The words hit me like a physical blow. My jaw clenched so tight, I had to take a breath to steady myself.
“No,” I snapped. “Don't do that. Don't minimize this. Don't act like this was convenient. You want to know what we are?”
“Sawyer, I can’t….”
Finally,finally, she looked up at me through her lashes. Those eyes—God, those eyes—swam with unshed tears, wide, terrified, and so fucking beautiful, it made my chest ache. Her lower lip trembled, just once, before she caught it between her teeth.
The sight of her broken like that shattered something inside me. I rounded the counter, closing the remaining distance and bracing my hands on the counter on either side of her, caging her in. She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t face me.
“We're real,” I whispered into her ear. “Maybe we started as something fake, but we crossed that line so fast, I didn't even see it happen.”
She turned to face me. “I just…I don’t know where I stand with you anymore. I don’t know what this is.”
I leaned closer, close enough that my forehead almost touched hers. “You're not on the outside or even beside me. You're not a question mark or a placeholder or some PR stunt I tolerated. You're the center of this.” My voice broke on the words. “You're where I land. You're where I begin. You're not standing beside me or behind me—youarethe place I'm standing. Everything else moves around that.”
Her breath hitched, and a single tear slipped free, tracking down her cheek. Without thinking, I reached up to brush it away with my thumb, and she leaned into my touch.
Her composure finally cracked completely. Her face crumpled, and she pressed her hands flat against my chest, fingers curling into my shirt.
“Sawyer,” she breathed, and it sounded like a prayer and a plea all at once.
I couldn't hold back anymore. My hands found her face, thumbs brushing away the tears, and then, my lips were on hers. She kissed me back desperately, like she was drowning and I was air. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer.
For a moment, everything else disappeared—Colt's words, the uncertainty, the fear. There was just us, just this.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard. Her forehead rested against mine, eyes still closed.
“This is what I'm afraid of,” she whispered against my lips. “This feeling. How much I need it. Need you.”
I pulled back enough to look at her. “Why is that so scary?”
She wiggled her way out of my reach and leaned against the opposite counter.
“Because I’m standing at the edge of this cliff, and the only way is down or back.” Her eyes welled up again, and her hands flew to her sides. “If I go back, I get the life I know. The one I built that’s safe and easy.” She pointed at her chest. “I can keep pretending I’m fine, keep performing and proving to myself, to my parents, that everything we did to get here was worth something. Or…or I jump, but I don’t know what’s down there. And I’m not sure I’m brave enough to find out. If I let myself have this—have you—then I’m giving everything else up. I’m letting everyone down. My team, my label, the tour. The version of me I worked so hard to create. I’d be walking away from Ellie Miles.”
I moved toward her. One step. She flinched, so I stopped.
“You wouldn't be walking away from anything,” I said. “Not for me. I’ll never ask you to give anything up for me.”
“I know.” Her voice caught. “But I want to. That’s the problem. I want to walk away from all of it. I want this…with you.” She laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “I don’t want the spotlight. I don’t want to be a brand. I just want to write songs that matter to me and share them when I feel like it. Or not at all. I want to wake up and not feel like I’m pretending.”
“Then do it.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “This was supposed to be an easy arrangement, remember? A plan. A clean start and a clean end. We were supposed to help each other, solve a couple of problems, and move on. I didn’t plan for this. I didn’t plan to feel like this and to question everything more than I already was.”
I ran a hand through my hair and let out a breath.
“Ellie, it’s okay for your plans, your dreams, to change.”
She scoffed. “Why do you even care? Why do you care about someone like me?”
That pulled a dry laugh from me. “You’re kidding, right?”
She didn’t respond.
“You really don't get it, do you?” I whispered.
“No, I don’t. I don't get why someone like you would want someone who's such a mess and whose entire life is under a microscope.”
