Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
JC
On my balcony overlooking the Eternal City, the morning slowly comes alive. Horns blaring. A hazy sunrise. Italian voices rat-a-tatting like gunfire off the sidewalk. I feel a step slow and sleep-deprived, my skin hot and itchy, brain fried.
Sawyer fumed nonstop on the drive to Rome last night, replaying every potential headline like a doomsday prophet. Then he pivoted to Gia’s shortcomings, and something in me snapped.
I yelled, “Shut up!” and couldn’t bear to see pity in his eyes.
After checking into the hotel, I stargazed for hours, wondering how the hell Venus became the planet of love. If the sulfuric acid lingering in its clouds didn’t dissolve you, the atmosphere would crush you. Or incinerate you at 464 degrees.
The greatest irony? Anyone who’s ever fallen in love knows that a one-way ticket to Venus might hurt less.
My buzzing phone pulls me from the outer space of my head. I fish it out of last night’s jeans. It’s Rhys. It’s always him—showing up with honey for my tea, offering me a safe room to crash in when the Amber situation exploded years ago, and talking me through the wreckage again last night.
RT: Checking in. What’s your status?
JT: Tired. Hating social media.
Sawyer has graciously forwarded multiple videos all morning, each more cringeworthy than the last. I feel inescapably on display, everything private inside me yanked out for the world to see.
RT: Did you and Gia talk it out yet?
JT: Sawyer asked to meet with her first.
RT: Asked? Would love to be a fly on the wall for that showdown.
I laugh, and it feels good to have my lungs do something other than collapse in on themselves. Trashing Sawyer is Rhys’s national pastime, but I know it isn’t easy being the guy in charge, the one who makes all the fun disappear.
And despite my love for Gia, she did cross a line.
I’m about to fire off a reply when soft knocks ring out on my door. Tension flutters through the room and my heart.
JT: Gotta run. She’s here.
RT: Text me after, K? And hugs from Dani. We’re both Team JC and Gia. No pressure. LOL.
I pocket the phone and rake both hands through my unwashed hair. My stomach is just empty enough to feel the full weight of apprehension. I fought against our simmering attraction for so long because maybe I knew we would end up here.
I cross the suite in a few short strides. When I open the door, the veil between the darkness of last night and this morning lifts. Gia stands there, cheeks flushed from the cold, and she has, even now, stunning eyes. Everything occurs there.
And something new lives in their depths.
Remorse.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
She scratches at her messy ponytail. “Can I come in?”
I feel a ping of anxiety inviting her into my space. Nothing is the same anymore, but the presence of her is so familiar. It brings back the thousand small journeys that led us here.
I watch her scan the suite, the acres of golden carpet. “How did things go with Sawyer?”
She makes a face. “I haven’t been banished to Mordor. Not yet. I’m on probation until the end of the tour. He said no one ever fucks with his family.”
A soft ache pulses in my throat. For all the times Sawyer has driven me around the bend, to hear this is to feel the gates of my heart fling open wide.
“Probation seems justified,” I affirm. “There are boundaries you don’t cross. You don’t hijack someone’s music.”
Gia stares up at me, her eyes two big moons on a sorrowful face. “I didn’t—”
“You did,” I interrupt.
She sinks onto the edge of the bed, head bowed.
I can see her throat working, swallowing down whatever excuse she was about to offer.
Whatever I’m feeling inside is barely recognizable.
In my mind, before she arrived, I had it all worked out.
What to say and how to say it. Now I’m standing in front of her, both of us with nothing and everything left to lose.
I start pacing, trying to shake off the nerves tightening around my ribs.
“I’m sorry,” she finally says. “Can you forgive me?”
I stop in front of her, and she lifts her face. I imagine what she sees—dark circles, bloodshot eyes. JC Trenton, teen idol in crisis mode. Five seconds feels like five hours.
“I don’t know if I should,” I say, my voice gritty with tension. “Life is about lessons, and you haven’t learned anything from yours. You’re still terminating. Me. The boys. Brady texted me asking if I wanted to join their new band.”
Gia blinks in disbelief. “Really?”
“Yeah. It shocked me too. Tell me if this is worth the power or the control or whatever it is your behavior gives you.”
She immediately blurts out, “It’s not worth it. Not at all. And I understand I need to change. I promise I will.”
