The Edge of Heaven (Broken Wings Duet Book 2)

by Gia Riley

Just like Cindy told me, adjustment takes time.

  Melody’s sitting in the car with Doug, on the way to her music class. I hang by the neighbor’s mailbox until they’re gone, so I don’t have to talk to them. When they’re out of sight, I sneak in the side door, hurry through the garage, and then into the kitchen. Chance, Hannah, Raven, and Matty are sitting around the kitchen table, doing homework. I don’t know if this is the usual after-school thing, but the fact that Dray isn’t with them makes my stomach churn. He’s the only one who knows I wasn’t at school. He’s the one I need to talk to first.

  “Where’s Cindy?” I ask.

  Raven gives me one of her fake smiles and says, “Looking for the princess of the house.”

  She’s the only princess who lives here. Hannah and Melody barely talk, and when they do, it’s never bad. But Raven doesn’t scare me. I’ve dealt with girls like her my whole life.

  Raven actually reminds me a lot of Tess. Selfish, full of herself, thinks the world owes her something. If she’s not careful, she’ll end up snorting lines of coke to stay skinny and pumping her lips full of filler to give better blow jobs for higher tips. With her bad attitude, seventeen might be as good as it’s ever going to get.

  Matty gives Raven a look, one that tells her to shut her mouth before it gets her in more trouble. “Raven’s not trying to be a bitch,” he says. “She’s just glad we’re not on the chopping block for once.”

  They should be.

  “Oh, you mean, Cindy doesn’t know you two had sex in the laundry room this morning? Maybe I should fill her in.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Raven squeals. Even her angry voice is petty.

  “Try me,” I tell her.

  The office door opens, and Dray walks out with his head down. I try to get his attention, but he goes upstairs without looking at me.

  Shit.

  Cindy gives me a warm smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes like it usually does. “There’s food in the fridge when you’re hungry, Winnie. Let me know when you’re ready to eat, and I’ll heat it up for you.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ll start my homework first, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” she says.

  I hear the defeat in her words, like whatever just happened with Dray shook her as much as it bothered him.

  “Thank you.”

  I take the stairs two at a time and go straight to Dray’s room. His door’s cracked, and I knock once, not waiting for a response before I go into his room. I expect to find him at his desk, doing his homework like everyone else, but he’s sprawled across his bed with his head buried in his arms. He looks like he’s about to crash for the night. Something’s not right.

  “Dray?” I say softly. “Are you okay?”

  “Not now, Winnie.” His words might be muffled by the blankets, but I hear the pain loud and clear.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  He lifts his head, and I think his eyes might be wet from tears, but maybe they’re just watering from having them closed and pressed up against his pillow.

  “No,” he says. “But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “Okay.”

  Afraid to turn around or move too quickly, I walk out of the room backward, keeping my eyes on him the whole time. I know better than to push, especially after he told me he didn’t want to talk about it, but maybe a real friend would push. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I’ve never had any real friends before. At least, I think Dray’s a real friend. If he knew what I did after school today and whom I was with, I’m sure he’d avoid me, too.

  Alone and by myself.

  The note on Melody’s whiteboard says she’s at her music lesson. She scribbles her plans on her board, no matter if she’s leaving the house or writing in the backyard. I think it’s either a safety thing or some kind of abandonment issue. I haven’t asked her about her story, and I probably never will. Because, if she tells me, she’ll want me to talk about mine. I can’t do that.

  After I hang up my bag and plug my phone in the charger, making sure to cover it with a pillow, I take a hot shower and let the warmth run down my body. God, I’ve missed hot water and showers that I don’t have to race through. Showering in the trailer felt like standing in the living room, naked, an open invitation to be taken advantage of. Now, when the doorknob rattles, I know it’s just one of the other kids, waiting their turn. My heart still races for those first few seconds, but then it passes, and I can wash the shampoo out of my hair without a full-blown anxiety attack.

