Page 5 of Mending Hearts
Do I think I can handle that?
I think… I hope I can.
The difference is, when I step away, I actually get to step away. When I retire, the noise fades. The attention softens. I get to choose quiet in a way he might never fully be able to. I don’t need us to disappear—I just need one part of my life to finally belong to me.
And if Rafe already has a house there?
That might make me desperate. But it also feels like the universe standing directly in my path, daring me to stop pretending this isn’t what I want.
This year, I’m done hiding behindsomeday.
This year, I make amends.
Or I find out—once and for all—that I waited too long.
2
RAFE
If you’d askedme ten years ago what success would feel like, I would’ve saidloud. Like amps cranked too high. Like sweat and screaming and the moment right before you step out and the crowd turns into one living, breathing organism hungry for you.
I was right. I just didn’t realize loud could also be… exhausting.
International tour number four is officially done, and I’m running on fumes, caffeine, and the kind of adrenaline that doesn’t even feel good anymore. It feels like my nervous system forgot how to come down. Like my body is stuck in “go” even when I’m standing still.
Which is why I’m on Miles’s couch at one in the afternoon, wearing my favorite jeans that have seen some shit, drinking a lukewarm coffee I should have drunk about ten minutes ago, and trying to convince myself this is what downtime looks like now.
I’m thirty-three.
Thirty-three, and I’m pretty sure I’ve become a boring old man.
I know, I know.Onlythirty-three. Still “young,” still “hot,” still “in your prime.” I’ve heard it from journalists and PRpeople and random fans who think saying it to my face counts as flirting. But I swear, at some point in the last three years, I crossed over into the kind of tired you can’t cure with one long nap and a slice of pizza.
The kind of tired that lives in your bones.
Miles’s place is clean in that minimalist way that always makes me feel like I’m leaving fingerprints just by existing. The man has a beige couch that I know cost more than my first car. A coffee table that looks like it belongs in an art gallery. There’s not a single visible cable, which is honestly the most suspicious part.
He’s in the kitchen, moving around with the calm competence of a guy who’s done this exact routine a thousand times: host, band dad, pretending not to be the most responsible one here.
“You want something real?” he calls. “I can make food.”
“I don’t deserve food,” I answer.
He laughs. “That’s the tour talking.”
“Okay, but what if I’m right?” I say, staring at the ceiling like it’s going to offer me absolution.
Miles appears in the doorway with two mugs. He hands me one. It smells like tea, which is rude.
“It’s ginger,” he says, reading my face. “For your stomach.”
“I hate that you care about me,” I mutter.
“You love it,” he says and sits in the armchair opposite the couch, stretching his long legs out. He looks annoyingly refreshed for someone who just did the same schedule I did—late nights, flights, interviews, sound checks, stage, repeat.
I don’t trust it.
Maybe he’s a robot. Maybe he feeds off our exhaustion.
