Chapter Twenty Cromwell

Chapter Twenty

Cromwell

Two weeks later…

I walked back into the dorm room to darkness. I went over to the curtains and pulled them back. Easton was in bed again. He threw the duvet over his head. “What the hell, Crom?”

I stood beside his bed and pulled the covers back. Easton whipped around. He stank of alcohol. I’d just got back from sleeping over at Bonnie’s, but I knew he’d only just got in.

“Get up. I need your help,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I looked at the painting on the easel. Another dark, messed-up piece. I got it. Christ knew I got it. I could see the pain he was in every day as he walked around, lost.

He saw Bonnie, and when he did he was all smiles. Even as she started to fade. As her days at college became less and less frequent. As her legs grew weak and she had to use a wheelchair, and when her breathing got so bad she needed oxygen through her nose every day. A piece of me died each time I saw her body giving up. And I wanted to scream when I saw the fight in her eyes. As she held my hand, gripping on as hard as she could…the once hard grip now as light as a feather.

Easton was getting worse. But Bonnie needed him. Hell, I needed him. He was the only other person who understood all this.

But when he was back here, he was thrashing canvases with black paint or out getting hammered.

“I need you to help me load up my truck.” Easton cracked his eye open. I rubbed the back of my head, my chest pulled tight. At every moment, I felt I was only ever one step from falling the hell apart. “I’m taking the instruments to her.”

Easton’s face fell, and I heard him inhale deeply. He knew what it meant. Bonnie was no longer able to come to college. She was no longer able to do much of anything.

“Please, East.” I knew he would have heard the telltale rasp in my voice. Easton got dressed and followed me to the music building. Lewis had given me permission to work with Bonnie at home. We’d gotten far. But now Bonnie could only lie in her bed and listen. If she tried to pick up a violin her arms would fail. If she tried to play the keys of a piano, her fingers would become too numb for her to move. And, the worst part, if she tried to play the guitar she loved so much, her hands couldn’t find the strength to strum.

And her voice. The violet blue. Her passion. Her words…they would fade to a whisper, her short breath making it impossible for her to sing. That was the worst of all. Each day she sang. I would lie with her on her bed, and she would sing. And every day the violet blue grew weaker and weaker, fading until it was a diluted sort of lilac. Until there was no pigment left at all.

When the truck was loaded, we made our way to Bonnie’s home. Easton didn’t talk any more. He hardly smiled. I glanced over at him. He was staring out of the window. I had nothing to say to him. What the hell did I say? We all waited, every day, for the call. The call that a heart had been found.

“Palliative,” Bonnie’s mum had explained to me recently. Bonnie was now officially in palliative care. A nurse would come around every day. And I could see the humiliation in Bonnie’s eyes as she was cared for. The longing to lift off the bed and walk. To sing and to play.

Just to be well.

We pulled to a stop outside the Farradays’ house. Easton didn’t move his eyes from the window. “You okay?” I asked.

Easton turned to me, a vacant look in his eyes. “Let’s get the instruments in to my sister.” He stepped out and began unloading. I followed, carrying a violin, a flute, and a clarinet. As soon as I entered the house, the smell of antiseptic hit me. The entire house now smelled like a hospital.

When I entered Bonnie’s room, it didn’t matter to me that she was lying on the bed, a plastic tube flowing oxygen into her body through her nose; she was still the most perfect thing I’d ever seen. Mrs. Farraday was sitting beside her. Easton put down the drum he was carrying and moved to the bed to kiss Bonnie’s forehead.

Bonnie smiled, and the sight of it split my heart wide open. A drip hung from her arm, fluids to help keep her strong now that she couldn’t eat or drink very well. She’d lost weight. She’d always been slim, but now she was fading before my eyes.

I suddenly couldn’t breathe, tears pricking at my eyes. I turned and went back to the truck to get more instruments. The minute the cool air hit me, I stopped and just breathed it in. Easton came beside me and stopped too. Neither of us said anything. But when he exhaled, his breath shaking, he may as well have screamed it from the rooftops.

Bonnie was dying, and there was fuck all we could do.

When I could move again, I took the cello and sax to the bedroom. This time Bonnie was waiting for me, her eyes fixed on the door. As I caught her eyes, a smile so bloody big it lit up the sky pulled on her sallow cheeks.

“Crom…well…” she stuttered, her voice barely there. I had only left a few hours ago, but when your time is limited, every minute apart is an eternity.

