huge consequence the decisions we had made along the way, that somehow drove the biggest wedge between us. All of it was held back, yet building from below, like magma compressed by a million years of pressure.

Waiting to erupt.

Humorless laughter rolled from him. “You know, sometimes I look at you, and I get this feeling…right here…”

Twice, he knocked the knuckles of his fist at the center of his chest. “Like I know you better than anyone. Like you know me better than anyone. And f*ck, Blue…I f*cking like the way that feels.”

His voice dropped into a guilty whisper. “And I want more of it. To know you better.” Warily, he turned my way. “And that’s what scares me most.”

At another stoplight, I met the intensity of his gaze. I knew in that moment, this untouchable boy was the most vulnerable he’d ever been. Splayed open wide. For the briefest flash of a second, everything exposed to be seen. As if he were pleading for a reprieve from his demons. For a real chance to be touched.

“I hid because when I ran, I ran for my life.” My words cracked. “And I never believed in all that time it was safe to turn around.”