Defy the Stars

by Sophie McKenzie

  Flynn reached his free hand up to brush the hair off my face. He winced with pain and when he spoke, his voice was so faint I could barely hear it. ‘It was always you, Riv,’ he whispered. ‘It will always be you.’

  ‘I love you so much.’ I gulped through the sob that rose inside me.

  Flynn closed his eyes.

  ‘No.’ My lips trembled. ‘You’re not leaving me again.’

  Flynn’s mouth half formed a smile. ‘I’ve never left,’ he said softly, his eyes still shut. ‘I’ve been watching over you whenever Bentham left me alone for five minutes.’

  ‘You went back to him . . .’

  ‘Only to protect you, to keep you safe . . .’ Flynn’s eyes flickered open. ‘I was always coming back for you. I could never stay away.’

  ‘I don’t want you to stay away. I want you here with me. Forever. Married. Kids. Everything.’

  ‘Me too, more than anything,’ Flynn whispered. ‘Listen, Riv, there’s just one more thing.’

  I bent closer. My lips were just over his.

  ‘Live your life,’ he breathed. ‘Promise me.’

  I touched his lips. They were cold. ‘I promise.’

  I drew back, gazing into his eyes, gold and green and so beautiful. ‘You’re everything to me,’ I whispered. ‘Everything.’

  Flynn’s eyes softened, fixed on me. And then his hand loosened its grip. The world shrank to this moment and the love in his eyes and then the power faded from his face and his expression grew blank and I knew he was gone.

  I sat, gazing down at him, unable to believe it.

  ‘Flynn,’ I sobbed. I shook his arm. ‘Flynn, please.’

  It couldn’t be true.

  I pressed my fingers against his neck, felt the inside of his wrist, laid my ear to his chest. There was no pulse. No heartbeat.

  The tears dried in my eyes. He was dead.

  Outside, Cody was still shouting, still threatening to kill someone.

  I looked up, utterly numb.

  Outside, a policeman yelled out that this was Cody’s final warning. If he didn’t put down his gun, the police would shoot.

  I stroked Flynn’s hair, his face. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t no longer exist. Our love was meant to be . . . we were supposed to defy the stars . . . to be together.

  Forever.

  I looked up. Right in my eyeline, on the shelf above Flynn’s head, sat the drill and the screwdrivers and the bits of wood I had noticed earlier. In the middle of the tools a Stanley knife glinted in the light from the door. The blade was short but it looked sharp.

  It was a sign.

  He was gone. Nothing made sense except that I didn’t want to live without him.

  I took the knife and held it over my wrist. One slice and blood would flow and I would die.

  More shouting outside. A male voice was counting down from five, giving Cody a chance to lay down his gun. I could hear footsteps on the gravel, people being moved back. It was all background noise. Inside my head there was just one voice, one chant, one call for me to take my own life and be with Flynn.

  I hesitated, staring down at the Stanley knife. Except I had just promised Flynn to live. Images flashed in front of my eyes: Flynn laughing, Flynn walking towards me, hungry to kiss me, Flynn’s eyes burning with anger and longing and love.

  More shouts outside but I was no longer listening.

  What about my family? There was Stone and Mum and poor Dad. I saw their faces, the misery my death would bring them.

  And there was little Lily. The world was hard and she was going to need a big sister.

  Flynn’s life had been taken from him. I could choose to keep mine.

  And I should.

  I had a life to live for. And I had promised Flynn I would live it.

  My hand trembled as I put the knife back on the shelf.

  And then a shot exploded into the night air outside. Emmi screamed out in fear. More shouts and screams. Grace was shrieking.

  ‘What about River?’ she was saying. ‘Is she okay? What about Leo?’

  Why was she asking about Leo?

  I wanted to get up and go to the door to see what was happening, but something held me here, where it was just me and Flynn. Just for a few more moments.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Leo was speaking now, his voice shaking. He wasn’t far away, just outside the door.

  I could hear Emmi there too, and James. Their voices were tense and strained. Someone – a policeman, presumably – was stopping them from coming inside the garage.

  Another man was speaking into a crackly radio: ‘We had to, Cody Walsh wasn’t fooling with that gun, sir,’ he was saying. ‘He would have shot the boy – er, first name, Leo, that’s all I know right now. Yes, he would have shot to kill if we hadn’t taken him out first.’ There was a pause. ‘No, sir, we don’t know what’s happened inside the garage.’

  Grace was sobbing. I processed what I’d heard, feeling strangely numb; so Cody had held Leo hostage and the police had shot him dead.

  But Leo and everyone else were okay.

  That, at least, was good.

  I felt for Flynn’s hand again. It was already cold. I stared down at him. All the power of his presence was gone. How was it possible that so much life, so much energy had just been wiped out in a single second.

  I lay down beside him on the floor and closed my eyes.

  ‘I’ll never love anyone as much as I love you,’ I whispered.

  Time passed – maybe just a few seconds, maybe longer. Then footsteps sounded across the garage. A light shone right at me, a red glow behind my shut eyes.

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ It was a man’s voice.

  ‘River!’ That was Leo.

  ‘River!’ Grace and Emmi were shouting out my name too.

  Their voices rose, calling me to them. ‘River!’

  It was time to start living.

  I opened my eyes.

  Epilogue

  Flynn died fifteen years ago and I still think about him every day. I have kept my promise to him to live and have done my best to make it a good life.

