Page 152 of The Sound Between Us

39

the reunion

Seren

“I never told you,” Harrison starts, the words crashing out of him, “because I didn’t really remember. And I figured that sounded worse—that maybe I did, or maybe I didn’t, but my life was so fucked I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. That doesn’t excuse it. I know that. But I never set out to hurt you. I need you to believe that. All I wanted was the way you made me feel—like I was finally more than the chaos I came from. But I was so scared of losing it that I wasn’t honest. I messed it up before it even had a chance.”

I just stare at him. The pink milkshake drips from his hoodie onto the Glastonbury mud, each drop marking time in the impossible silence between us.

He looks wrecked. Hair a mess, eyes red-rimmed, shoulders curved inward like he’s trying to protect something broken inside his chest.

Part of me wants to scream. Wants to ask him why he didn’t just tell me. It would’ve been so easy. Hey, Seren. I’ve met your sister.

But the bigger part of me... I’m just tired.

Tired of carrying this hurt around like stones in my pockets. Tired of pretending that love is safe, that it doesn’t destroy everything you thought you knew.

And somewhere deep down, I know the truth:

We don’t meet the love of our life when we’re ready. We meet them when we’re breaking.

Harrison Carter wouldn’t have stood a chance against Hailey Rogers. A few too many drinks, a few lines, a few blinks of denial, and she would’ve seen him coming from a mile off. All charm, no defences. And she’s never needed permission to hurt someone.

I open my mouth to say all of that, to let him off the hook, but then he steps forward and wraps his fingers around mine, gentle and trembling.

The contact ripples through me like memory.

The kind of touch you forget how to breathe through.

“I’ve spent months trying to go back to who I was before I met you.” His voice catches. “But I can’t. Because you—” He breathes like it costs him something. “You changed everything.”

I blink. The words hit like sudden light.

“I haven’t written a single song worth shit since Tokyo. Not one. But I’ve written about you. Every day. In the back of hotel receipts. On napkins. In notebooks I don’t show anyone. You’re in all of it. You’re the only thing that still feels real.”

His eyes are glassy, but he doesn’t look away. “I didn’t fall in love with you the way I was supposed to. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t slow. It was immediate. Violent. Like you tore something open in me that’s never going to close.”

“You didn’t just ruin me, Seren. You rebuilt me.”

There it is. The kind of thing you don’t come back from. The kind of thing you feel in your bones.

“I’m singing on the BBC Introducing stage.” I say, because my heart is a mess and I don’t know how to respond to any of that, so I pivot to the one thing I still have control over—music.

His face shifts. His mouth opens slightly.

“You’re joking. That’s massive. That’s the start of everything.”

“It’s just one song.” I shrug like it doesn’t matter, even though it does. Even though it’s the most terrifying, exhilarating thing I’ve ever done.

“Don’t downplay it.” He steps closer. “You were always the one with something real to say. You’re going to break them open, Seren. Just like you did me. You don’t need a stage to be powerful. You’ve been changing lives from behind a record shop counter—starting with mine.”

My throat tightens. I can’t look at him, not directly. Because he’s saying everything I ever wanted to hear, and part of me is still afraid to believe it. “Some people touch your body, Harry. But you touched my silence. You made me feel again. You made me want to stay alive.”

We blink. We breathe. We transform.

“Mind if I come and watch?” His voice is gentle now.

I hesitate. Just a second. But it’s enough for both of us to feel the weight of what’s not being said. I’ve missed him. Not the fame. Not the chaos. Him. The boy with messy chords and midnight lyrics. The boy who saw me, not just my last name.