“Farraday,” I said and moved beside her. Her mum was gone, and I’d seen her nurse, Clara, in the kitchen as I’d passed. I brushed back Bonnie’s hair. When her eyes looked around the room, they filled with tears. Her purple lips parted and a wheezy exhale slipped from her mouth. “You…brought…me…” She sucked in a quick breath. Her eyes closed as she fought to simply breathe. “Music,” she said, her chest rising and falling at double speed as she managed to push out the final word.

“We’re getting it done.” I leaned over to kiss her lips. “I made you a promise.”

Easton appeared on the other side of her bed. He sat down and took her hand in his. I could see the torment in his eyes. And I saw the dark shadow that hung around him like a cloak. The navy-blue and graphite evidence of how seeing his sister in this bed was his version of hell.

“I’ll leave you to the music.” He looked up at me. “Cromwell’s got you now, okay?” He kissed her hand. “I’ll see you, Bonn.” Easton’s voice cut off. The lump in my throat was getting bigger and bigger each day, shutting off my ability to swallow. And right now, seeing Bonnie shed a tear, watching as it rolled down her pale cheek, made it swell so big I couldn’t breathe.

Bonnie tried to hold on to him tightly. But I could see she was struggling to move her fingers. Easton stood and kissed her forehead. He looked at me. “Cromwell.”

“See you, East,” I said, and he left the room.

A sob came from Bonnie, and I was on the bed in two seconds flat, lifting her into my arms. I felt the tears on my neck. She weighed nothing in my arms. “Don’t want…” she whispered. I held still while she finished the rest. “To make him sad.”

My eyes squeezed shut and my jaw clenched. I held her tighter. The piano I played at most days stared at me. I moved my mouth to her ear. “I wrote something for you.”

I laid Bonnie back on her bed, wiping her tears away with my thumb. “You have?” she said.

I nodded then kissed her quickly. All our kisses were quick now. But I didn’t care. They were no less special. I ran my hand over her hair. “You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.” Bonnie blinked, her eyes closing a fraction too long as my words sank in. Her skin was clammy, so I pushed back the long, brown hair that framed her face. “You’re going to win, Bonnie. I’m never giving up hope. I wanted to create something to remind you of it, the fight you told me you’d put up. I wrote something for you to play when you lose hope.”

Excitement flared in her eyes. It always did when I played. She reminded me of my dad in those moments. Another person I loved who believed in me so much. Whose greatest joy in life was listening to me play. The loss I felt in these moments was extreme. Because if my dad had met Bonnie…he would have loved her.

And she would have loved him.

“You ready?” I said hoarsely, those thoughts stealing away my voice.

Bonnie nodded. She didn’t release my hand until I got off the bed to walk across the room. I sat down at the piano and closed my eyes.

My hands started to play the colors that I had committed to memory. The pattern that poured from my soul and whose music filled up the room. A small smile pulled on my lips as I let the images that had inspired this piece spring to mind. Of Bonnie walking ahead of me, holding my hand. Of her smile and pink lips. Her pale skin flushed with color under the weight of the heavy South Carolina sun. And her, sitting down in the grass with me, overlooking the lake. Canoeists and rowers moving slowly along the water, no urgency or rush. The breeze would flow through her hair and I’d notice the freckles the sun had brought out on her nose and cheeks.

She’d move above me to kiss me. I’d hold her waist, feeling the fabric of her summer dress. And she’d breathe easily as I took her mouth. Her body would be strong. And when I laid my palm over her heart, it would beat a steady, normal rhythm.

Her lungs would breathe in the fresh air.

And she would laugh and run just like everyone else.

Then we’d sit together, in the music room. Her, next to me on the piano. I’d play, and her voice would fill the room with the most vivid violet blue I’d ever seen.

I’d hold her in bed at night, and she’d fall asleep with her head on my arm…happy.

My fingers lifted off the piano. I took three deep breaths before I turned around. Bonnie was watching me, a floored look on her face. “Perfect,” she whispered, shattering my heart. I sat down on the edge of the bed. I took her phone off her bedside table and loaded the piece onto it. “When you’re lonely, when you’re feeling down. When you’re losing hope. You play this, and get back that strength you’ve shown me since I first met you in Brighton.”

Bonnie nodded her head. Her finger clumsily pressed play. The piece I’d just played drifted between us. Bonnie closed her eyes and smiled. “It’s like…” She worked on her breathing. “Being on the lake.”

“You like to be on the lake?”

Her eyes opened. And she smiled, ruining me. “Yes…especially in summer.” I nodded my head. “In a…boat.”

I held her hand. “When you’re better, we’ll do it.”

She smiled wider. “Yes.”

Bonnie’s eyes closed, and with my music still playing beside her, on repeat, she fell asleep. I stayed beside her until night fell. When Bonnie still didn’t wake, I kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back soon.” I got off the bed and walked to the door.

