Between the Stars and Sky Read online

  PRAISE FOR DAVID JAMES

  "The writing is beautiful, lyrical and the characters well- drawn." - J.H. Trumble, author of Don't Let Me Go

  "Breath-takingly lyrical, heart-breakingly real, Between the Stars and the Sky left me wanting only one thing: more.” - Joy N. Hensley, author of Rites of Passage

  "I am in awe of David James." - Nyrae Dawn, bestselling author of Charade

  "I really don't have enough words to express how amazing this book is. I give Light of the Moon five stars. And that's because I can't give it ten." - Emma Hart, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Love Game

  "Light of the Moon is beautifully poetic in its writing. David James has crafted a tale that is completely mesmerizing with the blending of two worlds. His artful merging of two strong characters will leave you dying for more." - Helen Boswell, author of Mythology

  “David not only embraces but exceeds in his writing about diversity.” - teacups&bookends, blog

  "The Warrior's Code blends action and drama perfectly, creating a truly unbeatable story." - Christopher Waltz, author of Ivy League

  ALSO BY DAVID JAMES

  THE LEGEND OF THE DREAMER SERIES

  Light of the Moon Book 1

  The Witch’s Curse Book 1.1

  The Warrior’s Code Book 1.2

  Shades of the Stars: An Anthology Book 1.5

  Shadow of the Sun Book 2 Coming Soon

  Between the Stars and Sky

  “One day we’ll find the place where love is infinite.”

  Jackson Grant is on the edge-

  of everything.

  Life. Loss. Love.

  His hope is flickering-

  until he finds a girl who ignites him.

  A girl who shows him life,

  saves him from loss,

  and opens his heart to an infinite love

  found between the stars and sky.

  Between the Stars and Sky

  a novel

  David James

  Copyright © 2014 David Knapp

  Published by DJ Publishing

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews when credit is given to the author by name.

  First hardcover, September 2014

  First e-format, September 2014

  Cover design by Keary Taylor

  Font by Vanessa Bays http://bythebutterfly.com

  Edited by Annie Burns

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Knapp, David, 1986-

  Between the Stars and Sky / by David James. - 1st ed.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To those who want to find an infinite love-

  and to those who already have.

  “The world only exists in your eyes.

  You can make it as big or as small as you want.”

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  CONTENTS

  Before

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After and During

  Bonus Content

  Before

  AN ECHO of that day beat in my heart forever; night and day and back again, as though the world stopped and started the very last night of the Firelight Festival.

  “The festival is a love story,” she said, always.

  Even now I wonder if the story was real.

  If Mom told the truth or lied.

  If she knew.

  “Did you ever jump?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Just once.”

  “When I’m old enough, I will. I’ll jump.”

  “No,” she told me. “You won’t.”

  “Why?” She said, “I won’t be there to catch you.”

  Chapter One

  I FEAR-

  myself.

  But fear is a silly thing, and I can do nothing to stop the way it looks or holds. Against fear, we are powerless if we cannot look it in the eye. Helpless, if we cannot step past the bitter lies of our nightmares into the sweet reckonings of our truths.

  I want to face my fear.

  But I can’t.

  Fear is everything-

  I am-

  not. Because right where I should be, I am lost. They tell me this is normal: to lose a life and fall back into the past as if it were the future you always wanted. It is okay to suffer when you have lost. They tell me these feeling are temporary, fleeting. Soon, these feelings will be as lost as I am now.

  “It’s fine,” Dad says. He smiles but his eyes can’t seem to find mine. “Sometimes we all need a year to restart. Sometimes we need more. Get lost and find yourself again. You are so strong.”

  Dull words and contradictions. Empty promises, false hopes that have never met an action. And I can’t help but feel that my dad has no idea what it means to be lost to a world that cannot find a place for him, desperately wanting to be a part of it.

  “It will be fine,” he says again.

  He doesn’t tell me I’ll love again.

  He doesn’t tell me to forget.

  I smile. I lie. “I know. I just need some time to think.”

  Dad puts a hand on my shoulder, his arm falls around me. Even though he is twice my age, my arms are twice his size; I could break him like this. “You’re always inside your head, Jackson. Just like her. Ever since you were a boy, you’ve lived inside yourself instead of really living at all. Think about that, son.”

  “Everyone thinks,” I tell him.

