Chapter 20
20
GAVIN
S ophie had always held the key to unlocking his most tortured and unvarnished emotions. This was different from the reputation he had fast been earning for being confessional in his songs and interviews. Those efforts were more calibrated than what they appeared. He had a natural instinct for how to manipulate his songs and image. That didn’t carry over into how to handle his emotions when it came to Sophie.
She turned back to him, incredulous at his claim of her breaking his heart. “What does that mean?”
“Darlin’, don’t you know it gutted me when you left?”
“It was hard for both of us, but what other choice was there?”
“You know very well that the choice was for you to stay and for us to get married.”
Sophie mirrored the reaction she had given him the first time he suggested this two years earlier. It was a quick dismissal of the idea.
“I was sixteen?—”
“Nearly seventeen.”
“Gavin, it was romantic and amazing for you to even consider such a thing. But we both knew it was impossible.”
“I knew no such thing. I was willing to remake my life for you, Sophie.”
“But—”
“And you walked away. You walked away.”
The silence stretched out between them as she watched him, and he did everything he could to not look away. He wanted to hide the hurt and fear he knew was naked in his eyes. And yet she was the only one he had ever been able to be this honest with. There was enormous relief in that. In letting go.
He thought she might tell him she had never meant to provoke that sense of desertion in him. Or that it wasn’t fair to compare her going home to finish high school to the same thing as the abandonment he’d known as a child.
Instead, she surprised him by going to him, taking his face in both her hands, and kissing him with a tenderness and longing he gratefully surrendered to.
Wrapping his arm around her slim waist and holding her close, they quickly found the rhythm they had perfected in all those make-out sessions during school. Her lips were soft but her kiss was insistent. He thought fleetingly about the fact that she still knew exactly how to manage him. She still knew him well enough to sense that he hated to even vaguely admit that her leaving had brought up tortured memories from his childhood.
But at the same time, a part of him had known his confession would trigger her desire to drop her own needs to instead take care of his. He’d known she was wired this way since the day he walked her home from school and she’d admitted she was a person who wanted to be needed. And Jesus, was he ever in need. They’d been fiercely connected in this way, to a level that was well beyond what a simple teenage relationship should have been.
And here she was again, providing the warmth and familiarity he had craved these past few years. The scent on her skin was the same light floral one she had always worn. He smiled at the comforting pleasure of it, breaking their kiss.
She met his eyes, silently questioning the interruption, and he shook his head to dismiss her concern. Now he took her face into his hands and brought his mouth to hers, oblivious to everything else. His bandmates down at the bar didn’t register in his thoughts, the world outside of their room didn’t exist.
He had all he wanted and needed at the moment.
Sophie was everything.