I choked out the word, “Okay.”
Risk bowed his head. “Take care of yourself, Cherry.”
“Keep chasin’, rock star.”
I had always told him that. No matter what life threw at him, I always told him to keep chasing his dreams.
Without a word, Risk turned and walked away from me, I had to force my legs not to run after him. I lifted my hand that still clenched my inhaler and inhaled a couple of puffs of my medicine. I wasn’t sure if I was about to have an attack or not. I felt horrendous pain in my chest, but I didn’t know if it was because I was struggling to breathe or because I had just forced the love of my life to walk away from me. All I knew was I was hurting, and watching Risk disappear from view was like someone stabbed a blade into my chest and twisted it.
Somehow, I turned around and began walking. I was replaying my conversation with Risk over and over in my mind and I couldn’t see a way that it could end where he didn’t have to give up everything he had ever dreamed of to stay with me in Southwold. I knew in my heart that that was the direction things would have headed for us. Risk loved me most in the entire world and there was nothing on God’s green earth that he wouldn’t give up to be with me. That included his dream of being a successful musician. I wasn’t going to be the person who killed his dream.
I refused.
I ended up at my front door without realising I had been walking home. When I got inside and closed the door behind me, the silence in my home was deafening. I began to strip out of my clothes where I stood. The sound of the sopping wet fabric smacking against the floor was barely audible because a new sound filled the silence. My crying. I couldn’t believe what had just taken place. I had broken up with Risk . . . with my Risk. Nothing in my life was the same as it had been a week ago.
Everything was different now.
My home, my town, my mum, my life, me.
All of it had been flipped on its head. I had to actively live without the relationship that my new adult life had been built around. It hurt. God, it hurt. I felt like I couldn’t breathe past the pain, yet I continued to breathe. I was somehow surviving even though on the inside I crumbled to nothingness. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea that my world could be turned inside out again. Just like the snap of my fingers, the life I planned to have was snatched away from me and the worse thing about it all . . . everything that led to right now was my decision.
Naked and shivering, I turned on the lights inside my home then I walked into my bedroom. I sat at my vanity table and stared into the mirror, wondering how I could look exactly the same, but feel so changed inside. The life I had planned with Risk was nothing more than a pipe dream now. The path we had walked together for so long had now become divided and I was quickly finding out that the road I was on was a one-way street. I couldn’t make a U-turn and go back to the start because that time had come and gone.
Risk was following his journey to stardom and it was a path I knew in my heart that he would succeed in reaching the end of. Risk, and his talent, were too big for our small town and much too big for me. Letting him go was my gift to him and though he didn’t understand that now I knew someday that he would. I was freeing him from a life that bound and constricted someone like him, someone who was born to take the world by storm. Someone who gave so much to people with his voice that his very presence would bring them happiness. I knew that because he and his voice brought me happiness for a very long time.
He would be okay, I knew he would be . . . me on the other hand, I would have to remember to put one foot in front of the other and tell myself to breathe. I would go to my quiet place where nothing was wrong. Mum wouldn’t be sick, Risk wouldn’t be leaving and I would be calm, collected and happy. All I had to do was remember to breathe.
In and out and in and out.
Just keep breathing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FRANKIE
Present day . . .
Three in the morning.
I found myself walking along Southwold pier after just arriving from London. When I fled the dressing room, Tobias followed me. He took a taxi with me back to Risk’s townhouse and saw me safely to my car, which was parked in Risk’s driveway. Tobias tried to convince me to sleep on my decision to walk away from Risk, but he and I both knew the only thing that would help Risk was me being far away from him. What happened a few hours ago could have been avoided if only we both were completely honest with each other.