Taylor: One more day. Then you’ll understand. You have to trust me, OK?
Tessa H: Please tell me. I can’t take the suspense. I really can’t. It’s killing me.
Taylor: You really want the truth? Right now?
Tessa H: TELL ME
Taylor: OK. Truth… I don’t know about Eric Thorn and his cheesy-ass songs, but I do know that I love you.
Taylor: Do you hear me, Tessa?
Taylor: L-O-V-E
Taylor: And I need you to remember that tomorrow. Whatever else happens, just remember I said that, and I meant it. Because it’s TRUE.
Taylor: Are you there?
Taylor: OK… I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow.
Tessa H: No, wait. I’m here. I’m crying.
Taylor: Don’t cry.
Tessa H: I’m crying because I love you too— “Tessa? Earth to Tessa?”
Tessa’s eyes had grown misty, but her head jerked up at the sound of Dr. Regan’s voice.
“Huh? What? Did you say something?”
“What are you up to on that phone of yours?”
“Nothing. I was just—”
“Are you ready for this? We’re almost there.”
“No. No, stop. Wait.”
“What is it?”
“Wait,” Tessa said again. “Pull over.”
“Tessa, you can do this. Remember your breathing—”
Tessa waved an arm to cut her off and motioned toward the shoulder of the road. Her eyes were glued to the phone again, but not to the same place in the conversation.
A new message had just flashed across her screen, added to the end of the thread.
“Pull over,” she said to Dr. Regan. “Something happened. Change of plans. Taylor just DM’ed.”
? ? ?
Eric rubbed his palms together briskly. He could feel his fingers growing numb. He cupped his hands around his mouth and blew in a puff of air to warm them.
It must be one hell of a cold front blowing in. The temperature had plummeted by twenty degrees in the ten minutes since the sun sank below the horizon. A stiff wind blew steadily across the parking lot, whipping up the dust.
He longed to return inside the shelter of the club. Maybe someone in there had a warmer coat that he could borrow. Maybe Maury? Eric could hear the faint sound of his manager’s voice on the other side of the door, yapping away on his cell phone.
But Eric couldn’t quite bring himself to peel his eyes away from the abandoned two-lane highway. Not even for a moment. He didn’t want to miss her.
He blew into his hands again and stamped his feet against the cold.
Cold feet.
The words came to his mind unbidden, and he frowned as he stamped again. She should have been here by now. It must be after six.
“Come on, Tessa,” he whispered. “Don’t back out on me now.”
He’d spent all day planning how this meet-and-greet would go, but he hadn’t seriously considered that she might not show. Not after the talk they’d had last night.
He hadn’t meant to tell her just how much he felt over DM. He wanted to say it in person, standing face-to-face, but he couldn’t hold back in the end. He simply didn’t have the strength to keep the words inside for a second longer. It must have been the song request that did him in.
As long as he does “Snowflake,” I’ll be happy.
A thrill coursed through him when she’d said that—a trail of icy heat that prickled from the nape of his neck to the tips of his toes. She had no idea how much it meant to hear her say she liked the song. And not just that she liked it. I wish someone would write a song like that about me.
A lopsided grin sprang onto Eric’s face as he remembered.
Tessa, I DID write that song about you.
He’d entered those words into his message bar, and then he’d sat there staring at them for a long moment with his finger over the Send button. So tempting to come clean and get it off his chest.
Maybe he should have sent that message after all.
Maybe then she would be here now.
He hadn’t gone through with it though. He’d settled for telling her how he felt instead—and that confession had been terrifying enough, until she said the word back to him: L-O-V-E.
God, he would have given anything to be with her at that moment. He would have given every single cent he had, and every last breath in his body, and every drop of blood running through his veins just to be there, wherever she was. Just to put his arms around her and cry with her, instead of what they had to settle for: two solitary souls crying in the artificial glimmer of their phones.
She’d talked to him for hours afterward. They both stayed up half the night. He’d finally found the magic words to make her trust him, and then the real breakthrough had happened. The whole story had come pouring out of her. That awful story. It made him want to wrap her in his arms even more and take that ugly memory away so she never had to think of it again. He’d felt so powerless, sitting there in silence, watching as she sent him DM after DM. Every sordid detail of her four weeks in New Orleans.
Now he finally understood. It all made sense. The phobia, and all those triggers that she’d mentioned over the months…
Crowds.
Being followed.
Eyes watching her while she slept.
He realized, at that point, that the concert might not be such a good idea. It might be more than she could handle. He’d brought it up before they both signed off, and the memory of those final messages swam inside his head.
Taylor: Tessa, are you sure you want to do this? We could skip the concert. I could come to your house instead.
Tessa H: But you don’t know where I live.
Taylor: That could be rectified.
Tessa H: No.
Taylor: Really? After everything you just told me, you still won’t trust me with your address?
Tessa H: No, no, it isn’t that. I just need to do this for myself. It’s my New Year’s resolution. I need to leave my house.
Taylor: But it doesn’t have to happen tomorrow. Small steps, right?
Tessa H: Small steps aren’t getting me anywhere. If I can’t leave my house for something as big as this, then I don’t know that I’ll ever get out of here.
She’d seemed so certain—so bound and determined to come. But now here he was, all alone again. Just a pathetic, lonely guy with a girl who said she loved him, but not enough to let him see her face.
With a sigh, Eric turned to go inside. He reached out toward the double doors of the club, but he paused at what he saw reflected in the glass. A sudden flicker of movement.
Was someone out there after all? A fan?
Eric squinted into the darkness, but he couldn’t see much from this distance. He could barely make out the silhouette of a human form. Medium height. Skinny. Downright spindly, in fact, with the arms and legs of a spider or a praying mantis. There was something odd about the head. No hair? Eric shielded his eyes with his hand and leaned forward into the wind to get a better look. No neck either, at second glance. Maybe that was a hood. A hoodie sweatshirt… Male or female? Facing toward him or away? Eric couldn’t tell. Just a solitary figure, standing still, with one foot in the parking lot and one foot in the shoulder of the road.