Page 11 of Holding Hope

“Avalon?” My voice echoed in the empty room.

Silence.

Panic rose in my chest. I searched for my phone and found it tangled in the sheets with 3% battery. I scanned the notification center, trying to will a text message into existence even though the truth twisted in my stomach. There would be no text. We hadn’t even exchanged numbers.

Tears burned my eyes. I scrubbed at them angrily. How stupid could I be? I showered, scrubbing myself clean of her touch, her mouth, her hands. I didn’t notice the heat of the water until tears mixed with it.

“Stupid tears!” I threw the washcloth at the wall.

In the mirror, dark purple marks bloomed across my neck. Hickies. Avalon had left hickies on my throat and then left before dawn.

I covered them with makeup, put on sunglasses, and met my manager and assistant, Scooter and Kendall, in the lobby. Kendall looked like she wanted to ask questions. I ignored her. Outside, something shiny caught my eye. A quarter. A quarter with a guitar on the back. My breath caught.

Had I dropped it? Was it a duplicate? Or had Avalon left it?

Either way, it felt like a message.

“Clarke! We cannot miss this flight!” Scooter yelled.

“Coming!” I pocketed the coin and followed.

On the drive to the airport, I flipped it over and over, thinking of her lips, her laugh, her voice. Thinking of the song we wrote. Thinking of the way she looked at me like I was something worth seeing.

Why would she do that? Why would she create all these memories with me and then leave like I meant nothing?

By the time we landed in Texas, resentment had replaced heartbreak. I would forget her. Forget the night. Forget the song.

But when I reached into my bag for my laptop and the hard drive with our song… It was gone. Avalon had taken it. I felt robbed in more ways than one. I sat with the hurt, letting it burn through me. If I could get it all out now, maybe I could forget her. Forget her name. Forget her touch. Forget the girl who had made me feel alive for the first time in years.

“Where the hell have you been hiding this?”

Jonas burst into the studio like a man discovering buried treasure, holding up a small tape between two fingers. Shock, disbelief, and theatrical betrayal were all painted across his face. His other hand rested on his hip like he was posing for a magazine spread.

I didn’t look up from the lap drum set in front of me. I twisted a nozzle slightly to the left. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jonas.”

“This masterpiece,” he said, waving the tape, “that I found thrown in with the rest of the trash.”

I tsked and adjusted another nozzle. “If it was in the trash, maybe that’s where it belongs. Also, why are you going through my garbage?”

Jonas sauntered toward me, amused. “Someone has to make sure gems like this don’t get tossed. More than a few of your hits have been dumpster rescues.”

I snorted and tapped out a random beat. That was all I did these days—random beats, random scrolling, random attempts at pretending I wasn’t falling apart.

I lacked motivation. I didn’t write my own music, and now I didn’t even want to be in the studio. The weather was warming up, but even the sun couldn’t thaw the heaviness in my chest. My limbs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. My brain was foggy. Blank. Constantly.

I’d thrown out every reminder of that night—anything that made my heart twist or my stomach drop. Anything that reminded me of her.

The guilt was crushing. I’d slipped out before dawn, then hid in my room when I heard her and her team leaving. I couldn’t face her. And then I’d found the hard drive—hers, technically— mixed in with my things.

It had fallen onto the floor outside her door when I was putting on my jacket. I had thought about going back in, leaving it on the nightstand. At least then I wouldn’t be a thief. But then I’d thought: We wrote this together. It’s mine too. Would she have sent it to me? Or would she have kept it, released it alone, taken all the credit?

I’d spent a week trying to convince myself I wasn’t completely in the wrong. “If you like it so much, you sing it,” I muttered, keeping my tone bored.

Jonas sighed dramatically and placed a hand over his heart. “I wish. But my theater days are over.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” I mumbled, finally turning to look at him —flamingo-pink satin shirt, matching pants, and enough confidence to power a small city.

I snatched the hard drive from his hand and looked it over. “Give me that.” Nothing special. Just a standard black drive. I plugged it into the PC. A soft acoustic melody filled the room—the one I’d tried so hard to forget.