Page 227 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

“And you’re avoiding the question.”

Her fingers tighten around the coffee cup.

I don’t push.

Pressure only works when people are ready for it.

Instead, I let silence settle naturally between us, calm and unthreatening. The kind that leaves room instead of demanding answers.

Eventually, she sighs. “I’m trying really hard not to freak out.” She looks down at the mug in her hands. “I want this. I do.”

“But?”

She laughs softly without humor. “But my life used to be really simple.” She finally looks up at me again, hazel eyes tired around the edges. “I used to know who I was all the time. Now I feel like I’m constantly reacting to things instead of choosing them.”

I absorb that.

Not the surface statement. The real one underneath it. Loss of control.

“What exactly scares you?” I ask carefully.

Her brows pull together. “All of it?”

“Break it down.”

She watches me, probably realizing what I’m doing. Organizing the problem. Structuring it. Because that’s how I survive things.

“The attention,” she says. “People watching me all the time. Talking about me like they know me.”

I nod once. “Okay.”

“And…” She hesitates. “I miss normal things.”

“Like working at the diner.”

“Yeah.”

“You feel disconnected from your own life,” I say.

Her eyes lift to mine. “Yes.”

“What else?”

This time, she takes longer to answer. “What if this falls apart later?”

I lean forward, forearms resting against the counter. “You think we’ll wake up one day and decide this was temporary.”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.

I understand anyway.

Given the industry she’s watching us from, it’s not an irrational fear. Most relationships in our world are transactional, temporary, built around convenience and proximity instead of substance.

I spent years participating in exactly that.

But this isn’t that. I know it with a certainty that’s become impossible to ignore.

“I can’t promise you nothing will ever get messy,” I say carefully. “That would be dishonest.”