Page 60 of Shine Bright

Because it’s easier that way.

Yeah, maybe.

It was her last night in Boston, and she drew a pretty clear line. I should be grateful to her for that, but I’m really not.

But then my gaze falls on the nightstand, searching for the necklace that’s been lying there for weeks. I freeze. It’s gone, just like Ophelia.

I leap up and search my room, my heart racing. I look under my bed, under the nightstand, between the sheets, and under the pillows. I can’t find it.

She took it.

Ophelia took the necklace that Isabel gave me.

Chapter 30

Ophelia

“You have to get up.” Phoenix’s soft whisper dances over my bare skin. A smile flits across my face, but I sigh and roll onto my stomach, burying my face in the pillow. It smells like him. Everything smells like him, and I don’t want to get up. I just want to lie here forever.

“Ophelia.” I can hear the laughter in his voice, and I love it.

“What time is it?” I mumble. If I don’t open my eyes, maybe I can delay reality a little longer. Particularly the reality of Susannah getting the lead role instead of me. That I’m only her understudy. That I’m incompetent and a failure.

My thoughts fade as Phoenix kisses my bare shoulder.

“It’s half past five.”

Much too early.

“I didn’t hear the alarm.” I turn to look at him, and my hair falls into my face and over my eyes. He brushes it back as though it were the most natural thing in the world. My gaze meets his, and he is simply too beautiful. His hair is tousled, and he still looks a bit sleepy, with shadows under his eyes because we slept too little and talked too long.

Not about Sam or Isabel, not about our families, Swan Lake, or school. But about everything else. We talked about London and New York again and about our favorite places there. I don’t know if he was thinking the same thing as me, but I found myself hoping that someday he’ll show me his favorite places and I’ll show him mine. We talked about a thousand things that normally would have been trivial but instead were important, because everything becomes a little more important when you tell it to someone who wants to listen.

We picked up exactly where we left off four months ago, talking about music and movies and books, favorite flowers and favorite colors. Favorite seasons and how rain is sometimes better than sunshine because everything feels cleaner after it rains. We agreed that summer rain is better than winter rain, and I’m sure we both thought about how we danced in it.

Cold drops on hot skin, slow steps, laughter, and that tingling feeling all over my body.

“You didn’t hear it because I turned it off. I’ve been awake for half an hour.”

I reach for his hands and kiss his knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem.” His thumb brushes my lower lip, and a hot shiver shoots through my body. “There are worse things than lying awake next to you in bed.”

My heart skips a beat. He can’t just say something like that. But he does. His words strike a chord deep inside me, and I start to feel afraid. Afraid of what we’re doing and of what might happen next.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks.

I nod. I can’t remember the last time I slept so well, so deeply, so peacefully. “What about you?”

His gaze softens. “I did too.” He says it like he means it, and all at once I feel incredibly light and free. Much lighter than I did last night when he told me about Isabel.

The memory of the pain in his eyes makes the lightness disappear as quickly as it came. It hurt to see him like that, to see how hard he’s struggling, even though it’s been four years since she died. Four years that sometimes feel like days or hours, and then the pain hits again with full force.

I know what that’s like. I know how it feels. And I also know that it wouldn’t have helped him to tell him that I’m sorry for his loss. Or that Isabel’s death certainly wasn’t his fault.

One step, one mistake, a catastrophe.

It wasn’t his fault, just a series of unfortunate circumstances. Deep down he must know that, I’m sure. He can’t allow himself to think that way.