  Cody’s death that terrible night at least meant that I didn’t live in fear ever again. It was soon obvious that despite what Flynn had told me about Bentham, there was no way my evidence would be anywhere near enough to prosecute him and after taking a statement, the police never approached me about him again. I still see his name occasionally and he still owns the Blue Parrot but I have never been there again.

  I spent the funeral and most of the year after Flynn’s death in a daze.

  The funeral itself was awful, though, to be honest, it’s a blur now. Mostly I remember the sight of the coffin and Dad at my side and the dead look in Flynn’s mum’s eyes.

  James, Grace and Emmi and a lot of our other friends were there. But Leo wasn’t. He had a bit of a breakdown after Cody held him hostage and his dad and Ros took him down to Devon to their new place as soon as they could. I didn’t hear from him for a few months but since then we’ve been in touch on a regular basis. He’s fine now – a totally different person from the shy, awkward boy I met all those years ago. He’s married – to a really nice girl he met at uni – and I’m godmother to the younger of their two sons.

  Dad and Gemma had a second baby too. Daisy was born two years after Lily and, like her, has grown up at the commune. They’re teenagers now, and I still see them all the time. I love them both very much, particularly Lily. Sometimes she reminds me of how I was when I met Flynn: wide-eyed and romantic, longing to fall in love and be loved in return.

  Flynn’s sister Siobhan keeps in touch, though these days it’s mostly just texts on birthdays and at Christmas. She’s still married to Gary. Together they run a whole network of hair and beauty salons which make them a lot of money. Not that it’s changed Siobhan. She’s still the same, sweet-natured person even though she and Gary now live in a big house with four kids, three dogs and a hamster. Siobhan and Flynn’s mum lives with them too. Whenever I see her
we have a quiet word about Flynn. I think she’s the only person who really understands how I feel about him.

  Caitlin visits them occasionally, but spends most of her time travelling around Asia and India, living hand to mouth as an artist. I know Siobhan despairs of her, but of all the people I know, Caitlin reminds me most of Flynn. There’s the same slightly wild look in her eye. I know their mum worries that she hasn’t settled down, but I love to hear about her adventures abroad. It’s like she’s doing all the things Flynn never had a chance to and I love her for that.

  I still see most of my old friends. Emmi lives not far away. She dropped out of uni after just one term to work as a model. It’s funny, I would have bet then that it was Emmi who would live the wild life but actually she’s settled right down now and is happily married to a banker. I know she really wants kids and though I would never have imagined it when we were younger, I think she’ll make a great mum so I hope that happens for her soon. Grace and James stayed together throughout university, then broke up soon after. Compared to me and Flynn, they were pretty chilled about it. There was no big drama, they just both said that the relationship had run its course, that maybe they’d met each other too young for it to last.

  I didn’t see much of Grace for a while, but we’ve been close again for a long time now. She’s a teacher, living with a really nice guy and their twin boys. We’re both still in touch with James, who’s a solicitor now and married with a little girl. James is still the same as he always was. He’s the only other person, apart from Flynn’s mum, who I really talk about Flynn with.

  That always makes me sad, even after all this time.

  And what have I done with my life? Somehow I got enough A levels to get to uni, where I studied History – just like Flynn had said he wanted to. It was good to get away to somewhere new, where no one knew about my past. I moved back to the commune afterwards and stayed there with Dad and Gemma in Leo’s old apartment for a year. There was a new family with a baby in the flat we once lived in and when I went up to take a look at the bedroom Flynn and I had once shared it was unrecognisable – a nursery all painted in pink with ballerina figures on the curtains. I found my old heart bracelet on a chain under the loose floorboard and I still have it, just as I still have the leather string with the little blue ‘R’ on the end that Flynn kept around his neck.

  For a long time it helped me keep him close.

  There were many years when I really gave up on other relationships. I tried for a while, dating quite a few guys at uni, but none of them matched up to Flynn. It’s funny . . . when you’re young, adults tell you that your life hasn’t really started yet. They say that nothing that has happened so far really counts, that all options are still open, that first love is meaningless.

  It isn’t true.

  I’ll never love anyone with the same intensity that I loved Flynn. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe Flynn and I would have burned out eventually. Maybe it’s all happened just as it was supposed to.

  One thing I know for sure is that loving Flynn and living with his death brought me closer to Mum and Stone than I probably would ever have been otherwise. You see, like Dad and Gemma and my sisters they love me. And now I know that when people love you, you make it count.

  My family and friends helped me through. So did writing. That’s what I do now: write stories. I’ve written lots of books but these are the only ones that tell the truth about who I am.

  But it’s my son who really turned things around for me. He was conceived by accident and born, a week earlier than expected, on the tenth anniversary of Flynn’s death. I knew that night, that his birth was a sign that Flynn had been right to make me live and I had been right to promise I would.

  From then on, I opened up, letting myself love and be loved. I made a proper commitment to my son’s father, Will, and a few months later we got married.

  Will is a good man, a lot easier than Flynn ever was, that’s for sure. And I love him. Not with the same blazing passion that Flynn and I loved each other but with something calmer and steadier, that brings me a level of contentment I used to think would never be possible.

  Even so, there are still nights when I dream of Flynn and how he sacrificed his own life to save mine. And there’s a part of me that will always be his, that still lives inside our love for each other even after all these years

  I don’t regret a second of our time together. Because Flynn was right that our love was meant to be . . . every bit of it, from tip to tail.

  In our heads. In our hearts.

  And in the stars.

  Forever.