Bonnie’s mum stood by the doorway. She smiled at me. “That was beautiful, Cromwell. The music you played for her.”

I ran my hand around the back of my head. “Thank you.” I didn’t want to ask. I couldn’t take it if it was bad, but I asked anyway. “How long have we got?”

Mrs. Farraday stared at her daughter on her bed, listening to the music I’d composed for her. “I was just speaking to Clara. She thinks it’ll only be a few more weeks, maybe a month, before she’ll have to be in the hospital.” Mrs. Farraday’s eyes watered. “After that…” She didn’t finish that sentence. I didn’t need her to. Because after that, the time we had was only as long as Bonnie’s heart could hold out.

“She’ll get one,” I said, and Mrs. Farraday nodded.

“She’ll get one.”

I drove toward home, but I found myself driving in the direction of the clearing Easton had taken me to. I came here most days. Sometimes Easton came too. I pulled my truck to a stop and sat on the grass overlooking the lake. The same canoeist I saw every time was here. The one I believed didn’t sleep at night either. Needed physical exercise to exorcise his demons. And at the dock to the right sat a small boat. It’s like being on the lake…

I stared at the moon and its reflection on the water. And I found myself doing something I’d never done before. I prayed. I prayed to a God I’d never spoken to before. But one I was sure had brought Bonnie into my life for a reason. And I had to believe that it wasn’t to help me through this, through my rejection of music, only to lose her at the end, knowing she owned my heart as much as the failure owned hers. Completely and irreversibly.

I sat watching the canoeist in the distance until he rowed out of sight into the dark distance beyond. I got to my feet and drove back to the dorms. The place was quiet as I walked to our door. The room was dark inside. I flicked on the light and stopped dead as the smell of paint smacked me in the face.

Black and gray paint had been smeared on all the walls. Easton’s posters had been ripped down, the remnants lying on the bed. I stepped further into the room. What the hell had happened?

And then I saw a pair of feet around the side of the wardrobe. I stepped closer, a deep thud starting to slam into my chest.

Then I saw blood.

I moved quickly around the corner. The wind was knocked from my chest and the blood drained from my face as I saw Easton sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall, blood seeping from slashes in his wrists.

“Shit!” I dropped to the floor and covered his wrists with my hand. Warm blood coated my palms. I looked about the room, not knowing what to do. I ran to my bed and pulled off the sheet. I ripped it into strips and tied them around Easton’s cuts.

I fumbled for my phone and called 911. “Ambulance,” I said, my words rushed and panicked. “My friend has slit his wrists.”

“Is he breathing?” I saw he wasn’t unconscious yet. His chest was moving up and down. His eyes rolled around.

I moved my hand to his neck. “He has a weak pulse.” I gave them the address and dropped my phone. I held Easton in my arms, wrists held up in my hands. “Easton, what the fuck?” I whispered in his ear. My voice was hoarse with devastation. He lost consciousness just as I heard the ambulance sirens outside.

The paramedics burst into the room and took him from me. I stood and watched, feeling like I was seeing the scene from outside of my body as they got him on a gurney and rushed him from the room. I didn’t think; I just ran with them. I rode in the back of the ambulance as they worked on him. And when they burst into the emergency room and through a set of doors I wasn’t allowed to go through, I stood in the waiting room, with dozens of eyes set on me.

My hands shook. I looked down; I had blood all over my hands and shirt. I walked out of the doors and into the night air. My hands were still shaking as I took my phone from my pocket, shaking even harder when I brought up Mrs. Farraday’s name and pressed call.

“Cromwell?” Her surprised, tired voice greeted me. She must have been in bed. It was late.

“It’s Easton,” I said, my voice raw. Mrs. Farraday went silent on the other end. “He’s in the hospital.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t know if he’s going to be okay. There was so much blood…” I didn’t know what the hell else to say. He’d gone white in the ambulance. He wouldn’t wake up.

“We’re on our way,” Mrs. Farraday said as her voice hushed out, panicked fear lacing her every word. Then my phone went silent.

I wandered back into the waiting room. I didn’t remember anything else until Mrs. Farraday came rushing through the door. She darted to the desk, and then her eyes fell on me. I got to my feet. Right now I was numb. But I knew what would come next. The emotions would come and smother me, making it impossible for me to breathe.

Mrs. Farraday grabbed my arms. Her eyes were huge and rimmed with red. “Cromwell, where is he?”

I swallowed and looked toward the closed doors. “They took him through there.” I followed her gaze as it fell to the blood on my hands.