  “Not like you. You let your thoughts consume you, Jackson,” he says, and even though he smiles, it is tilted sad at the sides. As his eyes search mine, I realize this: I could never break him, but with the right words he could break me. He could shatter me. “Apply for jobs while you’re up north. Something in the city, maybe. It’s been over a year since you graduated high school; you don’t want to lose any more time.”

  I don’t know what I want.

  But I will not change the way I think. Mom thought the same as me, and in that small token I want to keep this part of her just for myself.

  You are poetry, Jackson, she said to me.

  You are the life you choose.

  And make yours poetry.

  “I’ll apply for jobs,” I tell him, as though the thought had not occurred to me every night since I lost-

  everything.

  Suddenly, I am furious.

  I am sad.

  And I realize I cannot tell the difference between the two. That maybe I’m even more lost than I thought.

  I cannot hear the poetry anymore.

  “You’ll be helping Miles with the store?”

  “Yes, Dad.�
� I lie. I haven’t talked with Miles in years, not since we left that tiny town, and I don’t know how to start now. “He said I’d be helping with the inventory, mostly.”

  “Good, good.” He squeezes my arm. “That will be good for you, I think. Enough for now. Teach you real work before you can find that new job. Employers like a man who knows what it’s like to work.”

  “I know.” There is guilt laced deep within my words, like it’s my fault this happened. My fault that I don’t care about everything my Dad does. My fault I am young and broken, and want more than anything to fit back together but don’t know how.

  I don’t know.

  Too quiet, like a stumble of words falling out before they were meant to, he whispers, “I’m proud of you.” And maybe he is, maybe he thinks I’m everything he’s ever wanted in a son because he has never seen me. But even so, there is a wall between us that cannot be taken down, a forever hymn of love and loss that began with Mom and grows stronger each day.

  We don’t know how to be without her.

  We talk.

  We hug.

  “It will be okay,” he says. “I’ll try and visit but-”

  “I get it,” I tell him.

  We lie.

  “Be... Be...”

  “Safe?” I try, because I know all the things he wants to say but can’t. All the things he doesn’t want to remember I was before, after, during.

  “Yes,” he agrees. “Be safe.”

  And as we say goodbye and the door closes behind me, I wonder which parts of the conversation were actually true. It doesn’t matter that I want desperately to find a place where I belong so I can start my life, or that I can’t stop thinking about all the days I have lost not knowing who I am or who I want to be.

  Parents don’t listen or care about that stuff, not really. They smile. Love the best they can. And tell you your personal life can be sorted out in the meantime. In the future, with a job and a reason for existing, you’ll know exactly who you are.

  Money matters; it is security.

  A job matters; it has protection.

  But no one tells you that money doesn’t last forever and no job is protected when no one needs it. No one tells you that when you lie to your parent about getting a summer job near the family lake house, they won’t know and it doesn’t matter. They won’t check because they don’t care enough to know. No one tells you that if you leave town, your broken heart stays broken. No one tells you that you’ll never forget love even if you want to, even if the memory of it kills you every single day and night.

  And I refuse to believe my reason for existing is nothing more than a job that will eventually eat me from the inside out. I want a different reason. One that is painful and wonderful and exciting and forever. Before, I thought I had found that reason, but now even Natalie is gone and I am alone. And I am left with what thoughts my Dad presents me, pretending security is more important than love, protection more important than not being able to breathe from laughing too hard.

  But everyone lies.

  For some, ignorance is bliss.

  And I am afraid my reason for living will leave me again. For me, the unknown is between wrong and right, between what is and what should be. And I fear life will always taste bitter, a place on the edge of freedom.

  A half life.

  Between a truth and a lie.

  Chapter Two

  MY HEARTBEAT IS FEAR.

  It is unknowing.

  But for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am pressed hard with a sense of freedom. Relief that is hidden deep underneath, barely there.

  Life is silly like this: It changes-

  us.

  But we never know if life is for us or against us, changing as we do or running forward without us. Never know until we do, and then life changes again.

  Life is our guide.

  Our delusion.

  Life is everything.

  And it is nothing.

  Night crawls ahead of me in dark shadows, unraveling like fragmented nightmares searching for day. I drive slowly; I want to savor this, have the journey last as long as possible. Want the end closer than it is, farther than it will be, easier than it must be. And because I know it’s not an easy path I’m about to follow, I want this peaceful, melancholy middle to last forever.

  I want so many things.

  I want to be someone. I want to have the victory of youth; to hold life in my hands and know that somewhere in that freedom, deep within that security of knowing, I am someone worth loving. Worth living outside of being alone.

  But.

  “Do you love me?” she asks.

