Page 116 of Starstruck

His lashes fanned me as he pulled one side of his smile higher. “I was scaredthat once I did, you’d only see me as the idiot I used to be.”

I shook my head, not breaking our stare. “Well, that’s impossible. Because Iknow now, and the only thing I see when I look at you is someone who was trying their best to do the right thing, and the only thing that makes me see you as, is honest.”

What sounded like a laugh mixed with a sob left his mouth, relief coating hisentire being. It broke my heart that it sounded like that was everything he needed to hear, everything he wanted to hear to carry on.

My thumb skated across his jaw as I reminded him, “I’m falling for you, too, Tristan.”

And I meant it. I meant every single word. Because Tristan Harper in my eyeswas and forever will be a good guy, and I hoped that now he’d see himself as that too, knowing that I’d fallen for him, even though he didn’t show me all of him.

Even now I knew those parts he kept in the shadows; I only felt the love I felt for him grow.

I let my hands fall around his waist and pulled him towards me, holding him astightly as I could as he rested his head on top of mine. The warm glow from the porch lights lit us, along with the stars that shone sporadically around us.

I felt his chest fall in as he took a breath, before his hands smoothed outmy hair. “For what it’s worth, I think everything I feel for you goes beyond just loving you. Seeing you reminds me that home isn’t a place; it’s a person, and every time I find you, I feel like I’m walking up the path to my front door.” He pulled me away from him and dropped his hand to my chin, tilting it to the sky. “I don’t think telling you that I'm simply falling for you is enough anymore, Gold’s. It feels planned—how much room there is in my heart for you. It feels like I was born with that space already there and waiting for you.”

“I feel the same,” I muttered, before both of us cracked a smile.“And I wish that sounded as poetic as yours did, but I’m not like Addy and I don’t know how to make pretty words, or like you with your songs and the metaphors that I know are about me, but I didn’t want to say anything because I was nervous and on the off chance they weren’t about me, I didn’t want to look like an idiot.” I delighted in the way Tristan’s head fell back, and he smiled with his entire body, before I brought his eyes back onto me. “Was it about me? That song?”

His eye roll was beautiful. “You know it was about you.”

I sank my bottom lip between my teeth. "Yeah, I knew.”

His laugh broke free and rattled my bones, but as it settled, his eyes wanderedback over to the door, as did mine as I craned my neck round, before twisting it back to face him.

“It’ll be fine.” I promised him.

He looked down at me. “Do you want to head back in?”

I shook my head. “I think I want to stay out here a little longer.”

“Me too,”

Tristan told me about the swings that he and Nate had foundbefore and began to lead us to them, but the snow kept seeping into my slippers and soaking my feet, to the point where I slipped and sank into the thick blanket of ice. All Tristan and I did then was laugh, and after a moment or two, he joined me, lying down next to me and casting our eyes up to the stars.

Our hands found each other as we lay there, the cold chilling my bones, but I’mconvinced that a snowstorm could have overtaken the town and we still wouldn’t have moved. And when Tristan opened his mouth and sighed, I knew this was where I wanted to exist.

“It was July 12th when it happened.”

chapter thirty eight

facing the board > setting myself on fire

We stayed out that night until the snow was nipping at ourfingers and turning the ends of them blue, but it was more than enough time for me to tell her everything.

And I mean everything.

I opened up to her about that morning—when I realised my life was changing with my music. How it felt like I’d stepped into a different world overnight, and my dreams were suddenly becoming reality, one after the other.

I told her how, instead of the excitement I should have been feeling, I panicked. Social interaction? That was something I hadn’t had much experience with. And now, I was expected to thrive in it. It felt like I’d been abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic, alone and confused. So, like anyone lost, I latched onto the first people who seemed to know where they were going. I told her about Andreas, Jemyma, and even Frosted Tips. How, in those first few weeks, it felt like they were my guides, my map to their world.

I told her about the drugs—how they first persuaded me to try them. How, in the beginning, it seemed like some sort of initiation, a way to prove I belonged in their world. A world I thought I needed to be part of. I wanted their approval; I wanted what I'd never had, so I went along with it.

But then, eventually, they just stopped caring. It was as if I’d served my purpose. Get me hooked, and then abandon me. Just like that. Forget I ever existed and leave me in Clapham, no better than dead.

I told her about the hospital and the looks on my parents' faces when they walked in the room, which was when she asked whether that was why I’d freaked out so much when we went to see Finn.

“It was a trauma response; that was what those textbooks forEtoille’s class said it was, anyway.”

That was what I told her when she asked me if I was okay, thinking back to it.

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