“He slit his wrists,” I said, my voice coming out whether I wanted it to or not. “I found him in our room. He sliced them open with a knife.”

A choked sound came from behind Mrs. Farraday. When I lifted my head, Mr. Farraday was there…and in a wheelchair in front of him, oxygen mask on her face and IV in her arm, was Bonnie. My heart pounded in my chest, the numbness falling away as I laid eyes on her face. Tears dropped in freefall down her cheeks, and her brown eyes were wide, looking almost too big for her face. Her frail hands shook as they lay in her lap.

“Bonnie.” I stepped closer to her. With every step, more tears fell from Bonnie’s eyes. I stopped and looked down at myself. At the blood. Her twin’s blood. “Bonnie,” I whispered. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“Are the parents of Easton Farraday here?” a voice asked from behind us.

The Farradays rushed to the doctor. He led them through the doors I wasn’t able to go through. I watched the door close, keeping me out. And then I heard them. The sounds of doors closing, bringing orange to my mind. The sounds of pencils being scratched on paper. The dings of the speakers. The sniffles of crying friends and family members in the waiting room.

I started pacing, trying to push them from my mind. And the numbness that had begun to fall away when I saw Bonnie shed tears to the floor in strips of scarlet red. I sat down, hands on my head, as the rush of emotions I knew I’d feel came barreling at me like a freight train.

The sight of Easton on the floor, covered in blood, smashed into my head. I could smell his blood, the tinny scent of metal bursting on my tongue. Pain split into shards in my chest, the spiked fragments blistering my skin. Easton’s eyes. The blood pooled on the floor. The black paint. Easton’s eyes. Mrs. Farraday’s voice…then…

“Bonnie,” I whispered, the memory of her face as she looked at me, as she cowered away from me, was a hammer to my ribs.

I fidgeted on the seat, not knowing where to go or what to do. I didn’t know how much time had passed when someone sat beside me. I glanced over, raking my hands through my hair. Mr. Farraday was sitting next to me.

I froze, waiting for what he would say. Then his hand came down on my shoulder. “You saved my son’s life.” Relief like nothing I’d ever felt surged through me. But it only heightened the already elevated emotions. I needed to leave. I needed…needed…I needed music. I needed to get these emotions out of me in the only way I knew how. “You saved him, son,” Mr. Farraday repeated.

I choked on the lump in my throat. I nodded and looked at Mr. Farraday. He looked destroyed. He had two kids. One was dying of heart failure. The other had just tried to take his own life.

I couldn’t take being here. My heart felt like it was trying to rip from behind my ribs. My skin felt itchy. I needed to leave, but…

“Bonnie will be a while yet.” Behind the pain, there was a look of understanding in Mr. Farraday’s eyes.

“I can’t leave her,” I said softly. Because even though I felt like I was coming out of my skin, I wanted to see her. To be sure she didn’t blame me somehow. I wanted to hold her hand. It was always cold now. It only ever warmed when I held it.

“Go and get changed. Freshen up. She’ll see you soon enough.”

I wanted to burst through the doors that led me to her. I wanted to screw what anyone said and run to Bonnie. Make sure she was okay after her twin tried to kill himself, as all the while she was fighting to stay alive. How the hell did she wrap her head around that?

“Please, Cromwell,” Mr. Farraday said. I glanced at him. He was broken. My father’s face flashed through my mind. Of how he looked the last night I ever saw him. When I lashed him with my words and ripped apart his soul.

I jumped from the chair and ran out of the door. I drove to the nearest liquor store and bought my old friend, Jack Daniels. I hadn’t drunk it in weeks.

I didn’t give a shit about the look the cashier gave me as I slammed my fake ID and cash on the counter, covered in blood.

I ripped through Main Street, fighting the emotions that were threatening to consume me. My head pounded, and pressure built behind my eyes. I blasted a mix that beat in time with my heart. Loud bass notes ricocheted around the cabin of the truck. They usually helped me block it all out. All of the fucked-up thoughts of Easton that were rushing in my head. But it didn’t help. It didn’t drown out the emotions, the feelings that were building in me so strongly that I needed to squash them with alcohol.

I slammed my truck into park. I ignored the stares and the whispers of the students as I stormed up the path to the music room, Jack in hand. I ripped the cap off and took a long, sweet swig, waiting for the burn to take the emotions away. To numb them until I could breathe.

I shouldered the door to the building and staggered down the corridor until I entered the music room I usually used. I stood still as the instruments looked back at me. Mocking me. Crying out for me to use them. But anger took hold. Anger and frustration. I was just so damn sick and tired of it all. I took another swig of Jack then flew at the drum kit, knocking the whole thing over with one furious kick.

