Chasing Stars ✔️

40.

"These stars feel like they're illuminating the distance between us, and I wonder if you're thinking about me too. Somewhere on the other side of this night." – Blake Auden

She

"Sweetheart. You shouldn't have seen that."

I blinked, trying to ward off the tears that clouded my vision.

Matt was making slow but purposeful strides towards me. His face was impossible to read. I got up from the chair, despite my body's protest. "What is the meaning of this, Matt?"

He stopped halfway, his intense chocolate eyes never leaving mine.

"You are a smart girl, Alexa. I'm sure you know what that means." I shook my head. "What do you see?"

"This file has Jake's name on it."

He nodded. "Alexa, after the conversation I overheard you having with Sabrina, you should have known I was going to try to discover Jake's secret." He dropped his head to the side, massaging his neck. "I had to know, Alexa."

"You promised."

"And I kept my promise. I did nothing with that information."

"These pictures" I lifted the pile of photos. There were about a dozen of them, "this name" my shaking finger pointed to the yellow square of paper secured with a clip. Noah Clark, it read.

"This is Noah. The Noah..."

Matt's fingers brushed his hair furiously. "Let me go put a shirt on, you calm down..."

I didn't let him finished, closing the distance between us faster than I ever thought possible. "The hell you're going to turn your back on me right now, Matt." I shoved at his chest, pressing the pictures against him. He didn't move. His squared shoulders, impossibly wide, made him a solid wall I could never physically defeat. "Matt... the date in these pictures... is it right? Were these pictures taken at the end of last summer?"

I tried to capture his eyes, but he held his head high, and his gaze fixed above my head. "Matt. Please." My voice came out in almost a scream, a sharp pitch that only pure desperation could provoke.

He dropped his gaze. The answer that I already knew in my mind, written in the dark pools of chocolate of his eyes. "Yes. That is right."

I look at the pictures. Noah. The boy that had haunted my thoughts for so long. I could finally put a face to the name.

Jake mentioned he was our age, but he really looked like a boy, an easy-going smile on his face. His dark skin glistened under the sun and his hair stood pridefully wild, locks of black and deep brown floating around him. In other images, he had a more serious expression. There was concentration, effort, while he ran and jumped, playing a game of basketball.

"He is not paralyzed."

"No. He is not." I felt Matt's hand touch my arm, "he never was."

Noah wasn't paralyzed, but everything else around me seemed to stop moving; my heart, Matt's heavy breath; time itself.

"I have to go," I said, clutching the pictures against my chest.

Matt's hold on my arm changed. The soft contact morphing into a powerful grip. My eyes widen in response.

"Are you in such a hurry to go running to his arms you don't even want to hear the entire story?"

"You don't understand."

"I do. I understand perfectly. That's why you weren't supposed to see that."

"Are you so cruel that you're going to make this about yourself? Do you have any idea how much suffering Jake had been through because of this? His father? Me? This is not about you, Matt. This isn't a secret you can keep. Don't you get what this means?"