Home > The Hate of Loving You (Falling #3)

The Hate of Loving You (Falling #3)
Author: Maya Hughes

 

1

 

 

Bay

 

 

The buses pulled up beside the beach front hotel Maddy and the band seemed to favor for their time in LA. My stomach knotted as the brakes of the bus squealed and the seal around the door hissed.

It had been twenty-five days since I left. Twenty-five days since I left him. Twenty-five days since my fear overwhelmed me and I ran. I ran so hard and fast, I’ve felt breathless since the day the wheels left the ground at the airport twenty minutes away. Twenty-five days since I made the biggest mistake of my life.

The guitar I’d thought I’d said goodbye to for once and for all in the trash can in front of my house in Greenwood sat beside me, wedged into the bench seat and bolted down table at the front of the tour bus.

My hand had shot over my mouth and my fingers had gone numb the second it arrived to me. Somehow he’d repaired it. The faint lines of the cracked wood were barely visible under the shiny heavy body of the guitar. It played differently, with a fuller, deeper sound. The piece I’d saved from the trash stayed tucked into the case that travelled with me everywhere.

My hands trembled and I stared out the windows toward campus. The glowing screen of my phone sat in my lap and I tried to come up with words, words that were different than the ones I’d written before I left. The words I’d typed out and deleted a hundred times, but was too scared to send.

Rain droplets dotted the tinted glass.

“Bay, here’s your key.” Maddy slid it across the tabletop. The laminated card stock folder sprung open. I had a collection now. A stack that I didn’t quite know why I was keeping. Maybe as a keepsake. Maybe as a reminder that I’d done this. I’d gone on the road with one of the biggest bands in the world. I’d had my moment in the spotlight to look back on fondly when I was in the stands cheering him on.

But she didn’t walk past me and move on to the rest of the guys.

“Holden, can you give these out for me?” She handed over the rubber banded bundle to Holden.

The bus cleared out and I stared at the keycard on the table like I’d forgotten what it was and how to use it.

“How are you feeling, Bay?”

My gaze snapped to hers and I shrugged, trying to pretend I wasn’t coming apart at the seams. Trying to pretend I wasn’t moments from breaking down just like I’d been over the past four weeks.

“I’m good. Just tired.” The past month had been the most draining I’d ever experienced. Life on the road, I hadn’t imagined it would be like this. The thrill of the show was an adrenaline boost straight to my heart, but everything else around it felt muted and drowned out. It felt like I was living someone else’s life. Like a part of me had been stolen, no forfeited, and it dulled my senses and stole away the thing that lit my soul on fire. Dare and Keyton—one and the same, and no longer with me.

The monotony of the road was an oddity for sure. I’d puke before stepping on stage, Holden had started showing up with a trashcan after a near miss with his shoes. I’d get back on the tour bus after the shows and curl up in my bunk, unless we were stopping at a hotel for the night, and I wrote. I wrote so much my fingers ached from gripping the pen and strumming my guitar. I filled my notebooks like the grains on the hourglass were running out. And maybe they were.

“You seem more than tired.” She sat beside me nudging me with her elbow.

“It’s weird being back here so soon.”

“It feels different even though it’s been less than a month, doesn’t it?”

I nodded, my throat tight. Keyton was out there in the city somewhere. I’d followed the games. I hadn’t heard the announcers mention him in one yet, but I’d searched for him on the sidelines. The news Vince had been cut from the team made it to the regular news broadcasts after his drug-fueled bender and single car crash he’d walked away from. That was one less issue Keyton would have to deal with on the team, although maybe I was about to introduce another speed bump back into his life—me.

“Does this have anything to do with you maybe not wanting to get back on this bus tomorrow for the next leg of the tour?”

My head shot up. “What? No! I know this is an opportunity other people would kill for.” Had I been that obvious? Had my doubts appeared in a bubble over my head I didn’t know about.

“But you’re not other people, Bay.” Her gaze softened and she folded her hands on the table top. “There’s a laundry list of reasons to do what we do. The rewards are unimaginable and exhilarating, but if your heart’s not in it—if your heart’s somewhere else, then it’ll never give you everything you need.”

Inside my chest, the searing got worse, feeling like it would burn me up in a blink. I’d thought about him every night. Dreamed about him.

“What if my heart can’t have what it wants? What if I’ve destroyed my chance to ever have it?”

Her lips parted and she held onto my hands. “Don’t blame yourself for taking this chance, Bay. I know how hard it can be. I know what it can feel like to look into someone’s eyes and feel like they can give you the world. But that’s not always how it works. And if you keep waiting for someone to serve it up to you or be that for you, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

“You’re twenty-two. A lot can change in your life, but you need to be sure. You need to want this because it’s not easy and it’ll never be easy. But I’ll support you no matter what you choose. The bus leaves at seven a.m. tomorrow. I hope you’re on it, but understand if you’re not.” She slid out of the seat and walked down the aisle toward the front of the bus.

“Bay?”

I leaned out, looking down the aisle.

“If he’s not there for you, you can always turn to the music. I’ve seen how you are when you create and it’s a gift I don’t want you to lock away.” She disappeared down the stairs and I was left alone in the silence.

The scariness of what he saw when he looked at me was offset by the panic of not seeing him again. And Felicia sending my dad’s guitar with a note that it was from Keyton had wrecked me. I trailed my fingers over the cracks and splinters lacquered and smoothed like I was looking at them through museum glass. Preserved to stay with me forever and that was how I’d felt when I held it with shaky hands trembling so hard, I’d put it away out of fear I’d drop it and break it.

One part of our past had been put back together and I’d broken us apart all over again.

Right after the show, I’d been locked away in my hotel room with ice cream and a hot water bottle on my lap, feeling like I was drowning in tears. They’d clogged my throat and burned my eyes. My skin was so hot, it felt like they’d evaporate off my cheeks, but they hadn’t. But the rawness remained.

And now I was back. But what would I be returning to?

A lot could change in a month, just like all the complicated feelings I had for Keyton were deepened, expanded, filling all the spaces in my soul with a love I’d never experienced before, it also scared me more than I’d ever been scared before. Even scarier than him looming over me with the broken pieces of my dad’s guitar in hand, even scarier than how much it hurt to walk away from him on the graduation field, and so much more scarier than opening myself up to him again.

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