Chapter 13

He would swear that from now on, he would always stand by her side.

But as dusk bled across the sky, he found himself with nowhere left to go.

Curled against the rusted gates of an abandoned observatory on the outskirts of town, he shivered.

This had been their place, the sacred ground where she had once brought him to watch the meteor showers.

Now, there was nothing but silence.

There was nothing but crows pecking at the remnants of a memory.

His phone burned hot against his skin, buzzing with another call.

Zachary’s voice slithered through the receiver, slick and grating.

“Ian, Vanessa had another episode after you left. She almost slit her wrist. We barely managed to stop her. You better come back.”

“She wants to die? Then let her,” Ian said angrily before hurling his phone against the gate.

Sparks flew as the battery split open, scattering the crows —- into the darkening sky.

Ian clutched his head.

His sobs were lost in the biting wind.

Then, faintly, like an echo from a distant past, Selena’s voice whispered in his ear the way she had when they were sixteen.

“Did you know? When a star explodes, its light takes six hundred and forty two years to reach Earth.”

And now, I realize what lies between us is a distance far greater than that,’ Ian thought.