But it didn’t help. A cymbal crashed to the floor, but the emotions were still there, bright and vivid in my head. The neon colors almost blinding, the metallic taste of the pain, of the suffering, the helplessness, leaving the taste of burning acid on my tongue.

I shot out of the door and found myself at Lewis’s office. I didn’t think; everything in me was just too consuming to think. I pounded on the door, hot tears seeping from the corners of my eyes, scalding my skin. I slammed my fist on the heavy wood, the thuds building in both volume and tempo. Throbbing yellows filled my head. My breath echoed in my ears—olive green. My heart pounded in my chest—tan brown.

I hit the door harder, every sound, every emotion, every taste an assault on the senses. No, not an assault; a damn near air strike, obliterating everything in its path.

The door flew open and I fell into the room. Lewis was suddenly before me, eyes wide and staring at me in horror. “Christ, Cromwell! What happened?” I pushed him off and started to pace the room. I downed some more Jack, half the bottle gone. But this time the emotions were too strong for me to fend off.

I threw the bottle against the wall, hearing the glass smash and shatter. Tarnished gold spots sailed through my mind. I gripped my hair, pulling at the strands. I hit at my head until Lewis pulled my wrists away. He held them tight and made me look into his eyes.

“Cromwell.” His voice was harsh and strict. “Calm down.”

The fight drained from me, leaving only the florescent print of everything I was fighting in my mind. My tongue ring rolled in my mouth, trying to rid it of the bitterness.

“Cromwell!” Lewis shook me, and my shoulders sagged.

“I can’t take them,” I said, my voice breaking. Lewis’s eyes saddened. I stared down at the blood still on my hands. I hadn’t even washed off Easton’s blood. “He tried to kill himself.” My voice was shaking. I squeezed my eyes shut. “She’s dying.” I palmed my eyes, trying to take away the navy-blue pigment that washed over any other color in my mind. A navy canvas, blotting out everything else.

I fucking hated navy blue.

“She’s waiting on a heart. But I don’t think it’s coming.” Lewis’s hold slackened, but he didn’t let me go. I stared at the painting of brightly colored swirls on his wall. “She’s getting weaker and weaker every day.” I shook my head, seeing Bonnie at the hospital. Being wheeled toward me, eyes sunken and huge. She looked so weak.

She looked like she was losing the fight.

“She’s going to die,” I whispered again. Pain so strong and blue so dark drilled themselves into my every cell, knocking the air from my lungs. “She made me want to play again.” I smacked my fist over my chest…over my still-working heart. “She made me listen to the music inside me again. She made me play. She inspired me…She made me me again.” I swallowed the lump that I was sick of feeling. “She can’t die.” All the fight drained from my body. “I love her. She’s my silver.”

The emotions rose higher again, like a tsunami ready to demolish an unsuspecting shore. Then Lewis was leading me somewhere, his hand on my arm. I didn’t even register where we were going until I blinked and we were in a music studio. Only this was better than any I’d seen since I’d gotten here. I looked around the polished room, at the instruments perfectly laid out and ready to play. They were all new and high spec. And then my eyes drifted to a grand piano in the corner. The glossy black finish was like a magnet to me. My feet were moving across the light wooden floor. I felt I was gliding as I arrived at the piano I’d played on numerous times in concert as a kid. As packed theaters heard me play…as my dad stood in the wings and watched his synesthete son share the colors of his soul.

“You must play,” Lewis said. He was standing in the center of the room, watching me. In this moment, he looked like the composer I’d watched all those years ago in the Albert Hall.

Tyler Lewis.

I winced as the emotions took their hold. My head felt like it was in a vice, pounding, throbbing. “Release them,” he said. I let his voice hit my ears.

His voice was burgundy.

I liked burgundy.

My hands spread on the keys. The minute I felt the cold of the ivories under my fingertips, everything calmed. I kept my eyes closed as everything from tonight morphed from images into colors. Into shapes that danced and shimmered, stabbed and flexed.

And I followed them, just like my heart told me to. With every key, with every chord played, the emotions lessened. I played and played until I no longer thought. I let the music lead me, eyes closed, into the dark. I breathed, my chest relaxing. My muscles became one with the piano, the tension seeping from the fibers into the melody. And with the sonata that was materializing in this music room, the emotions were appeased. My head lost its ache as the notes danced and scattered into the air, lifting their burden from my body.

I played and I played until the music chose to end, and I was replete.

I breathed. I inhaled and exhaled, in and out, until my hands chose to fall to my side. I blinked my eyes open and stared at the black and white keys. Despite tonight, despite the pain and sadness that I knew were only going to get worse, I smiled.

