𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟-𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑

Stars

Three days later

Abby's POV

Groaning as I walk down to the main deck, I lie down on the cool metal. The morphine is still working, but it hasn't reached its peak yet. I was just given a new dose ten minutes ago.

But I can't stay in that room any longer. It makes me sick.

I place my hands under my head as I lie against the cool metal of the ship, feeling the cold breeze against my face. I look up at the stars twinkling so brightly on this dark night. The stars twinkle in the night, but they are especially bright on this night. When I look to the left, I see the crescent moon in the sky. I smile and stroke the back of my neck with my thumb; the place where my crescent moon tattoo is.

I got that tattoo a few days after my father died. My old friend, X, did it. It's a crescent moon with a star at each of the two points of the moon and on the highest point of the curve.

My father and I used to go to the highest rooftop building in New Orleans and watch the stars at night when he came home from work. Every night we would do it and every night I looked forward to it. He never once missed a night—not even when he was so sick with the flu, he could barely get out of bed.

He loved the stars. He didn't believe in astrology or anything, but he loved how beautiful the stars were. He always told me stories about the stars and the constellations. I always had a favorite though. There was always one that I wanted to hear every night as a child. This one was more like a fairytale, but I loved it even as a teenager.

When I hear footsteps from the right, I am broken out of my thoughts and my head snaps to the right. I see Rafe slowly walking toward me. I swallow and turn my head back to where it was, looking directly up at the stars. In a few moments, I feel Rafe lie down next to me, his head now resting under his hands like mine was.

"When you weren't in your room, I got worried," he explains, answering the question that I have on the tip of my tongue. "I didn't try to slit my wrists again if that's what you're asking," I tell him, and I swear I see him flinch. He swallows at my words and doesn't move to open his mouth to retort.

We lay in total silence for about ten minutes. I stay staring up at the stars above and he continues staring at me. My face. My eyes. My lips.

After about ten minutes of him staring at me, I find my cheeks heating and my stomach twisting. "They're beautiful, aren't they?" I ask, breaking the silence. His eyes never leave my face. "Gorgeous."

"You like the stars, don't you?" he asks even though he knows the answer. I nod. "My father and I would always watch the stars at night. He always told me stories about the stars and fairytales that involved stars."

"Is that why you got the tattoo?" he asks, and I nod my head.

A few more minutes of silence pass before he opens his mouth to speak. "Tell me your favorite story."

The story of two star-crossed lovers.

That was always my favorite.

It's a story I have never shared with anyone. I promised my father I would never share the story unless it was with the person I was sure I loved. And I do love Rafe. As much as that love stings, I can't deny it.

So I open my mouth to tell the story.

"There was a boy and a girl. Two opposite sides of a coin. Fire and ice. Oil and water," I tell him, smiling as I remember the story. "He was fire, and she was ice. He was oil and she was water." My father always described me as water—powerful, with the ability to give life but also the power to take it. And he described me as ice—cold, with ice walls guarding my heart. When I was a child, I would reject his claim that I had walls around my heart, but I realized he was right when I grew older. Because of my mother's death and the hardship I suffered from living in poverty as a child, I built walls around my heart to keep myself from feeling pain. At the time, my father was the only one who was able to penetrate those walls of ice. And then his death shattered those walls completely.