Stars Burn Out

Max Valentine's phone buzzed relentlessly against the concrete balcony floor, vibrating in a frantic little dance like it was trying to force him to look. To answer. To acknowledge the day.

He stared at it without moving.

Not today.

Not on the one day he wished the world would forget existed.

If the damn thing slid off the edge and plummeted twelve floors down, he'd thank the universe for doing him a favor.

Let it fall.

Let it shatter.

Maybe the crash would drown out everything clawing up his throat. Maybe silence would feel like mercy for once.

But the ache in his chest only tightened.

He hated this night more than any other. Every year, like clockwork, the memories crawled out of the corners he shoved them into. He'd spent the last decade trying everything - drinking the ache away, staying awake for two days straight so he wouldn't dream, pretending the date meant nothing. Tonight, he'd tried distracting himself with the view, the breeze, anything.

None of it mattered. His ribs knew the truth.

His heart remembers, even when he begged it not to.

Another year.

Not just another.

Not just one.

A decade.

Ten years, and he still couldn't force the word past his lips. He held on with every last drop in his shattered should, clinging to the thin thread of hope that told him none of it was real. That she wasn't-

...that she wasn't-

that she-

The thought strangled him, same as it always did.

"Dead," a voice whispered beside him.

Max flinched hard, squeezing his eyes hut as his pulse kicked into a painful gallop.

"There's no one there," he muttered, "There's no one there."

A warm breath tickled his ear. "It's okay to admit it, ya know."

The air shifted - warm in a way LA nights never were.

He shook his head slowly, "You're not here."

"No... I haven't been for a long time." Her voice softened, trembling around the edges. "It's okay, Max. It's been ten years."

"You know I can't."

Silence pooled beside him. Heavy. Thick. Like a blanket settling over his shoulders.

Then, a soft, aching sigh. "It doesn't change anything. I'm dead. Forever wi-"

Her voice cracked. Broke. A tiny sob escaped before she could swallow it.

Max's heart lurched. He opened his eyes, turning and collided with hers.

She was still fourteen going on fifteen. Still the girl frozen at the last moment he'd seen her.

Strawberry-blonde hair she used as a curtain. A constellation of freckles scattered across her delicate nose. Soft red lips. And those eyes-

God, those eyes...

Dark juniper green, warm and alive. The kind of eyes that dragged you straight into her soul. The kind of eyes he searched for everywhere after she was gone.

In strangers.

In dreams.

In corners of crowded rooms.

In hopes...

In hopes...

"You won't find me," she murmured, settling at his side. She rested her head on his bicep exactly the way she used to, like no time had passed at all. The familiarity of it nearly unraveled him.

He felt her.

He felt. Her.

Warm. Solid. Real.

And that's why letting go had never been an option.

They said she was gone, but something had always held tight - a gold thread, thin and gleaming, stretched between them.

Still taut.

Still there.

She lifted her head and looked down at him, sadness washing through her features.

"It's oh-kay to let me go," she said gently. "It's oh-kay to love again. Make your own family here, Max, And in the next life..." her voice waved, "we'll make on together as you tell me all about the one you chose in this life."

He swallowed hard. His voice barely a breath. "What if I want to keep looking for you?"

She gave the smallest shrug - a familiar, heartbreaking little motion he felt like a pulse under the skin.

And God, that nearly undid him.

"I have a family now," he whispered. "Ones I made myself. Ones you'd love."

That earned him her smile. The smile he'd never stop seeing. The lopsided, bright, radiant smile that always made something inside him go soft and stupid.

He took her in again - really looked. She was thinner than he remembered. Hollowed out. The gentle softness she once carried had been stripped away. Bones too sharp. Knees knobby. A body robbed of the years it should've had.

He wondered what she'd look like at twenty-five.

Wondered how she'd have grown into herself - the awkwardness smoothed out, the length of her limbs finally balanced, the last trace of childhood replaced by the warmth of adulthood. Would her hair still fall into her eyes when she laughed?

But time had been stolen.

From her.

From him.

From them.

"Tomorrow is my birthday," she said quietly, reading his mind like she always had.

He nodded. "You would be twenty-five."

She gave a tiny half-smile. "I'd be a quarter."

A surprised laugh slipped from him - light, fragile. "Yeah. A full quarter."

It faded quickly.

A heaviness that had made itself home in his chest reappeared.

Her outline flickered. Just slightly.

Like a breeze passed through her, though the air was still.

"Amara..." his voice cracked.

She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else - something important, something final - but the sound never came.

Her form thinned. Wavered.

And then-

She vanished.

Gone.

As quickly as she'd come.

Max's breath trembled. He would've given anything - anything - to have one more birthday with her.

One more touch.

One more shared breath.

One more whispered promise against his lips:

"Until the stars burn out?"

He lifted his gaze to the starless sky.

"Until the stars burn out, Amara," he whispered, letting the words carve open ten years of ache.

His nose burned. Eyes filled. And finally - finally - he said the thing he had begged the universe to hear for so long:

"Whatever God or Being is listening...please. Please, let me have her again. I have nothing to give except my word. I'd keep her safe. She'd never want for anything. I'd uproot my whole life if it meant I could have her back."

Silence answered.

Only honking cars and distance shouts filled the night sky.

Max braced himself on the railing, waiting for...

something. A sign. A flicker. Anything.

Minutes passed.

He waited.

Hoped.

Listened.

Nothing.

Feeling foolish, he slipped inside and shut the glass door behind him with a soft click. He didn't see the sky again that night.

He never saw it-

Above the city haze, a lone star trembled - faint, flickering, fighting the dark.

It pulsed once.

Twice.

Gathered strength.

Then, with a soft brilliance no one below would notice, it slipped free of the day.

A star beginning its fall across the horizon.