Bonnie would have loved that smile.

When I looked up, Lewis was still standing where he had been when I started playing. Only his expression was something else entirely. And his eyes were wet.

“That, Cromwell,” he said, voice hoarse, “was why I wanted you here, at this school.” He took a step closer. “I’ve never heard anything like that, son. Not in all my years of composing and conducting have I heard anything as raw, as real, as I just witnessed.”

He came to the piano and leaned on its top. He was silent. I stared down at the piano, running my hands over the black gloss.

“I want this,” I whispered and felt the final string that tightly bound my passion for chords and melodies, rhapsodies and symphonies, break free. The lump that had been clogging my throat all but disappeared. I breathed, and I felt my lungs truly exhale for the first time in years—maybe even since before I lost my dad—because this was my choice.

The music had been screaming at me to compose from the minute I was born…and now I was ready to listen. “I want this,” I said louder, with a conviction I hadn’t ever had before. I looked up at Lewis. “I need to do this.” I needed to create. To compose.

Then I thought of tonight, and the story this Steinway had just told. I felt the sadness well up inside me, clawing its way to the surface. My finger dropped to a single key, and I pressed on the E. E, I always liked. It was mint green.

“He slit his wrists.” I moved on to the G. “Bonnie’s brother, Easton. He tried to kill himself tonight.” A scale started as I walked my way up the keys. “I found him.” My voice sounded like razor blades.

“Is he…?”

“He’s stable. That’s what his dad said.” Scale after scale tapped its way along the piano. I put my free hand on my chest. “The emotions…” I shook my head, not knowing how to explain it.

“They consumed you,” Lewis said. “Broke you.”

My hand froze on the keys. I met his eyes. “Yeah.” I drowned in confusion. He’d understood.

Lewis pulled an orchestra chair beside me. His fingers found their way to the keys too. I watched as his hands moved as if of their own accord. I saw the colors in my mind. So I started playing similar colors that meshed. I played a harmony. Lewis’s lip hooked into a smirk. I followed his cues. Spectrums refracted in my mind. And I chased them until Lewis pulled his hands back and dropped them to his lap.

He sighed. “It’s how I started drinking. Taking the drugs.” He tapped his head, then his chest. “The emotions. The colors I would feel when things went wrong.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t cope. I used alcohol to numb the pain. And my life spiraled from there.”

“Your emotions get heightened too?” I stared at him, floored.

Lewis nodded. “I taste it too. And see colors.”

“I didn’t think synesthetes ever had such similar symptoms.” Lewis nodded. I felt a lightness in my chest I couldn’t describe. Because someone else knew. He understood. All of it. All of what sometimes buried me in so many sensations that I shut down. Built high walls to fortress the feelings. Who I really was.

Lewis closed his eyes, inhaled, then took something from his jacket’s inner pocket. He placed a silver hip flask on the top of the piano.

“It’s whiskey,” he said, staring at the hip flask. “I’ve been sober three years.”

I just listened.

“When I was asked to compose for the gala in a couple of months, I thought I could do it. I thought I’d mastered my demons.” He flicked his chin in the direction of the liquor. “I thought I had a grip on the emotions that rose in me when I played. When the colors came.” He laughed without humor. “When I opened up my soul.”

His gaze dropped to the piano keys. He played a single F note, the sound and bright-pink hexagon vibrating in the air. “But I have too many regrets, Cromwell. Too many ghosts in my past that I’ll never escape from. The ones that always come and find me whenever I compose. Because they are what lives within me. My music wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t leave everything on the sheets of music.” He ran his finger down the filigree pattern on the flask. “But I can’t handle the emotions that come because of my synesthesia. I was stupid to think they wouldn’t resurface.”

“Have you drunk any?”

“Not yet.” He laughed again, but it sounded more like he was choking. “I just carry it around with me. To prove to myself that I can resist it.” Before I could say anything, he said, “I’m not composing at the National Philharmonic’s Gala.”

I frowned. Then Lewis turned to me. “I told them I had someone else who could debut instead.” As mentally exhausted as I was, it took me a few seconds to realize what he was getting at. A dormant heat that lived in my blood sparked to life as his words sank in. Shivers broke out along my skin, and I felt my pulse race. “The way you just played…” He shook his head. “It’s up to you, Cromwell. But if you want it, the place is yours. The program director remembered you from your youth. They now want you more than me. The musical genius who just one day stopped playing, making his big return.”

My heart slammed in my chest. “There’s not enough time. It’s too soon. And I’d have to compose an entire symphony. I—”

“I’ll help you.”