  After the shower, I glance at my reflection in the mirror. It’s been a long time since I looked without hating myself, and I’m okay until my eyes drift to my legs. The scars on my thigh are at the ugly stage. The scab looks like it wants to break open, and it’s itchy and irritated from rubbing against clothing. This is usually when I cave and cut them back open, but the excitement of seeing Trey again in less than twenty-four hours takes the urge away. He’ll already be mad they’re fresh cuts. Making it worse will cause a distraction, and then I’ll lose time with him. Time that could be spent in bed or with his lips on mine.

  His touches and the way he gripped my waist when he held on to me gets me through a couple of chapters of boring homework while I eat leftovers from dinner. Cindy really likes chicken. She puts it in everything, and since it’s been so long since I had any protein besides tuna fish, it hurts my stomach.

  The pains get so bad that, at one point, I toss my books on the floor and pull the blanket over my head. I want to know what’s bothering Dray, and I’m tempted to go back to his room and ask, but Melody comes home around bedtime, humming a new song. I’m sure it’s one she worked on in her music class, and I should ask her about it. All I want to do is make the pain stop and go to bed. Because, the sooner I close my eyes and fall asleep, the sooner I’ll be with Trey again.

  “You asleep, Winnie?” she whispers.

  I can tell she’s hovering over me, and if I sit up, we’d probably bang heads.

  “I’m awake.”

  She’s waiting for me to say something else, and she’s breathing heavy enough to wake the dead. “Are you okay?”

  A long, silent pause, and then she says, “Actually, can we talk for a minute?”

  “Is this about Raven?” I ask as I toss the blanket off and sit up.

  Her eyes are red-rimmed, but she’s smiling. Melody doesn’t smile much, only when a song transports her to one of her rainbow-and-unicorn heavens.

  “No. I met someone.”

  “Where? Music class?”

  She shakes her head. “We got done early, so a couple of us went to this coffee shop. My classes are across the street from the hospital.”

  The mention of the hospital makes my side tingle, and I’m back on the ground with the blood. But I keep my eyes on Melody and do what I do best—pretend like I’m okay.

  She rattles on about whom she was with and then some guy who came in and sat next to her. They talked about her guitar and her new song, and he bought her a muffin since she already had coffee.

  I think she’s at the end of the story, so I tell her, “I’m glad you had a good night.”

  Then, she surprises me and says, “We made out in the restroom.”

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  Her eyes fill with tears, and she says, “I asked him that, too. And then it got weird. Turns out, he has a girlfriend.”

  “Maybe it won’t last. Nothing does in high school. Are you in any classes together?”

  “He doesn’t go to my school, Winnie. He goes to yours. I thought you could help me out and see who the girl is. Find out if it’s serious or not.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jasper. He’s a senior.”

  All the blood rushes to my head, and I think I might throw up. There’s only one Jasper in the senior class. Hell, I think there’s only one Jasper in the whole school. But what was he doing on the other side of town at some coffee shop, kiss
ing strangers?

  “I’ve never heard of him,” I tell Melody. “I’m not sure I’ll be much help.”

  “But you’ll at least try? I really like him, Winnie. He was so sweet and told me how he was there to get coffee for some old woman who works at the hospital. I guess he had a sick friend, and she helped him find his way to her. It’s all very sweet.”

  The sick friend was me. Jasper never told me about any old woman who’d helped him find me, but I was unconscious for all of that. By the time I woke up, he was so glad to see me that all we talked about was how I felt and how he could make me feel better. Melody’s absolutely right; Jasper’s the sweetest. And I’ve never given him a real chance because of Trey.

  “I’ll see what I can find out, Melody. Get some sleep.”

  Her smile is so wide, I think she’s about to hug me. The apprehension on my face stops her, and she slides into bed and pops her earbuds in. The flashlight illuminates under her covers, and she’s already busy writing new sheet music for her next masterpiece. I have a feeling this one’s going to be about a boy named Jasper—my Jasper.

