“Tyler,no,” I say, my voice breaking, tears flooding my eyes. She tries to push past me, but I grab her by the arm. “Please don’t…don’t do this. I know I fucked up but please don’t shut me out.” Desperate, my heart breaking in my chest, I take her face in my hands and kiss her. She doesn’t pull away, so I keep going, and I pour absolutely everything I have into this kiss.
“Stay,” I whisper against her lips, tears falling from my eyes and down my face. “Please, I ambeggingyou. Stay and let me—”
She shakes herself free from my grasp, pushes past me, and disappears down the stairs.
“Let me love you,” I say into the empty space between us, watching out the windshield as she walks away.
And like the goddamn idiot I am, I let her.
FORTY-EIGHT
Ty
? If I Were – Nothing More ?
“Okay,” Dani says, taking a deep breath. “Let me make sure I’m following…he told you he’s in love with you, then he told you he didn’t mean it, then told you he didn’t mean that he didn’t mean it?” I nod. She sighs and runs a hand over her face. “Jesus Christ. This is why I date women. Men are idiots.”
I snort a laugh. I had no intention of putting Dani in the middle of this, but other than maybe going to talk to Josh, which I knew wouldn’t help anything right now, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I wanted to go home, put as much distance between us as possible, but I’d left all my suitcases behind in my room when I’d stormed out and I couldn’t very well walk back in for them after I’d just made a perfectly dramatic exit.
When Kate saw me upset and wandering aimlessly through the lot, she pulled me inside and made me spill. So, Icollapsed onto the couch and told them everything that happened in the last twelve hours.
“What am I supposed to do?” I say, then immediately hold my hand up when Dani opens her mouth. “No, don’t. I shouldn’t even be here, putting you in the middle of this…whatever it is,” I say, waving my hand in the air. “That was more of a rhetorical question to myself. This was…not how I wanted things to end.”
“Are you in love with him?” Kate asks.
“Of course I am,” I say, draping my arm across my eyes.
“And you know he’s in love with you too, right?” Dani asks.
I let out a deep exhale.
“See, that’s the problem. Idon’tknow. I want to believe he is, but this is just all so…”
“Look,” Dani says. “I don’t want to tell you what to do or what to believe, but I will tell you what I know. I know for a fact that everything he said to you last night was the truth. He’s been in love with you since New York. You have no idea how hard he looked for you. How badly he wanted to find you. And when he did, he took your reaction hard and decided that spending six months with you in a business partnership and then going your separate ways was better than the alternative.”
“Which was?”
“Never seeing you again.”
I close my eyes against the sting of tears. He was going to let me go. He loves me, and he was just going to let me go. Never tell me how he felt. Never pressure me. Just…spend time with me and watch me walk away.
I want to believe her—to believe him—but it’s almost impossible for my brain to move past what happened this morning.
“You asked what you should do? I would at least hear him out. Stay. Come to the show with me, and then, if you’re feeling up to it, talk to him.”
The final show is in less than three hours, and then…it’s over. I drive home and he returns to Texas and…what? I never see him again? God, just thinking about never seeing him again tears my heart open. How could we possibly go from seeing each other every day to not seeing each other at all?
We can’t. We just…can’t.
“Okay,” I say. Dani flashes me a very excited smile, and I hug her before heading back to my RV. Eric will already be in the arena for sound check, so I’ll have time to collect myself and figure out what the hell I’m going to say to him.
The energy in PPG Paints Arena is humming, and I can already tell it’s going to be a great night. I smile as I race through the halls backstage, knowing I’ve seen enough of these shows to pick up on whether the crowd is going to be over-the-top loud or more mellow, and tonight feels like an over-the-top kind of night. They’ve worked their asses off for the last six months. They deserve a high energy closer.
I spent too much time freaking out in the RV and I’m so late that I make it backstage just in time to see Eric running out onto the stage and climbing up to his spot high above them all.
The King, seated on his throne and ready to rule.
Except tonight, something’s off. His shoulders are slumped and there’s a deep crease between his brows. Physically, he’s there, but...