I looked at him curiously. “Why do you want to help me so much? It can’t all be to repay my father.”

Lewis glanced away, then facing me again, said, “Let’s just say that I have a lot of errors I need to amend. It’s one of my twelve steps.” He went quiet, and I wondered what he was thinking. “But it’s also because I want to, Cromwell. I want to help you compose.”

Adrenaline pulsed through me at the thought of being back on a stage, an orchestra surrounding me, giving life to my creations. But then ice cooled that excitement. “Bonnie…I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t…” My jaw clenched when I pictured her on her bed. Then in the wheelchair, and her face when she saw Easton’s blood on me. “I don’t know if I can.”

Lewis’s hand came down on my shoulder. “You don’t have to make decisions now.” He shook his head, and his hand slipped away. “I shouldn’t have asked you right now. It was insensitive.”

“No,” I argued. “It wasn’t… I just…”

“Take your time. They’ll hold the place open for a while longer.” I nodded. Then I looked down at myself. I was covered in blood. My hands…

“The keys,” I said, not knowing what the hell else to say. I had left some blood on the keys. On a Steinway. I grabbed my shirt and started rubbing at them to get them clean. But the blood on the shirt only made it worse. Lewis put his hand on my arm and stopped me.

I was shaking again. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, pulling myself together.

“I’ll fix it, Cromwell. Get yourself home and cleaned up.”

I opened my eyes and walked to the door. Just as I was about to leave, I turned to Lewis, who was staring at the flask. “It was good,” I said gruffly. “To talk to someone who understands.”

He smiled. “Or just anyone at all.” I nodded as Lewis stared back at the flask. “Your mother was always that person for me.”

My eyebrows pulled down. “My mum?”

“Yeah. She never told you I knew her?” His face paled a little. Like he’d just shared something he shouldn’t have. I shook my head. I had no clue what he was talking about. “We went to college together. That’s how she knew me. How your father knew to contact me.”

“She never said.” I wondered why she hadn’t. Then again, I had never asked her. Just assumed she’d heard of him from the world I was in. But there was no space in my mind to wonder any more about that tonight.

“Night, Professor.” I left him in the room with his demons and temptation. I walked back to the dorm, my feet feeling like heavy weights. When I got back to the room, it had been cleaned, I assumed by the college’s cleaning staff. Only faint stains remained on the wooden floor where Easton’s blood had pooled. The debris he’d thrown around the room had been swept up. I showered then sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the black paint he’d thrown on the walls. At the swirling eyes that he’d drawn every few feet. Eyes that watched every move I made.

Exhaustion wrapped around me, and I lay down in my bed. I pulled out my phone, brought up Bonnie’s name, and sent her a simple message:

I love you.

Simple. Yet to me, it meant the world.

* * *

I blinked awake to the sound of knocking at my door. I rubbed my eyes and threw back the cover. Light from the sun sliced into the room around the edges of the thick curtains. Birds were singing.

I opened the door, and I stilled. Bonnie sat in her chair, looking at me. I swallowed. “Farraday,” I rasped. At the end of the corridor, Mr. Farraday was walking away. He gave me a tight smile.

A hand slid into mine. Bonnie was looking up at me, her eyes tired, her lips shaking. “Bonnie,” I whispered and held her hand tight. I only let go so I could move to the back of her chair and push her into the room. As I shut the door, I heard a tiny gasp slip from Bonnie’s mouth.

My stomach sank. Bonnie’s hand moved to her mouth as she stared at the black-smeared wall. I tried to move around her to stop her from looking to the right. But I didn’t make it in time. Silent tears tracked down Bonnie’s cheeks when she saw the bloodstained floor.

I grabbed the blanket off my bed and covered the floor. I bent down to Bonnie and lifted her chin with my finger. Her gaze finally ripped away from that corner. “You don’t need to see that.”

Bonnie nodded her head. But when it fell forward and she buried it into my neck, she unloaded everything. The sobs, the pain…everything.

I held her tight, feeling the rising emotions I could never fight off. She cried so much that she suddenly struggled to breathe. I cupped her face and pulled her back from me. Her cheeks were mottled and her skin was turning white from too little air. “Breathe, baby,” I said. Panic swelled inside me, but I kept it under control as Bonnie started trying to take deep breaths.

It took minutes for her to calm enough for her breathing to return to what now passed as normal.

“You okay?” I asked. Bonnie nodded. Her eyes were dull with exhaustion. “Come to bed.” I made sure the chair was close enough to the bed so that her IV and oxygen would be okay, and then I picked her up. Her arms draped weakly around my neck. I paused, just drinking in her face. How pretty she was. Bonnie turned her face to me and gave me a small smile. She killed me then. Killed me with one simple smile.

