12. CHAPTER TWELVE #3
“I know you’re scared,” she said, her words too steady. “I know you’ve been told your whole life that you shouldn’t want too much. That you should be grateful for whatever small thing you get. I get it, Vada. I do.”
She finally looked at me again, and the hurt there made my chest cave in.
“But it’s difficult not to notice,” she continued, “that when a man with a reasonable offer gives you a future on paper, you say yes in one conversation. When the universe offers you a future with me, you tell it to wait its turn.”
The sting in her voice was almost invisible, but I could hear it.
Feel it.
Tears blurred my vision.
“That’s—not—” I tried, then stopped. I took a breath that hitched in the middle. “I was coming to talk to you about that. I swear I was. I spent all day on Tessara thinking about it. About us. About Sira and the videos, and Pia’re telling me I was treating our bond like a glitch.”
I shook my head.
“I was going to tell you tonight. After I calmed down enough not to faint while saying it.”
“Tell me what?” she asked.
The bond thrummed between us, too loud all of a sudden.
I swallowed hard.
“I’m ready,” I said, my voice shaking.
The truth ripped up through my ribs as if it had been clawing at my heart to get out.
“I want this. You.”
I gestured between us with trembling hands.
“All of it.”
I let out another long breath, trying to compose myself.
“I want to be with you forever,” I said, my voice breaking.
“I want to wake up every morning with your hair in my mouth because you steal the pillow. I want to complain about your terrible socks. I want to know what you look like when you’re seventy and grumpy and still pretending you hate ballads. ”
A tear slipped free and slid hot down my cheek.
“I want to build a life with you where the most interesting thing about me isn’t that the universe tied my heart to a pop star’s. I want it to be that I chose you. That we kept choosing each other. Over and over.”
Silence filled the bubble.
Her eyes were glossy now, but no tears fell. That somehow hurt more.
“You don’t get to do that,” she said quietly.
The sentence knocked the air out of me.
“Do what?” I whispered.
“Decide you’re ready now that something else wants you too,” she said. “You don’t get to tell the universe no until you have a backup plan lined up, then come to me the moment it might feel safe.”
“That’s not why,” I stammered. “Tev’s job offer didn’t make me want you. I already wanted you. It just gave me proof that maybe I’m… worth wanting too,” I whimpered, my voice cracking as tears were rolling down my cheeks.
“I have always known you were worth wanting,” she said. “That was never the question.”
The way she said it made the tears come faster. I swiped at my face, the salt stinging.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry it doesn’t look like that from the outside. I just—I needed time to catch up. To believe I was more than just someone the universe told you to bond with.”
“And yet you did not need time to say yes to him,” she murmured.
“It’s work,” I said, frustration finally sparking through the grief. “It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s not a mystical soul ceremony that changes both our lives forever.”
“This changes our lives forever,” she said, gesturing between us. “Whether we seal it or not. Whether the press knows or not. You standing there and saying to me, ‘I want forever with you’—that is not something you throw out only when you are afraid I might walk away.”
“Are you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said as she looked past me again into the nightlife. “I just know that right now, I can’t breathe in here.”
The bond squeezed painfully, as if it were shrinking in on itself.
“I need space,” she added, and there was a faint tremor in her voice I had never heard before. “From this. From the bus. From you.”
Panic lit up every nerve.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, we can talk. We can fix this. I’m sorry I said yes without—”
She held up a hand, stopping me.
“Vada,” she said. “I am not saying I never want to talk again. I am saying I cannot think in here right now, I feel like I’m suffocating.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“A hotel,” she said. “In the city. I’m hurt and need space.”
The image of her in some glamourous city hotel room, alone, hurt so much that I actually swayed.
“When?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Now,” she said.
She shifted in the bubble, getting her feet beneath her. For a second, I thought she might reach for me, but she didn’t.
“When will you be back?” I asked, hating the wobble in my voice.
“I don’t know, Vada,” she said. “Before the show. After. I have to. It’s my job.”
A humorless smile twitched across her mouth.
“The people still need their pop star.”
My chest felt like it was cracking along old fault lines.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
She climbed down and out of the bubble without another word, her movements economical and careful, as if she were afraid touching me might undo her resolve.
I stayed where I was, my knees pulled up and my sketchbook clutched to my chest like a shield.
I listened to the faint sounds of her moving through the corridor—the soft hiss of the door to our room, drawers sliding, and her suitcase wheels bumping over the threshold.