Her gaze of defenseless vulnerability sends me reeling.
I take a deep breath, the warm air in the room thickening, settling into my lungs.
The heat pulls me back to last August in the Trenton boardroom when we first met, sunlight spilling across her pale skin and the awareness blooming that she was tracking me as closely as I was watching her.
Now I study the contours of her face, those lips that make me groan every time they touch mine, and the realization lands hard. I’m completely in over my head.
How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled by it.
The urge to punish her, to teach her a lesson, starts to fade, but I shore up my melting defenses.
“Part of me thinks you’re just saying that so I do forgive you.
And you’ll slide right back into the same shitty patterns.
I’m not doing this again. I can’t.” The last word comes out rough and Gia stares down at her hands.
I feel both the physical pull drawing me to her and the rage for what she did.
Why is this so hard? “I’m sorry if I sound harsh,” I add. “I’m fucking exhausted.”
Gia chews on her bottom lip and eventually asks, “Has Amber said anything?”
“We had a long call this morning. She apologized for coming to the show and we said all the things we needed to say. It actually made me feel better, finally getting it off my chest.” At Gia’s sharp intake of breath, I add, “And no, we’re not getting back together. Ever.”
Her voice turns small. “Does she hate me?”
“What if she does? You can’t do a thing about it. And even if she did, who cares? She isn’t your friend.”
She digests that, me holding my breath, half expecting a tirade against Amber for showing her face last night after promising not to. Instead, she says quietly, “I’m glad you feel better.”
My blood slows its breakneck trek through every vein, but the heartbreak is still there, little shards piercing my soul. Talking to Amber and finally getting closure made me confront what I’d kept sidelined for so long. And it might mean the end of Gia and me.
“One good thing came out of this, at least. Clarity about what I want.” A tendon in my neck twitches, but I power through. “I want kids. Not tomorrow, but sooner than later.”
Her eyes travel across my face. She senses it. “And I’m not the right person to do that with.”
We look at each other for a long time, the weight of everything unspoken thick between us. I clear the lump in my throat, but my voice still sounds wrung out. “I’m afraid of not being enough for you when you finally realize what you want. And of having to start over again five years from now...”
I trail off, shifting my gaze from hers. A flash of shame passes through me. To be this emotionally naked in front of her. It’s hard to breathe.
Gia reaches for my hands. Tentative at first, then more assured as she pulls me between her legs.
“Hurting you kills me on a cellular level. There’s no excuse.
I just…” her voice wavers on the last word.
“I wanted you so bad. I saw Amber and lost my mind. I’m sorry.
” She swipes her sad, glittering eyes. “I’m twenty and stupid and jealous.
Messed up and fucking everything up. But I still love you.
” After a shuddering breath, she continues, “And I want kids one day too. I’ll be a damn good mother. ”
The honesty in her voice punches straight through me. “I think you’ll be a ferocious mother.”
“How do you know what I’m willing to commit to if you don’t bother asking?”
“Gia,” I sigh, giving my head a little shake, “you don’t fix hurt with a baby. And I can’t ask you to throw away your career. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I forced you down the same path as your mother. I already feel like I’m altering your trajectory.”
“Who says I’m giving up anything?” she says. “You can change diapers while I rock the house.”
It takes me a moment to recognize the change in atmosphere. She’s looking at me like she’s trying to read my soul and call bullshit at the same time.
“You know what I think?” She leans back, crossing her arms. “You’re scared. Of me. Of my perceived lack of commitment. And maybe you enjoy this perpetual state of whatever it is, because it’s easier. Because you don’t have to risk your heart.”
“Easy?” My jaw tightens. “You think any of this is easy? I’m surprised my phone hasn’t gone up in flames from the nonstop texts. That is all you.”
Gia stands abruptly, energy coiling around her.
“Then what? Where does that leave us? Two people who walk away without trying? Fuck that.” She kicks at the carpet with a sound of disgust. “There’s no money-back guarantee with love, no quid pro quo.
You dive in blind and pray you come up for air unbloodied and breathing. ”
Her eyes are two rings of fire, challenging me. She will not blink or wilt.
“I can say sorry a hundred times, and I know it sounds like BS, but I truly am. I hurt you; I hurt my best friends. Maybe killed my career. In the end, I did what I did because I love you. And if this ends here, then at least I know I fucking said it.”