Leaning in, I kissed her, lingering as long as I could before she needed to breathe. When I pulled back, I saw her lips tremble. “I got you,” I said, hoping she knew that I meant more than just right now.

I laid Bonnie down on the bed and crawled beside her. She was wearing leggings and a sweater, and her hair was in a plait down her back. She couldn’t have looked more beautiful if she tried.

I wanted to say something as her brown eyes stared into mine. But I didn’t know what to say. My heart beat at a million miles an hour. Then she whispered, “Thank you.”

Bonnie moved her tired arm to my chest and shuffled closer to me. “You…saved him.” My eyes closed. “No,” she said, more firmly than I’d heard her speak in a while. I opened my eyes. Her hand lifted to my cheek. “I love to see your eyes.”

“Bonnie.” I shook my head. “Is he okay?”

Bonnie’s expression changed. She stared over my shoulder. “East is living with bipolar.” I stopped breathing, everything stilling. My lips parted, and Bonnie continued. “He has always found life…hard. But…he’d been better lately.”

“Bipolar.” I thought of his bright painting when I first arrived. The shouting over the mic in the Barn. The late nights. The drinking. The erratic behavior…then the darkness. The way the color around him changed from purples and greens to blacks and grays. His paintings. Him unable to get out of bed.

“He’s good at pretending he’s okay.” I faced Bonnie again and thought of his wide smiles around her but his moods when he was here. Bonnie’s eyes dropped. I threaded my fingers through hers. She stared at the entwined hands. “He’s tried before.”

I froze. Bonnie held it together, showing the strength she had inside her, even if her eyes screamed out their pain. “His leather cuffs.”

Realization dawned. “He slit his wrists before?”

Bonnie nodded. “He gets moments of extreme highs and horrific lows. When the lows hit, it’s the worst. He’s been up and down for years. But he’s been doing so much better lately.” Her shallow inhale was labored. “He’s admitted to being off his meds. He said he found them stifling, creatively. But he’s back on them now. He needs them to keep his moods even.”

We sat in silence for five minutes while she took a break. While she fought harder to breathe. I held her the whole time, just memorizing this moment. What she felt like beside me. Here, right now.

Everything that was her.

“He’s stable.” I relaxed as she spoke those words. Then Bonnie was looking into my eyes. Her lips trembled and her eyes glistened. “You were sent to me.” She smiled, purple lips spread wide. “To get me through this.” My vision blurred at her words. “Or to show me…how this felt.” I stilled. “Love…before it is too late.”

“No.” I pulled her closer. I wanted to pull her so close that the strength of my heart could breathe life into hers. “You’re going to get a heart, Bonnie. I refuse to think otherwise.”

Bonnie’s sad smile ripped my chest in half. “It is…getting harder.” She closed her eyes and breathed. Her chest rattled, and the movements were erratic. When her eyes opened again, she said, “I am fighting. I will keep on fighting…But if I have to, I can go…knowing how this felt.” She stroked my face, ran her finger over my lips. “What it felt like to love you. To know you…to hear your soul through your music.”

I shook my head, not wanting to hear it. “I won’t lose you,” I said and kissed her forehead. I inhaled her peach and vanilla scent. I tasted her addictive sweetness on my tongue. “I can’t live without you.”

“Cromwell…” I met Bonnie’s eyes. She swallowed. “Even if I get a heart…it is not always the answer.”

“What do you mean?”

“My body could reject it.” I shook my head, refusing to believe it. “Then there’s how long I can live beyond the surgery. Some people only live a year…some can live between five and ten.” She lifted her chin. “And…some can live for twenty-five years or more.” She lowered her eyes. “We won’t know until we know.”

“Then you’ll live beyond twenty-five years. You’ll do it, Bonnie. You’ll sing again. You’ll breathe and run and play your guitar.”

Bonnie tucked her head into me, and I heard her soft cries. So I held her tight. After a while the quiet hum of the oxygen machine and her starved breaths were the soundtrack to the moment. Until her breaths evened out, and she fell asleep in my arms.

But I didn’t sleep.

An opening sonata started playing in my head, keeping me awake. I closed my eyes and listened to the music telling me the story of us. Watched the colors dance like fireworks on the fifth of November. With Bonnie’s scent in my nose and her taste on my tongue, I let the symphony wash over me. I let it keep me warm.

We stayed that way for hours, until sleep claimed me too.

When I woke, it was with Bonnie in my arms…exactly where she was forever meant to be.