The Wrong Heart

by Jennifer Hartmann

I drink her words in like sustenance. I never thought to look for beauty in grief. How can there be any trace of goodness in something so ugly?

She’s always held out hope. She’s always wished the very best for me, and for the longest time, my best was simply surviving. My heart would beat with sleet and snow, with icy disdain for life itself, but it was still beating.

Bree has kept me alive. And now, Melody is showing me what it’s like to truly live.

“Fight for her, Parker,” she breathes out, inhaling a frayed breath. “Whoever she is, fight for her in the same way I’ve never stopped fighting for you.”

Melody March is my true starting point. My reason for finally wanting… more. And that’s something worth fucking fighting for.

Melody continues to fight for something I’ve given her little reason to fight for. So damn intrusive. And fuck if it’s not exactly what I need.

Both of my hands reach out to grasp her cheeks in the same way I did last week in the parking lot, only this time, I’m not letting her go. I’m going to fire my burning truths at her, and if they cremate me in the process, torch me into cinders and soot, then so-fucking-be-it. “You’re mine,” I grit out, my heart thundering, my soul alight. “You’re what I’ve been waiting for. You’re what I’ve been searching for my whole life, and I didn’t even know it.”

Her gasp only makes me hold her tighter, and I swear I see tears glinting back at me, ready to fall. “Melody… you’re my starting point. You’re my turning point.” Pulling her forehead against mine, a strangled sound escapes her, and I finish with conviction, “You’re the whole damn point.”

I’m shattered. My walls, my barriers, the remnants of my armor. I’m hers.

As I come down from the high, I hold her, scooping her up and cradling her like a lost lover beneath the dusky moonlight. In this moment, nothing else matters. In this moment, everything matters. I feel everything. A blessing and a curse, and inevitably, my undoing.

As our ragged breaths steady and our heartbeats settle, I pull up from her embrace to smooth back her hair and find her eyes. A lump forms in my throat when I note the vulnerability swimming in her depths of bright green. This is new for me, but it’s new for her, too. We are both two broken souls, fractured in ...

mouth. “Thank you,” I whisper, my hands curling around her waist. Melody flicks her nose with mine. An Eskimo kiss. “For what?” “For not giving up on me.”

I’m not sure what it is, but there’s been a draw from the very start. A tether. His frosty disposition and crass words weren’t enough to deviate me from the crackle in the air every time he’d glance my way with his penetrative green eyes. Every time our skin would brush, I’d feel it. Every time he’d say my name, I’d feel it. Some things can’t be explained. Some things just are.

We straddle the line between magic and mayhem with every look, every touch, every white-hot kiss.

“I think that’s the key to happiness, though, don’t you think?” Her tongue slicks along her upper lip with consideration. “If we never let our guard down, no one would ever be able to reach us.”

Vulnerability is a risk, but the reward is so much greater.

A snicker escapes me. “So, you’re Team Parker?” “Girl, I’m Team Melody. Always have been, always will be.”

“The loudest love is wordless.”

“Then I realized: I do fucking know you, Melody. I know the deep, important shit, like the way your eyes light up when you’re dancing in the freezing lake singing God-awful eighties songs, and that you cry when you hear violins play, and that your mom would make you peanut butter and banana sandwiches whenever you were sad, and all the little things that keep you waking up each morning, living and breathing. I know your starting points.”

Perfection is an illusion. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Perfection is right now, this very moment, sitting on my favorite beach with Parker Denison as he siphons every last drop of remorse and fear, every lingering shadow, from my wildly beating heart. The sun rises inside me again.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Parker bites outs, dragging me through the sludge until I’m flush against his chest. His arms snake around me, holding tight. “But you’re not.” My nose kisses the front of his t-shirt. “Because I’m the sun, right?” There’s a lengthy pause, a considerable silence, as Parker digests my question while the water licks our thighs. He breathes a tapered sigh into my hair. “You’re the moon.”

“Why am I the moon?” “You’re the guiding light in a dark sky,” Parker murmurs, his breath tickling the top of my head. “You shine strong when the rest of the world is asleep… when no one is even looking.”

I’m Charlie’s sun, and I’m Parker’s moon. I can be both. I’m an eclipse.

“You’re perfect.” “No…” Parker hisses through his teeth. “You don’t need to lie to me.” Another cry breaks loose, broken and mournful. My lungs feel strangled. “I’m not lying, Parker. The cruel things you tell yourself, your toxic beliefs—those are the lies. They’re ugly and poisonous, not you.”

His muscles clench, resisting my truths. “Seventy-nine scars, Melody. I’m a fucking monster.” “No. You’re a man,” I bite back. “You’re the man I’ve fallen head over heels for, scars and all.”

Parker is Zephyr. Parker has Charlie’s beating heart inside his chest, functioning and strong. Alive.

“My Zephyr…” I breathe against his lips before stealing another violent kiss. I’m starved and achy. I need him. “I should have known it was you.”

