Rewrite the Stars

by Charleigh Rose

“People are drawn to train wrecks. It’s human nature. They can’t help it.”

“Do you trust me?” Sebastian asks, his arm still outstretched, waiting for me to take the helmet. What an absurd thing to ask of a stranger. “Yes,” I surprise myself by saying. What an even more absurd answer.

“You’re all brothers?” I ask, once we slow enough for him to hear me. “Cousins. But yeah. We’re brothers in the way that it counts.”

“What’s the difference between a carnival and a circus?” “The circus keeps their animals in cages. We let ours run free,” he says, with a glint in his eyes. The insinuation is clear. They are the animals.

“Be careful, Princess. You’re wrapped in a pretty package, but you’re rotting from the inside out.”

“Don’t go.” His voice is full of gravel and reluctance.

“Why should I stay?” “Because I don’t feel like waiting another year to see you again.”

“I’ve been thinking about the way you taste for two fucking years.”

“Least of all me. The most dangerous men are the ones with nothing to lose.”

“You were the first boy I ever kissed. I spent two years trying to find this feeling again.”

Even when there is nothing else, there is hope.”

“I don’t think we ended up here just for you to die,” she whispers. “What if it’s already in the stars? You can’t change fate.” “Then we’ll rewrite the stars.”

I’d give anything to keep you. I think I say the words out loud, but I can’t be sure. No. I don’t feel alive. I’ve never felt more dead than the moment Evan’s eyes told me I was dying.

I don’t know what I did to deserve Evan, but I’ll fight until death to keep her. Turns out, she wasn’t the casualty after all. She was the cure.