He took for granted how much his mom loved him without thinking about how much she must worry about him. If we didn’t have a future together there was no reason to add to that.
We were driving his mom to Austin with us so she could watch his show then take his truck back to her house. He would ride the bus back with the guys and I’d catch a flight.
I folded myself into the cramped back seat of his truck while his mom chatted away to him in the front seat. She occasionally tried to pull me into the conversation, forcing me to have to make up shit about the music industry, which I knew nothing about. Zane kept throwing me hurt looks in the rearview mirror until he stopped looking at me at all.
When we finally dropped his mom at her hotel hours later, I wanted to get out with her so I didn’t have to face him.
With a smile and a wave, we pulled out of the hotel parking lot. We made it through two traffic lights before he said, “My fuckingPR manager, Maia? That what you want to be to me?”
I sighed. “Your mom would see exactly what Miss Alice saw if you told her we’re together. She doesn’t need that worry.”
“Doesn’t she? After last night, you’re just going to pretend this doesn’t mean anything? That it isn’t worth fighting for?” He slammed his hand down on the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” I said, fighting back tears as I realized how much I’d hurt him. “I saw what she saw and I didn’t like it. You’ve got such a bright future in front of you, Zane.”
“You’re saying that like you won’t be in it.”
I tucked my feet under me and hugged my knees. “I just don’t see how this works.”
He pulled into a parking lot and stopped the truck to look at me. “It works if you’re in this with me. If you’re willing to fight for it. If you don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, including my mother. You know what she wants for me? To find what she had with my dad.”
He took my face in his hands. “That’s what we have, baby. I’m sure of it. But only if you’re in this with me.”
He looked so young and full of hope, brimming with what I’d been drawn to in him in the first place. To him, the world was still a place where anything was possible, where fairy tales existed.
I didn’t know how to tell him that if his life was a fairy tale that I was only ever destined to be in the first act.
So I kissed him, telling him without words how much I wanted to believe in his dream. But that dream had been shattered for me a stormy night years ago. My dream was to emerge from that nightmare and that was never going to happen if I didn’t wake the fuck up.
“I love you,” he said, voice barely louder than a whisper, like he was scared if he said it louder I might spook.
“I love you too,” I said back.
It was true.
But I didn’t know if it was enough.
19
MAIA
Then
* * *
“Idon’t have a problem with it.”
Zane said it with the same ease with which he would’ve told me to eat the last bite of ice cream, and my stomach turned with nerves. We were back in Vegas, sitting on the edge of the bed in our hotel room with the minutes draining away until I needed to go down to the bar to meet a client.
I’d never been in this position before, had never been with clients while in a relationship, and it wasn’t a complication I’d ever planned to juggle.
I traced a ridge on the comforter, trying to tell myself this wouldn’t matter. To me it trulydidn’tmatter. I was just going to do my job and it was completely different from anything I had with him.
Thesexdidn’t matter to me.
But Zane’s feelings did.
That was the part I couldn’t control…and to some extent, neither could he.
