blackheart ➵ m. clifford

➵ epilogue

➵ j e t t

Four years, seven months and thirteen days after his death, and I'm still in love with him. I'm in love with the twinkle in his eyes and the red flush of his cheeks, and I'm so undeniably, impossibly in love with him. I'm so fucking in love with the way he sits when he plays video games, and I'm so fucking in love with the brush of his fingertip against my chin as he tilts it up for a kiss. There's never been another person that makes me feel the way he does. He was in my veins and my breath and the tears that slipped down my cheeks.

I missed how he was in love with me. I missed how he was in love with my fingertips, and how he was in love with the freckle on my cheek. I missed, so fucking much, how he was so fucking in love with the way I tangled my fingers in his hair, and the way my fingers moved terribly over the strings of his favourite guitar. I was in his veins and his breath and the tears that never had that chance to slip down his cheeks.

People have this expectation of love – that it's a feeling of euphoria and ecstasy and pure and complete adoration for another person. When you feel it, it hits you like a tonne of bricks. Like somebody has driven an eighteen-wheeled truck right over your sternum and your collarbones and your heart that's beating so fast that it feels almost like it will explode in your chest.

Falling in love with Michael was exactly like that.

He wasn't the boy next door, or the maths tutor, or the jock. It wasn't love at first sight. It grew. Like flowers in the spring, blooming from a tiny seed to a wildflower so tragically beautiful that you could stare at it for hours and never once get bored. It grew deep within our blood and our skin and every tiny fibre of our being. Our being.

We belonged to each other."

I breathed out shakily, wrapping my arms around the tiny girl that wriggled in my arms. Her dark blonde curls were pulled back into a braid that toppled messily down to the middle of her back, and her arms were tucked inside the sleeves of the old Metallica shirt that Michael had given to me on that one night in London – she liked to wear it as a dress, paired with her favourite leggings that had studs on the sides. My eyes had welled up with tears when she told me she wanted to be a punk rocker, just like Michael.

"I like Mikey." She tilted her head back to look at me, her eyes sparkling like the stars that had once lit up the ceiling in the basement at that old house on Shrewsbury Avenue.

"You would have adored him." I couldn't help the smile that streaked across my face, thinking of how the odd, awkward boy would have sat her between his legs and taught her how to play Smoke on the Water on his acoustic guitar, or how he would buy markers so she could colour in his tattoos. "You really would have."

"How many hair colours did he have?" She giggled, reaching up to touch her own locks.

"I lost count." I laughed with her, pulling at the ends of my own."Green, blue, red, purple." I gasped, and her jaw popped open at the mention of the final colour. "Your favourite."

"I really like Mikey." She put her hands on her cheeks, showing off the gap in her toothy grin. There was something about the words she said, she liked Mikey, and it was as if he was still here. He was still a part of us. A part of me.

Michael and Billie were so alike, with powder white skin that looked like porcelain, and green eyes that glistened like crystals. Button noses and the same plump lips that were so red I was often told I was an immature parent for allowing my daughter to wear lipstick. She had long eyelashes that brushed her cheeks when she blinked, and her nose crinkled the same way his did when she couldn't hold in her giggles.

A few months after he left, I stopped taking my medication. And I saw him again. I saw the love of my life, and I cried. He stayed with me, just like he promised, each of us sharing the goodbyes we never got to share before the accident. It brought me peace, and lifted the weight off my shoulders, knowing that I'd finally said goodbye to him. One last night with Michael was all I needed. I took my medication again.

I was close to bursting then, and felt this immense sense of relief knowing that Michael knew, and Billie Clifford was born thirteen hours later.

She was my angel in disguise, and she shed light with every move she made, dancing on my heart like the pretty little dancer she aspired to be. Music was in her bones and her heart and every fibre of her soul, and that was enough to make me happy. Michael would have adored it.

"Mum?" She shifted, sitting herself cross-legged in my lap with her knees facing my stomach. "What was your favourite thing about Mikey?" Speaking softly, she tucked her hair behind her ear, looking up at me through her eyelashes.

And it was that single look that gave me my answer, because nothing ever compared to Michael's eyes. They were so vivid, so alight with emotion, flecked with hundreds upon hundreds of different shades of green. You could read him like an open book. When he looked at me, it made my heart stutter in my chest and fire ignite in my stomach. He didn't have to say anything, not utter a single word, because I knew how he felt.

"His eyes." I leaned forward, making a show of looking right into hers. The similarities were uncanny.

"What colour were they?" She began to get giddy, fiddling with the strings on my hoodie.

"Green." I poked at her dimples, and her lips stretched over her teeth in a wide smile.

"Mine are green!" She squealed, her hands thudding together in an attempt to clap, but the sleeves of her shirt muffled the noise.

"I know, Billie Joe, I know." I bit down on my lower lip, and she copied me, sticking the tip of her tongue out through the little gap in the front. "But guess what? I saw his pretty eyes again."

"What?" She gasped, and I gasped back, clutching her hands in my palms as she began to rock back and forth. "How?"

I gently tilted her chin up with my thumb and forefinger, watching as her expression softened and her lips parted, her irises still blown wide from excitement. I ran my fingers over her jawline, before wrapping my arms around her tiny frame.

"You opened yours."

➵

and that's that! thank you so much to anybody that stuck with me, forty thousand reads is beyond anything i could ever have imagined and i'm so thankful for the support. i've finally finished my first book and i couldn't be happier.

as we know, i've been through some shit lately and i lost my mum and i took a break, but i really want to write something over the summer, so stay tuned because we might be in for another ride!

again, thank you for sticking by me and i'm so fucking thankful. i hope you enjoyed blackheart, because fuck yeah i enjoyed writing it. on to the next!

-tay