Turned out the art gallery I was dropped off at was the National Gallery of Australia.

I wandered through the collections but hardly took in anything. The one saving grace of this place was that it was quiet like I’d hoped it would be. With it being a weekday, not many people were around. I didn’t want to see anyone. Not even a bunch of strangers.

Wandering into the Impressionist gallery, I stopped in front of a Monet painting of a haystack and stared at all the little brushstrokes, picking out the individual colors. I probably stood there looking like a zombie for a full fifteen minutes before I sat on the bench behind me. Luckily, the room was empty.

I gathered it had been about forty-five minutes since I’d fled. What the hell had happened? My past had come crashing down so fast it had almost suffocated me. Things had been so good lately. So good in fact that all that crap had started to become a tiny blip on my radar. Now it was the only thing on it.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I tried to forget the feeling of Will’s hands on me. His lips. His kiss. But I burned with the memory of it. I also burned with another memory.

I wasn’t going back there. So I’d run.

My phone began to ring, and it was shrill in the silence, making me jump. I fumbled it out of the pocket of my jeans and saw it was Dee. Will would’ve said something to him by now. He didn’t have my number.

I pressed the green accept icon and pressed the phone to my ear.

“Zoe?” Dee sounded frantic.

“Yeah,” I replied, any energy I had suddenly fleeing the scene.

“Are you okay?”

I wanted to shrug, but it wouldn’t have translated well on a phone call. Instead, I grunted.

“What happened?”

“I can’t.”

“He’s worried about you, Zoe. So am I.”

“What did you say?” I asked thinly, the accusation clear in my voice.

“Nothing. It’s not my place to tell him anything.”

“You had better not have.”

“Zoe, come back. He cares for you. We all do. Right now, you’re scaring the shit outta me.”

“I can’t right now.”

“At least tell me where you are so I can come and sit with you.”

“I can’t keep draining your life, Dee. It’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but I want to. I love you, you know.” The silence was deafening.

“I’m at the National Gallery,” I said numbly.

“Where are you inside?”

“I’m looking at Monet’s Haystacks.”

“Don’t move. I’m coming.”

I let the phone drop into my lap and watched the call disconnect.

You know what they say in books and movies about how people fall in love, and it consumes them? I didn’t believe it. Not for one second. That kind of love? I’d tried and tried but never found it, and I couldn’t believe anymore. I’d thought I had it, but it was a lie. What if this thing with Will was the biggest fib of all? I couldn’t go through that chaos again. It just hurt too much.

My one true love was the silly band I was a part of. The Devil’s Tattoo. And the Will Strickland thing? That was more trouble than it was worth. It would consume me and leave me broken again. I was fooling myself that I could go on and not have shit happen again. I wasn’t going back there. I would never go back. Ever.

* * *

We got through our show in Canberra the next night without incident.

It wasn’t one of our best, but I got up there and played and did my thing. The moment we finished, Dee let me go back to the hotel, telling me he would take care of our stuff. I was so thoroughly embarrassed, angry, and overwhelmed after my freak out that I couldn’t face anyone, so I hightailed it.

Thankfully, Will left me alone. I knew Dee had something to do with it, but I didn’t question anything. I just put my head down and went through the motions.

The day before, Dee had sat with me at the art gallery in silence for an hour before I worked up the courage to go back. He did so much for me, and I seemed to give him so little. I would find a way to make it up to him. I couldn’t keep this up.

The next day, we had another bus ride to endure. Simone sat with me in the car park as the trailer was secured, and I stared at the asphalt.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I just need some time.”

“Do you wanna ride with me today?”

I looked up at her hopefully, and she smiled.

“Dean?” she called out, and he wandered over, hands in his pockets. “Do you mind if Zoe rides with me today?”

“I’ll hang with the guys on the bus,” Dean said, patting me on the shoulder.

I didn’t have it in me to argue as he wandered off to where I knew the guys were standing and loading up the last of the gear. I wanted to get away from Will. After running out on him like that, I couldn’t look him in the face. Not yet.

I had to apologize to him eventually. I had to tell him I couldn’t… I wasn’t ready for that yet. I’d made it so glaringly obvious.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I glanced at the text that had just appeared from Dee. I knew he was watching us from across the car park, but I was determined not to look.

