Page 139 of These Wicked Hearts

Chen isn’t saying it, but my mind goes to the worst.

He sighs. “I haven’t said anything before. I kept it to myself because I thought I was overreacting, that maybe he is just burned out and needs a break.” He looks at me carefully. “Then he met you.”

I blink. “Me?”

Chen gives a small shrug. “He’s different, or not different. It’s like I have my friend back.” My throat tightens instantly. “He smiles more. He’s writing again. Hell, he texted me at two in the morning a couple of nights ago with this verse he wrote. It’s been so long since he did that. He’s changed, in the best way possible.

“I just went up to his apartment and he’s not answering me, but I know he’s there. The location on his phone says he’s in there, and I just, I don’t know . . . I need him to talk to me.”

“What are you asking me? Gage broke it off with me this morning.”

He nods slowly, sliding into the stool across from me. “Before or after Jim?” I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. “When he got there, right?” I swallow but nod.

“He said I was nobody.”

Chen’s smile is instant. “Well then he lied to you, because I know my friend, and the last thing you are to him is nobody.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m telling you, he’s done with me.” And it’s slowly breaking me.

Chen watches me carefully. “I’m worried about my friend, Atlas. I just want to know if you know anything. I’m telling you something is wrong.”

I think about the way Gage was at his door this morning, his forehead pressed to the wood, his eyes closed, and now that I’m thinking more clearly, I remember something.

“Before he opened the door he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’”

Now that I’m thinking, the look on his face unsettled me. The look in his eyes, the soft way he spoke as if it was physically hurting him. Then under all that pain was fear.

Chen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me. I unfold it and see the messy handwriting scrawled across the torn-out page of a notebook. “He’s going to kill me.” He laughs softly. “He gave me this to look over. It’s something he’s been working on.”

I grab it from him, and it takes a minute to understand what I’m looking at. I recognize the words instantly. This is the song he sang for me as I fell asleep to his voice when I called him on the anniversary of Penelope’s death.

When the night has fallen and there’s nowhere else to run

When the light from your eyes is brighter than the sun

When you’re not here with me and everything feels numb

I think of you, I’ll think of you, you.

Stars beat across the sky, but the thing I see is you and I,

Way up high, there we are, and I can’t believe I fell so far

With you, you.

I’ll be chasing

Right here facing

Whatever you want me to

Because all I think of is you, you

I just think of youu.

My vision blurs. Hearing the lyrics and seeing them here in front of me feels different. At the time I thought he was just singing something random. “It’s . . .” My voice wavers. “It’s about me, isn’t it?”

Chen says nothing. He doesn’t have to. For the first time all day I finally have some clarity. Gage didn’t want to let me go, but he felt he had to. He knew to hit me where it hurt because I would have sat there and asked questions.