Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(162)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“Food?” he said with a gentle smile.

I nodded. “Yeah. Food sounds great.”

* * *

The last chimes of the principal’s speech resonated in my thoughts. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the pale glow of the spotlight over me as my fingers scaled across the keys, breaking the hearts of those in the crowd tonight.

Of all the worlds my mind created, this, where I lived each day, was the most painful one; the world that hovered on the wrong side of truth—the one I could not escape from, even if I closed my eyes or woke myself up. In this world, everyone I loved was gone, and the boy the crowd mourned, Nathan, was gone too. No matter how much we played for him, he would never hear our songs, but I would play for them anyway—for all those who lived only in my memories. Including David.

I truly believed he’d come tonight, but mine was the last performance, and so far, he hadn’t showed. So, I sang the words of the song from memory, not from my heart. All the joy, all the passion I once felt when singing was non-existent—dead, weighted like heavy rain. But my music teachers taught me well how to perform when everything around me was falling away. No one in the crowd would have known how much I was suffering for the painful realisation that all this was real. That David really was gone.

We finished the song to a standing ovation. Mike wiped a mock tear from his cheek; I smiled at him, then took a bow and sat back down at the piano for my solo.

After a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and in the moment it took to open them again, the room went dark and ultimately quiet. A wispy cool encircled me; the absence of life filtering emptiness into my world. I sat taller and looked around the vacant auditorium.

I was alone; everyone was gone.

How long had I been sitting here?

A whisper of a memory salted my thoughts, making me look down at my bone-white, numb fingers. I remembered playing. I remembered the faces of the audience—how, afterward, they greeted me and shook my hand. I had smiled and nodded, while inside, I was dying. I could see it all as it happened, but couldn’t remember living it. I wondered if Dad or Mike were looking for me—worried about me.

My posture sunk a little as I made myself smaller and took a few shallow breaths. Truth was, I really didn’t care if they were worried. I just wanted to play, rain my heart into a song until it no longer felt like it was bleeding.

Ignoring the tension of the impending grilling, I placed my fingers to the keys again. Each note poured through them like rainbow-coloured grief—strings of light that, with every pull on my heart, tore away another part of my soul; brought to the surface another emotion, another painful memory I thought I’d locked away for good.

Through all of this that I’d suffered, I knew that, inside, I was destroyed. I would never be the same again. I tried once, to move on, to be normal, but with the loss of David, of my one true love, I knew that moving on was never in the cards for me. Whatever my existence here was fated to be, happiness was not it. David was not it.

Like a strong link to a powerful memory, the faint hint of a familiar scent touched my lungs. I drew a deep breath of orange-chocolate, and my body rejoiced the sensation of oxygen, as if I’d not taken a breath since I last held David.

My head whipped up; I looked back to the chairs that only hours ago had been filled with friends and family, and all of a sudden, in the middle seat, softly lit by the light from the corridor outside, I saw a face.

David.

He stood up slowly, like a ghost weighed down by the anguish in the world.

How long had he been there? What had he heard in my thoughts while he was watching me?

“I know this is hard.” He appeared behind me, his smooth, ethereal voice shattering my heart. “But you knew this. Breaking up was never going to be easy.”

“So, that’s what this is?” I asked in a quiet voice, looking down. “We’re broken up, now?”

“I wish it wasn’t so.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“It does.”

“But…maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to—” I spun around on the seat and stopped dead when I looked at him; it ached inside to see his face after I was sure I’d never lay eyes on him again.

“What wouldn’t be so bad?”

“To…to be like you.”

He shook his head. “You can’t be like me. I’ve spent so much time thinking about it—desperate to find some way this could work. But, Ara? There’s no saying you even carry the gene. What if we tried and you—” He shook his head again. “No. You have to take a chance at life. You have to live it to its fullest before I could even dream of changing you.”

“But—”

“No.” He placed his thumb to my lips. “If you die, Ara, without ever knowing life, motherhood, I could not live with myself. It is better to have lived your life in heartache, than never to have lived at all.”

“I know. I do know that. And—” I pictured my future, my children, my wrinkled skin. “And I want a life, but…but the heartache is worse than I thought.”

David looked at my hand, over my heart, and nodded. “I know.”

We held our gaze for a long moment, leaving our future resting on the pause of a few simple words. After a while, I sighed, turning my face away when the words refused to come.

“He’s right for you, you know.” David broke the silence, though the tension stayed as thick as blood.

My quiet breath sunk.

“I want you to be with him. I want you to go back to Perth with him.”

I looked up quickly.

“I see in his thoughts, Ara. I watch him with you. He loves you—deeply.” He lost his voice on the last word, closing his eyes as he said it.

“I know, David. I know he loves me, and—I love him too.” I had to whisper, afraid my words would wound him forever; like somehow, making my voice low might take away some of the sting. “But I can’t go with him. I can’t. I just can’t leave you here al—”

“Ara. Be smart.” David dropped to his knees in front of me. “I can’t have you here, lingering in a place I may one day return. That’s not living. You have to go—you have to be far away so I can never find you.”

“But—”

“No. I won’t do it. I won’t return and ruin your life and, knowing how close you are—that I could just drive to you—would be more agony than I could bear.”

The tears in my eyes turned to thick droplets as they spilled onto my cheeks and over my lips. He was right. It would be selfish of me to wait around here for him—to hope he might change his mind and become a fake human. If he left his Set, he’d have nothing, and one day, I’d be gone anyway. At least, for now, we suffered the absence in union—desolate union.