“You okay? Do I need to smite anyone? Xx”

I smiled a little at his reference to our first show when I’d asked him to smite Will for being such a shameless manwhore. I thought Dee had been too drunk to remember. Apparently not.

“Not yet,” I texted back.

“Ready to go?” Simone asked.

I folded myself into the front passenger seat and sank into my hair as we followed the bus to our next destination.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Simone asked once we were out on the open highway.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t really have the strength to talk about much right now.”

“Okay,” she replied, and I could hear the unmistakable note of concern in her voice. “But I’m here if you want to.”

“I know. I appreciate it.” The radio was playing just loud enough to be heard over the road noise, but it was still painfully silent. “What’s going on with you and Chris?” I asked as much to fill the void as to try to emerge out of myself again.

Simone glanced at me with a small smile and then looked back at the road. “We had a talk last night after the gig.”

“And?”

“We talked.”

“About?”

By the way her face reddened, I knew they must have come at least a little clean with each other. “Did you tell him?”

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“Did he tell you?”

“Not in so many words, but we’re going to hang out more. See what happens.”

“That’s good, right?”

“I suppose,” she said sounding defeated.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” I countered.

“Yeah, but it’s still in the friend zone. Safe, you know?”

I sank down in the seat and wondered if it would be better if I remained back in the friend zone with Will.

Then I remembered how I had struggled against it.

Then I remembered my reaction to getting what I had tried to bury away inside my broken shell.

When I couldn’t avoid speaking to him anymore, how would I play it? Apologize and clamp down the ice walls again.

“Chris is shy,” I said, squashing my thoughts down into the pit of my stomach. “He’s a good guy and probably doesn’t want to stuff things up.”

Simone’s only response was to glance at me with a frown.

“When I talked with him, he said he didn’t know what to do. He just doesn’t know what to say, so maybe it’s a good thing. Hanging out.”

“Yeah,” she replied with a sigh. “The problem is I’m just so damn impatient.”

It was like a lightbulb flashed over my head when I heard those words. Maybe that was part of my problem. I’d crushed on Will for months, but I didn’t really know him that well outside of the band. It had only been three weeks. Three weeks in close proximity, but that was such a short amount of time, and for someone like me, maybe it was too fast to jump into any kind of relationship above friends. Maybe that was what had triggered my reaction.

Or maybe life had just broken me beyond repair. Maybe I wasn’t meant to fall in love ever again. Maybe this was it.

* * *

That night, we had another free one, so I hid in the hotel room and ordered room service like the coward I was.

I was still rooming with Dee and was thankful he was the only one who saw me like this. Behind closed doors, I had come apart. I couldn’t help thinking I was selfish for relying on him so much. I was selfish. As I’d thought that morning, I had to make it up to him, but I had no idea how.

I could think of worse things than rooming with Dee. Like a hole in the head. That was worse. Sharing with him wasn’t bad—he was my best friend after all, so it wasn’t weird in the slightest. It didn’t matter that I wore boy short underwear and a tank top to bed. He’d seen it all before, and we were firmly in the friend zone. In fact, we were concreted there.

The only thing that did bother me was he flung his dirty clothes everywhere and left his damp towel on the floor. If it weren’t for hotel housekeeping on the nights we stayed more than once, I’d go stark raving mad.

It was around eleven when Dee came back to the room. He took one look at me and lay down beside my rumpled form on the bed.

“The guys wanna know if you’re okay,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“C’mere,” he mumbled, pulling me into a hug.

We lay like that for a while in silence until I had to say something. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I keep doing this to you.”

“Doing what?” He sounded confused.

“Falling apart.”

“Life wasn’t meant to be easy, Zo.”

“I know.”

“You have to talk to him.”

“I will. Tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I’m just in the next bed if you need me, okay?”

He slid into his own bed, and in true Dee fashion, he was asleep in minutes. But for me, sleep didn’t come easy. When I finally managed to drift off, it was headfirst into a dream. You know the in between bit where you still feel wide-awake, but you’re in a weird place, and you know it isn’t real? It was there I found myself, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

The apartment I used to live in was brown brick, and the stairs leading up to our floor were concrete. I’d run up and down those stairs a million times carrying boxes and groceries. For two years, I’d gone out and come home without a care in the world. That was until the day I had run to get away. My eyes stung with unshed tears and my face throbbed with the promise of a black bruise swelling up against my pale skin.

