Page 9 of Love is a Harmony
Justin had loved full moons, the night when he claimed they could see the whole truth—that there really was a man in the moon.
Thoughts of her husband never came slowly. They weren’t a trickle into her mind. Instead, they slammed into her with the force of a battering ram.
“Justin,” she whispered.
Sliding to the floor, she rested her knees against the cold glass and started writing.
To the man who makes me smile.
When they were dating, he used to write her letters and always said they were to the woman who made him smile. She never wrote him back, always telling him how she felt instead. It wasn’t until she saw him in the casket, looking fast asleep, that she wished she had.
She’d spent ten years rectifying that.
I miss you, but I’m scared. It seems as the years pass, I think of you less. You don’t consume every waking thought anymore. If you were here, I know you’d tell me that was a good thing, that I have to remember I’m still here.
But what if I’m not here? Not really. What if this version of Melanie isn’t the girl you loved?
Have I told you about Noah Clarke? He’s one of my clients, probably my most infuriating. I haven’t talked to him in days, and I assume the worst. Do you know why? It’s because of you. I’ve seen what can happen to a healthy young man. I’m not rational, Justin, but you loved that about me.
Sometimes I wonder if I forgot what it’s like not to fear. To be impulsive instead of logical. You once told me the best thing about me was that I didn’t think.
Well, now it’s all I do.
Does that mean you wouldn’t love me anymore?
Your Melanie, always.
The pencil fell from her grip, bouncing off the soft carpet. No tears fell, she didn’t let them. It had been ten years since she lost the love of her life, the one person who understood her. And she’d moved on. Sort of.
But it didn’t hurt any less.
3
Noah
Carson is dead.
Those three words had been on repeat in Noah’s mind for the last three days.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
His older brother.
It had to be a mistake.
He’d asked Jerald to repeat himself three times, and the outcome never changed. In the years since Carson disappeared, Noah never questioned whether he’d see him again. In his mind, he’d seen Jerald finding his brother happy and whole, living a grand life out of the spotlight their family put on them.
Heck, Noah couldn’t blame him for wanting to leave. He’d escaped too, hadn’t he? When he was twenty and left for the U.S., wasn’t that him abandoning the family? They sure thought so.
He spent a year waiting tables, living in a crowded apartment with three other blokes, and playing dodgy gigs wherever he could find them until Mr. Snyder himself appeared as if he was Noah’s very own knight in shining armor.
He’d been meeting a friend in the little dive while Noah charmed the crowd from the stage. That night, he’d only gotten the man’s card, and it took months for him to get up the courage to give him a call which garnered him an audition for the label.
And who’d fought for him?
