They know they’re real.
They know they’re right.
They know it’s love.
Even if their parents don’t approve and they have to hide, they know it’s love.
It’s a slower song. The guys spread out on the stage, singing to the crowd from five places.
Except Davis.
Davis makes his way to me.
Drops to his knees while he sings.
Then squats back and swings his legs forward, sitting on the edge of the stage as close as he can get to me.
I inch closer to the security line.
They let me through.
And the man of my dreams—the man who saved me countless times, the man who’s made sure I feel safe every second of every day for the past week, the man who’s made love to me and spoiled my cat and opened up to my friends and who strives so hard every day to do the right thing for all of the right reasons, and sometimes even more than the right reasons—he holds eye contact while he sings the song of my heart to me.
In the middle of forty thousand people.
With his best friends singing with him.
I’m crying and I’m laughing and when he flips his microphone to one of the security guards before sliding off the stage and wrapping me in his arms and kissing me soundly, right there while the entire arena watches, I know.
I know he’s the one.
He’s my reward for every bad relationship. He’s my family to make up for the family I was born to. He’s my everything.
I pull out of the kiss and wrap my arms around him and hover my lips to his ear, his fresh haircut tickling my nose. “Are we going slow enough if I tell you I love you?”
He shudders, then squeezes me tightly. “A guy doesn’t face that stage for a woman he doesn’t love back.”
We don’t stay for the rest of Aspen’s show.
Davis assures me she’ll forgive us.
Considering all the ways he shows me he loves me once we get to his secret apartment just a few blocks away—I don’t think I’d care if she didn’t.
Who needs a pop star’s forgiveness when I have my favorite retired boy bander’s complete love and adoration?
Especially when he’s so thorough in showing his love and adoration?
And not just with orgasms.
But with making me coffee. Telling me the stories about all of his tattoos. Keeping my favorite Kangapoo shampoo in his shower in this secret apartment that no one else in his circle knows about.
Answering me honestly even when it’s hard.
Not being mad when I answer him honestly even when it’s hard.
All of the little things that are healing the wounds I still have on my soul.
The things that show me he’s a good man with a good heart who will never be perfect, but who is absolutely perfect to me.