“Get away from me!” I heard myself shriek.

A strong hand grasped my upper arm, fingers biting into my flesh—another bruise added to the list. I had been happy. So happy I’d been blind to what was happening behind my back.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

They let go of me, and I wanted to run down those stairs, the stairs I had walked up and down a thousand million times. I didn’t need to run. I didn’t need to walk. There was a hand on my back that would help me get to the bottom faster than I could have ever let my legs carry me.

The ground came rushing up toward my face, and I let out a scream, like the sound of my own terror would stop my forward momentum.

“Zoe.” The voiced sounded small like it came from a faraway place, and it took a long minute for it to register that it wasn’t part of my nightmare. My eyes snapped open, and I gasped for air, my skin hot and sticky with sweat.

“Zoe, fucking hell.” A hand was on my shoulder and another came down on my forehead.

“Dee?” I said with a grating voice.

“It was just a dream,” he said, his voice full of panic.

“A dream?”

“You let out an awful scream,” he said, pulling my hair from my wet face.

“I’m sorry.” I gasped as I sat up and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to calm down. My heart was still thumping a million miles an hour, the image of the ground rushing up to meet me still crystal clear in my mind’s eye.

“What was it about?”

I pointed to my arm, and he knew. Collapsing back onto the bed, I couldn’t help it when the tears started to flow. The dream had been so vivid it was like an action replay. Dee slid into bed behind me and circled his arm around my waist as sob after sob burst out of me.

“What happened?” he whispered into my hair.

“He called me… My arm,” I said between heavy breaths.

“Did he hurt you?” Dee asked quietly, knowing I was talking about Will. “If he even…”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

He held me for a long time, waiting for me to calm down.

Finally, he asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I whispered. I couldn’t say it.

“Something must’ve,” he said. “It’s you and me, Zo. Just you and me.”

He forced me to turn around and look at him. The room was dark, but the muted light from the streetlight outside filtered in, and I could just make out the familiar features of his face. Tucking my hair behind my ear, he kissed my forehead, and I breathed in his familiar smell of leather and musk.

“He kissed me,” I whispered.

“That’s not a bad thing, Zo.”

“He called me baby. It… When he said it, all these things came back. Memories. My arm…”

“Did he hurt your arm?”

“No. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t. It was weird. It felt like that night. The pain.”

“Shit, Zoe,” Dee cursed, pulling me against his chest.

“I panicked. I’m sorry.”

“God,” he murmured into my hair. “I understand, Zo. I get it. After everything, I get it.”

“I can’t just wake up one day and decide that I’m over it. You know I haven’t let anyone in. No one but you. It’s not easy.”

“I know, Zoe. I know.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. When you’re ready, and I think you are.”

“I don’t want to get hurt again. I can’t. I can’t go through that again.”

“He’s not Jason,” Dee said. “He’s nothing like that prick. I was wrong about Will, Zo. He’s all right. He’s one of the good ones. That guy would go to hell and back for you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was too afraid to believe. I just buried myself harder against my best friend.

“Remember when he almost beat up that guy for just talking to you? He wants you bad, and I think you should let him in. I mean, he’ll protect you from sleazy guys like me. That’s ten points right there. And he’s got nice shoes. I know how you are with shoes.”

I didn’t know where he heard about that night, but everything else he said was right. I was the only one who had a problem with it.

“I know it’s hard, but you’ve gotta face it.”

“I know.”

“I can only help you so much. The last bit you’ve gotta do on your own.”

“Mmm,” I murmured.

“Are you okay now?” I knew he meant the dream, so I nodded.

He went to let me go, but I grasped hold of him tighter. “Stay.”

He let out a small laugh and pulled the cover up over my shoulders. “The day I get a girlfriend, Zo, she’s going to be a jealous wreck.”

“I want to see her resume first.”

He ran a hand through my hair. “There’s the Zoe I know and love. Don’t let her get away again.”

The way he said it made it sound easy, but I knew the conversation I had to have with Will the next day was going to be one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

And I still didn’t know which way it was going to go.