Hole In My Chest - Lynn Gunn/Alexa San Roman

Chapter 18 - Coping

A/N: Okay so I was writing this chapter and then I realised that after I really didn't want another one after it besides the epilogue so I guess this is the "last" chapter of this story, I'll save the rest of my speech for the end epilogue, so for now just enjoy this chapter and I'll see you on the other side! 

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Over the coming months it would take Lynn a considerably substantial time to recover from the tragedy of that night. After the funeral she went back to her parents house and stayed inside her room for the best part of 3 weeks before she even left it, let alone going back to her apartment. 

Her mother had gone over there to retrieve Lynn's belongings and Alexa's parents had been over and sorted through the things that they wanted to take but they obviously left behind the personal things that the pair shared as that was up to Lynn to decide what she wanted to do with them. 

Eventually she found it within herself to sort through it a while later. A lot of it she trashed but she couldn't bring herself to throw away all the photos of them together in which they both looked so happy and in love. But despite being able to do that and then put it up on the market for sale, 3 months down the line Lynn had found herself in a state of depression and had dropped out of the uni as she found that they weren't enhancing her creativity as well as she knew she could herself, and thats why in the time she hadn't been there, she had found herself locked inside of her room and had just let the pen do the talking. 

Obviously all of her friends stayed in contact with her and they visited regularly because they were all concerned for her wellbeing, physically and mentally, but as of yet the only person that had "heard" these songs was Alexa. on the occasion that Lynn did leave the house it was to go and visit Alexa's grave. She would sit there for hours on end in front of it with her guitar and she would just strum lightly as she hummed the melodies. That was until one day Alex and Brian both went round together with their instruments to play with Lynn cause after all, she was still their front woman. 

At first it just started out as a little jam session that they thought would cheer her up but when she suddenly said that she thought she was ready to share this new music she had written the boys were both stunned. It wasn't something they had expected to happen but they certainly were happy that she was finally letting them in to her locked mind.

"Okay..." She said with a shaky breath as she reached for her little black book with all her songs in. "This is everything." She said as she passed it to Brian who was beside her. His eyes went wide. 

"Lynn there's gotta be like 25 songs in here" he exclaimed. 

"42 actually" she said with a little smile. 

"Man thats like 3 albums worth" Alex stated as he flicked through the pages. "I wanna hear some!" it meant to be a question but it didn't really come out like one. They knew Lynn's songwriting was amazing already but it was clear that many of these songs had been extremely personal and a lot of them were her coping mechanism so they didn't push her but she picked up her guitar and started strumming some chords. 

I feel these limbs have grown cold to numb.

Take a good look at what I've become

There's a hole in my chest

And I don't think it's leaving room for anyone

She paused slightly before continuing. 

There's a burning love for me at rest

Yeah pounding at the walls of my flesh

I'm trying my best

Just to let it set before I come undone

By this point in the song she had her eyes closed and was just lost in the music. 

Oh I can't see

The whites are missing from my eyes

I can't breathe

I'm doing everything to bring this body back to life

I'm afraid of shutting down tonight

Yeah I've got this feeling deep inside

No matter how hard I try

I don't think I will make it through the night

Oh I can't see

The whites are missing from my eyes

I can't breathe

I'm doing everything to bring this body back to life

And I'm, afraid of shutting down tonight

I've got this feeling deep inside

No matter how hard I try

I don't think I will make it through the night

And there's a burning love for me at rest

I'm pounding at the walls of my flesh

I'm trying my best

But I can feel this all deep in my chest

But she couldn't quite finish the song as she got herself all choked up. But that was okay, they had heard enough. 

"Lynn that was amazing, I can't believe you wrote that" Brian said as he went in for a hug 

"Thanks" she said with a sigh followed by a little sniffle. Alex then got up and gave her a big hug. 

"Right then, well I guess we had better get to work putting so other music to some of these, and then we need to pick out which songs we wanna use for a demo cause seriously Lynn, this shit needs to be heard!" Brian said as he picked up his bass. She let out a little chuckle and then over the next few weeks they had chosen 4 songs which they had put music to and used the uni studio to record them into a demo which they sent off. 

Using this as a distraction helped Lynn gain back her liveliness little by little though Alexa was never far from her mind, how could she be when she was the focus of more than half of these songs. But she was feeling happiness again for the first time in what felt like forever to her so she was only too compliant to follow the path that was being set for her. And a bright path it was.