  I type out a quick text to Jasper because I feel guilty about lying to him this afternoon. I’ve lied to him so many times since I moved into Sunshine Place. This is where I’m supposed to be reinventing myself and becoming a better person, yet all I do is cover up one lie with another because I’m too scared to tell my only friend that I made a new one.

  Besides Trey, Jasper’s the most understanding person I’ve ever met. He’d accept Dray the same way I have, but until Dray speaks his truth, I’ll never get to tell Jasper about who he really is. Dray’s story isn’t mine to tell, and I understand why he wants to keep it a secret.

  Most days, I wish the shooting weren’t public knowledge. At least then, I wouldn’t have to deal with awkward glances and nervous smiles as I walked the halls at school. I’d do anything to avoid the pity.

  Winnie: How was your night?

  Ten minutes go by before my screen lights up with Jasper’s name.

  Jasper: Boring.

  Winnie: What’d you do?

  Jasper: Homework.

  I stare at his incomplete truth for a couple of minutes, unsure of what to say next. I’m sure he did homework at some point, so it’s not a total lie but more of an omission of guilt.

  Winnie: That’s it?

  Jasper: Yeah. Why? What was I supposed to do?

  There’s nothing more I can say without flat-out asking if he kissed Melody in a coffee shop across town. I can’t ruin Melody’s chances, if she has one with him, and I don’t have the guts to ask Jasper why he called me his girlfriend. We’re not together. We never have been.

  Winnie: Nothing. Sorry.

  Jasper: Are you okay?

  Winnie: Tired.

  Another omission.

  Jasper: You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, right?

  Winnie: Yes.

  A lie. But am I okay? No, I’m not. Jasper kissing Melody means he could be kissing other people, and that makes my chest ache for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t like Jasper. Not when I’m in love with Trey.

  Can I?

  You don’t care, Winnie.

  But I do care. I care a lot, and I want to know why he did it. Why did he kiss Melody and then tell her he had a girlfriend? Whether I was real or not, he was okay with her thinking he’d cheated.

  Tomorrow, I’ll make it right with Jasper. I’ll tell him the truth about going to see Trey, and I’ll ask him about Melody. But, first, I need some sleep.

  When I close my eyes, both Trey and Jasper are there. My pleasant daydreams slowly turn into nightmares.

  The gun is pressed against my temple, and Tess’s finger hovers over the trigger. She’s so close to me, I smell the alcohol on her breath. Jax sits on the corner of the sofa with a beer in his hand and watches me like a movie.

  “Do it already, baby,” he tells her.

  Tess giggles and lowers the gun to her side. Then, she snorts another line of coke off the mirror. The higher she gets, the more she sways from side to side. If she wasn’t sitting, I’m sure she would fall over.

  “Let me leave,” I beg her. “I have to get to work.”

  The silver sequined dress, gold stilettos, and rhinestone hoop earrings are as cheap as I look. My hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and my lips are painted bright red. I’m a whore, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because everyone at The Whip thinks I am pretty. I’m the star of the show, the headliner Tess used to be.

  “You’re a slut, Winnie.”

  “You wish you were me,” I spit back.

  Not a single name could take away my pride. I’d made something out of nothing. I made Ace more money than he knew what to do with, and he loved me for it. His daughter lived in a huge house and had a nanny. His mother had retired and lived a life she’d dreamed of. All because I had taken my clothes off.

  Tess used the barrel of the gun to smack me across the face. Blood gushed from my nose and dripped down the front of my dress. Some sprayed directly onto Tess’s prison jumpsuit. The red clashed with the orange so terribly, I wished I had some mustard to break up the insanity.

  “It’s time to die, Winnie. I should have killed you the first time,” she slurred.

  The coke hit her hard, and the swaying turned into full-blown rocking. She’d be lucky to hit the back side of a barn with a bullet, let alone my body. But I knew she’d try anyway.

  I felt the warmth again. The same puddle grew around me, and I ran my fingers through the burgundy ripples, ready to be with my dad.