The intimacy is so thick, it hovers between us like a third party. A witness. The emotional avalanche to my senses is so brutal, so violent, a cry breaks through my lips, and I’m not sure whether I should tighten my hold to stay afloat, or push him away and swim to shore.

saw you,” he says, quiet but firm. “I see you in every sunrise. Beauty… promise.”

Melody told me that night in the rain, the night she hopped onto the hood of her car, drenched in new purpose, her soul cleansing and purging before my eyes—she told me that all broken things can be fixed. The hard part is deciding that they’re worth fixing. As the thick silence settles over me, an old friend turned enemy, the truth is evident with every minute that ticks by in her absence. We’re not worth fixing.

“I thought I could help him by helping you,” she murmurs to the floor. “Give him something to care about. A connection. I thought maybe…” Her voice wavers as fresh tears fall free, tracking down her freckled cheeks. “I thought you both could find healing in one another and work through your pain together. I never intended to manipulate anyone’s emotions… I didn’t think it would go this far.”

“Parker has never had feelings like this before. There’s never been anyone like you. And I’m not trying to justify it, I promise, I’m just trying to paint a picture, so maybe you can see things from a different perspective.”

“My brother has been through hell. He’s suffered the worst out of life, truly, and I’ve done everything in my power to keep his head above water. And maybe I’ve kept him afloat all these years, but it’s you who has finally taught him how to swim. I’ve seen the difference you’ve made. I’ve seen a light in his eyes that has never been there before.”

I’m just trying to find the good in it all.” “There’s no good in lies and broken trust.”

Melody fixed me, and I’m determined as hell to fix us.

Time is the greatest measure for healing, after all. It’s the greatest measure for forgetting, too.

“Look at me. Fucking see me,” I rasp out, my fingers weaving through her soft hair. “I’m here, and I’m trying. I don’t have lavish gifts or words that will magically erase the stupid shit I did, and fuck if I know how to grovel, but I do have one thing… and that’s me. Right here, right now. Standing on your doorstep, asking you to give me another fucking chance. To look past my mistakes and see everything else. Look at the real me, Melody. The man you brought to life, who has no goddamn clue what he’s doing, but is doing it anyway because it fucking matters. You matter.”

And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I didn’t fall in love with the wrong heart. I fell in love with the right heart at the right time. I fell in love with Parker Denison.

“Charlie!” I reach for his cold hand, squeezing tight as the rain falls fast and mercilessly. “The sun falls with it, Charlie. Please… I’m nothing without you.”

“But… it still shines, Mel,” he murmurs hoarsely. Charlie swallows, his peach-spun eyes trying to find my face through the wreckage and rainfall. His fingers grip mine with the last of his strength, and for the tiniest second, I am warm. “It just shines in a new place.”

You gave me your blessing with your final words, you gave me permission to move on and let go, and God, I didn’t know what it meant then… I didn’t understand your meaning because, how could I? I thought the sun died that day, and I would never shine again.”

“The sun never dies, though. It only sets,” I finish, licking fallen tears from my lips. “Then it rises, and a new day begins.”

“Are you still mine?” My favorite song echoes in my mind, and I keep nodding, my tears spilling free. “Yes,” I murmur, watching his eyes snap shut, like he’s soaking up my assent and carving it into his bones. “I’m yours. I’m only yours.”

“Goddamn, I don’t deserve you.” Leaning up, I place a kiss to his bottom lip, lingering as I mutter, “You deserve more than you know.”

Hope. Parker said once that hope was for the weak. It was my very first day at those meetings, and his words burned me. They rattled me straight to the core. But maybe he was right—hope is for the weak. The frail and the struggling. The breakable. Hope is the glue. And there is no shame in that. There is no shame in weakness, in wanting more, in failure or defeat. Without those moments of weakness, we would never truly appreciate the beauty of our strength.

Hope is the stepping stone for grief and suffering, and then it’s up to us to do the rest. To fill in our dark holes, stitch our wounds, and make our way to the other side.

“Parker, I love you.” Another desperate, virile sound escapes him as he tenses on top of me. “Jesus, you’re fucking killing me right now.” “I love you,” I say again, coiling my legs around his hips while my hands cradle his face. “I love you so much, Parker Denison. You. All of your scars, your shadows, and your perfect, perfect heart. I’m not giving up on you. Not now, not ever.”

“You ruin me, Melody,” he murmurs, weaving his fingers through my wild hair. “You shatter my walls. You vaporize my darkness, overthrow my demons. You destroy every goddamn misaligned belief I’ve carried with me all my life.” My lips trail up his chest until we’re mouth to mouth, breaths intermingled, and I say, “It’s time to rebuild.”

But fucking West just had to take over and hire a shitty rock band to serenade us with godawful Nickelback covers all night. He even got up on stage and sang that Photograph song as some kind of horrifying dedication, and Christ, that song was terrible enough to begin with—the memories still haunt me.

He also made a giant fucking spectacle of himself when he got trashed and drunkenly proposed to Leah in front of our seventy-five guests. She slapped him. Then she kissed him. And then she slapped him again. I’m pretty sure that sums up their entire relationship.