Because I don’t care if she’s ready to say it.
I love her, and no matter what happens right now, I need her to know it.
“Go. You’re hurt. Get checked out,” I nearly beg.
“What about you?”
“I’ll still be here,” I say.
The cop is pulling me away.
She grabs my face and kisses me again, her tears mixing with mine, and when she pulls back, I hear her whisper, “I love you.”
And I think I could die right now and be perfectly okay with it.
Reed appears at my side.
“Hang on,” Reed yells. “Wait—you can’t take him!It was self-defense. The creep was trying to rape and kidnap my sister—” I don’t hear what the cop says. He passes me off to another cop as a paramedic ushers Andi to an ambulance. The medic wraps a blanket over her shoulders. The woman holding my wrists says something.
I barely hear her.
Andi is safe.
Reed stops running after us and finally meets my eyes.
“I trust you,” he says.
It’s the last thing I hear before the cop hoists me up into the arms of a paramedic, and then clamors inside the ambulance after me.
EPILOGUE - MADDOX
IT’S BEEN A little over a year since I was stuffed into the back of an ambulance and interrogated for murdering Andi's ex-boyfriend.
With as many witnesses as there were around us at the concert, I got off on self-defense. The cops dismissed the charges after only a week—the amount of time it took them to interview everyone who came forward to tell them how they’d seen the asshole dragging Andi in the parking lot and beating her. Initially, they thought I’d done it because Adam had been the one trying to expose me.
However, the number of witnesses was hard to refute.
Not to mention the camera on the corner of the building in the back that showed everything.
Andi and the band visited me every day in jail, and every morning, I could hear the slew of fans outside chanting for my release.
Since the story hit news outlets, our popularity has skyrocketed. Concert tickets are selling out faster than before—I guess the notion that I’d murdered a man in defense of the woman I’m in love with spoke volumes.
“Stop fidgeting,” Reed says beside me. “You’re making me nervous.”
“If I knew how, I would,” I reply.
Because I can’t. I’m all jitters and nerves. I haven’t seen Andi since September.
It’s just three days from Christmas. Zeb and Bonnie took separate planes to see their families in New York and Hawaii.
We have the next ten days off until a New Year’s show at the hometown stadium.
She flew into New York in September when she had a few days off. However, that’s the last I’ve seen her other than our video dates. As much as I want her on the tour, we decided—along with management—that it was best to keep the band separate from what we are.
And what we are is fucking amazing.
She’s the first person I talk to when I wake up and the last voice I hear before I fall asleep. I still look at her every day and wonder how I got so lucky to have her.