  It was time.

  I couldn’t fight anymore.

  I didn’t want to.

  The stage at The Whip had become my paradise, but hell was swallowing me up.

  “Winnie!”

  I can hear my name, but it’s not coming from Tess or Jax. Their faces slowly fade away until I can’t see their huge pupils or gray skin anymore. The stench of the smoke-filled trailer disappears, and my neck aches. The nagging twinge of pain on my arm won’t stop, and then my eyes are forced open.

  Dray’s shaking me, digging his fingertips into my skin because I’m dead weight in his arms.

  “Why am I on the floor?”

  “You fell out of the bed. I think you were trying to sleep walk.”

  I’ve never walked in my sleep before. Even when my mind was begging me to run away from Tess, I always woke up in bed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper as I try to stand on shaky legs. My body’s trembling so bad, I wrap my arms around my stomach and hold on to myself. “Was I that loud? How’d you know?”

  His room’s nowhere near mine.

  “I fell asleep so early, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I thought I’d heard something when I got up to use the bathroom.”

  I couldn’t have been that loud. Melody’s still passed out in her bed. Granted, she sleeps with earbuds in her ears, the music always playing, but I think she would have heard me yell.

  “Did I scream?”

  “No,” he says. “I think you hit your head on the wall, or maybe it was your knee. Whatever it was, it scared the shit out of me.”

  My head doesn’t hurt, so that couldn’t have been it. And, through all the nightmares, I’ve never actually hurt myself. That only happens while I’m awake.

  “You should go back to bed, Dray.”

  He says, “Okay,” but he lingers next to me.

  First, a finger and then a hand land on my shoulder, and he squeezes. I know what’s coming next—the pity.

  “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. That makes me a hypocrite, considering I didn’t take you up on your offer earlier, but I mean it, Winnie. Whatever you need. I don’t want you to be that scared ever again.”

  “I’m fine.” More lies, but I don’t talk about my nightmares, not even with the therapists. The only information I’ve ever given them is the little bit I remember about the shooting. Nobody knows that I can still feel the blood and
glass and the searing burn of the bullet as it tears through my skin. I don’t think I could say those things out loud. Feeling them is enough.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  I’ve said those words so many times, I’ve stopped believing it is possible. Yet, every day, I wake up. I fight. And I put one foot in front of the other. I make a conscious decision to keep fighting.

  Seventeen

  Jasper

  I didn’t sleep at all. Between kissing that girl in the coffee shop and lying to Winnie about what I was doing, my stomach’s in a giant knot.

  The coffee shop was my hideout. I knew, if I sat there long enough and watched the buses coming and going, I’d see the woman who helped me find Winnie. After never getting to properly thank her, I wanted to let her know that Winnie had pulled through.

  Once I found her, I thought I’d feel better. But, no matter how long I watched and waited, she never came. I started to think I’d imagined her. That my head was so screwed up from thinking that Winnie was dead, I’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe I had. Maybe that’s what hallucinating is like.

  So, I stayed at the coffee shop until it got dark, just in case. I was on my third cup when a group of kids my age walked in. They all sat down, and one guy pulled out his guitar. The voice of an angel woke me up, and when I looked at the girl next to me, I was mesmerized.

  “Can you pass me the sugar?” she said.

  Six words, and I was drunk on her full lips and hazel eyes. That hadn’t happened since I met Winnie, but as much as I cared about that girl, she wasn’t mine. There was a good chance she never would be, and that pissed me off. I got so mad, I took this angel by the hand and told her to follow me.

  Without a single question, she did as she had been told. The restroom was empty. I pressed her against the wall and kissed her lips so hard, my teeth hit hers. Her tongue brushed against mine, and she grabbed handfuls of my shirt. It was the best first kiss I’d ever had, and I didn’t even know her name.

  When her eyes opened, she smiled. That was gorgeous, too.

  If I didn’t walk away, I’d do something stupid. Something I’d regret and something that would hurt her.