  “You know I do, Nat,” I tell her. I need her to know I do, that I love her like no one else, because she is the only thing keeping me standing. Keeping me whole. And now, more than anything, I need I want I have to be whole. A pause. “You don’t love me enough.”

  “I do. I can.” I break.

  “You can’t. Not like this.”

  I have to. “How do you know?”

  “Because you’ll never be enough. I’m sorry. You’re too different, too broken now, Jackson. You’re not the guy I fell for. And I know it’s not your fault, but I can’t be the one to fix you.”

  My reflection looks back at me; when the light of the moon hits the windshield just right, I come alive in the glass through the droplets of rain hanging on. Only, I don’t feel alive. Like the person looking back at me, I feel barely there. I try to see what everyone else must see, but I am not me. My shoulders take up most of the glass and my hands cover the steering wheel. The night has turned my dark brown hair black, my green eyes a deeper shade of forest. I am larger than I am; already, my shoulders and arms stretch against my shirt, but in the glass they nearly break. I am darker than I should be; my skin looks like true night instead of a light, dusking sky. And even though I am a vast shadow of myself, I feel small.

  Maybe Nat was right; I am not enough.

  Still, I can’t think like that. I won’t let myself, not again. It’s amazing what a reflection shows and what it is capable of ignoring. I won’t let Dad be right about this: My thoughts consuming me like sun to dawn. And as a flash of light from a passing car rips me away, I breathe. Easier. Force my mind to forget, for a moment, why I left home, and focus on the freedom of this cool summer twilight.

  I might not have been enough, but neither was Natalie. A girl who left when I needed her most. When my family was falling apart, she unraveled it further. Once, I close my eyes. Open. Quickly.

  Blink away the past.

  New.

  I roll down the window and breathe the smell of rain and trees and dirt so deeply in I think I might die.

  Or live.

  * * *

  The forest is so quiet it screams.

  The air hits me cool, like a dream colliding with reality, and I realize this is the first time I’ve been outside in hours. The air smells different here, cleaner. Fresh and new and so, so dark. As though night has a scent, a desire. A life all its own. And maybe it does, because as I walk toward the house my heart is racing ahead of me wanting to get out of the dark.

  But I don’t. Instead, I stop and close my eyes and let the dark eat me alive. Let my fear escape into the night and touch the stars.

  In this moment, I am everything. I am nothing. It is a wonderful, horrible feeling to be both, to be so infinitely lost to the world you can’t see yourself. I want it to last forever. I want it to stop.

  Silence.

  Except for the crash of waves against sand in the distance. The silver of moonlight shining against the trees I swear I can hear breathing. A million shining leaves shake on a hundred branches, waiting to break and drop and fly.

  And maybe that’s it.

  Maybe I have to break before I drop-

  before I fly.

  The motion lights pop on.

  I am blind. I am alone with my heart.

  With fear.

  I came to escape, to be alone.


  I am so far away from everything and everyone and-

  I’m free.

  But when I am, when I have no one, there is no one and nothing to fear but fear itself. And when that fear is you, life is but a bitter night waiting for the sun to rise, for freedom to turn against you.

  Suddenly, a bird screams in the distance. One bird alone in the chaos of night. Loud. Quiet. Quiet. Quieter. It becomes a faded memory somewhere beyond.

  One bird, gone.

  I am a bird.

  This is it.

  This is my summer to fly.

  Chapter Three

  MORNING HAS CHANGED this place from dark to light, and yet there are shadows at the edges of the woods and in the clouds where the sun can’t reach. My eyes find life; hummingbirds spark around a feeder long dry, hovering and waiting. The world looks cool, and yet warm the way the sun breaks the trees in a thousand beams of golden light before running across the deck to my feet.

  Imperfections are everywhere if we know where to look, and where not to. Perfect is there, too.

  I will face them all-

  alone.

  My eyes find the journal resting closed on the table next to the couch, and my mind finds a memory of Mom writing in it. I won’t look inside. I can’t. I know she would want me to, want me to read the moments where her pen found paper, found poetry, and remember her.

  But I can’t. Not yet.

  I open the sliding door too quickly and my coffee jumps from my mug and burns my thumb. “Shit.”

  I don’t swear because of my mom.

  But she isn’t here.

  So

  I

  Fucking

  Swear

  again.

  But it feels like cheating, like burns around the edges of what I should be saying. Even though it’s just me at this edge, there is a horrible comfort in knowing my mom will follow me even in my words.