Will You Catch Me If I Fall?

Trace’s POV

It was dark outside and the van was quiet. Ant was snoring gently in the background, his head lolling back on the headrest and headphones covering his ears. The quiet giggles of Mason and Simara were almost drowned by the low hum of the engine as they played eye spy, Simara resting her tired head on the shoulder of my best friend. I smiled out the window, feeling as if I may be sneaking on a private moment.

Unconsciously, my fingers stroked the dark red hair of the head in my lap. I looked down at the sleeping form of Addison, as my hand thread through her soft hair. I could feel more than hear her steady breathing as she slept in my lap, the rest of her thin body sprawled gracelessly across the seat, part of her legs on Ant. I could feel the thrum of her heartbeat against my knee, and it seemed to beat in perfect rhythm with my own.

My fingers brushed the pale skin of her cheek and her eyes flickered for a brief moment before she fell back asleep. We were on the road to New Orleans, where we would meet our bigger tour bus. I had seen the relief in both Addison and Simara’s faces when we told them we wouldn’t be living in the run down van.

Addison looked a lot younger when she slept, more peaceful. No haunted look shadowed her face when she was deep in thought. Her eyes weren’t veiled with a thick wall as she protected herself from hurt. Right now, she looked no more innocent than a child and I counted the freckles that skipped across her nose.

I never knew I could feel like this, where by looking at one person the world around me melts away and all that matters is her. She’s wonderful, amazing, strong.

I wrapped my hand into her own and in her sleep she clutched to me like a baby. I gazed at the faint scars that ran across her skin, scars I could recognise as self harm. I knew she was slowly allowing me into her world, a world that seemed to have treated her with so much pain…so much hardship. I hoped I could help her and I hoped she could share her story with me.

My mind flickered back to the day of her birthday, when we lay at the beach looking up at the sky. Her head had rested on my chest, already forgiving me for not calling her. I had smelt her hair, strawberry shampoo.

“Are you afraid of dying?” Addison asked me, her voice low in comparison to the soft crash of the eaves meeting shore.

I had looked down at her, wondering why she would ask a question like that

“Aren’t we all?”

She hadn’t said anything, her fingers clenching gently.

“You’re not afraid of death?”

“No” she whispered, and her eyes shadowed with though, gazed at the horizon “We all meet it sooner or later, some sooner…before their time….but I don’t think we need to fear it exactly. I think of it as a friend…relieving suffering, taking what so many people are giving it…their lives”

It was then I realised what a complex person she was. She was thinking beyond usual measures, she was extraordinary, breaking apart the concepts of life and piecing it back together in her own way, missing several pieces, but fitting all the same. And she was completely mine…

I looked out the window to the night above where thousands of stars lit up the sky. I had caught Addison talking to the stars several times, and had wondered who exactly she was talking to? Was there a lost soul somewhere in heaven that held a piece of Addison’s heart? That connected Addison to the heavens, to where death and eternity waited?

It scared me sometimes to know she thought of these things and it made me hold her a little tighter. I wanted to keep her with me. I noticed with a mild interest the pale sheen of her thin arms beside the tattooed melody of mine. We almost blended together in a perfect fit.

She murmured something in her sleep, pressing her body a little loser to mine. I smiled, bending down to kiss her forehead. God, I loved her…

Oh shit…I love her.