Chapter Twenty-Four
Three weeks pass. Robb puts in her notice, and I try not to cry while helping her pack up her closet of an office. With every passing day and every meeting where John doesn’t accept any of my pitches, I begin to lose faith AP will ever make me an offer.
Each morning, I wake up and try to convince myself that today’s the day. Every day, I promise myself I’ll talk to John, and every day, I chicken out. I’m frozen in the balance, needing to make a decision but terrified of the fallout.
Rolling over, I meet Dax’s gaze across the pillows.
With hardly any work to do, I’ve disappeared into him, the two of us almost always together, staying at each other’s places.
But the bubble is about to burst. The first time, when the bubble of tour burst, we ended.
And now, reality is knocking at the door of this secret, precious thing we’ve been building.
I have to give Rolling Stone an answer next week, and I’m no clearer on what to do than I was when Robb presented it to me.
After today’s pitch meeting, I’m flying home to spend Thanksgiving with my family.
I still haven’t told Dax about the offer, but by the way we’ve been inseparable, it’s like he knows, can feel the proverbial needle pressed to our bubble and is as determined as I am to squeeze as much “us” into the coming weeks as possible.
We spent last night apart—him at the studio and me at a show, scouting for Artists to Watch—and I was fast asleep when he let himself into my apartment late last night. Now, I wrap as many of my limbs around him as I can, desperate for the contact.
We lie like that for a while—me flopped half on top of him while he lazily strokes up and down my spine—before Dax presses a kiss to my temple and says, “I want to show you something.”
I arch a brow, glancing down pointedly, the hard length of him apparent even through the duvet.
He laughs throatily. “I mean, I can multitask.” He rolls us over, pressing me into the mattress with a kiss before extricating himself from the tangle of limbs and blankets. Grabbing his phone, he unwinds the headphones wrapped around it before slipping them into my ears.
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. It can only be one of two things: the Nixed song he never sent me or the final song on the album, which they’ve spent the past few weeks writing and recording.
He hits Play before laying his face on my stomach.
My breath hitches immediately. It’s the melody I’ve heard many times from the next room over.
They haven’t done a soft song since their first album.
Dax is using a harsh vocal style I’ve never heard from him before—there’s no other way to describe it other than it sounds like heartbreak.
I’ll need to listen again to fully absorb the lyrics, but true to his word, it’s not bad about me, but it’s definitely about me.
The way he went back to the memories of us over and over—the same way I did—rereading our chapter and wishing for an alternate ending.
I realize this is both the Nixed song he never shared with me and the final song on the album.
The beautiful guitar medley ends and what comes next can only be described as a screamed confessional.
Dax half telling me to go, half begging me to stay, promising to wait until we can try again, when he’s better and I’m ready.
Then the rest of the band comes in, and it’s so different but so them.
It’s an anthem and a victory cry, the life he dreamed of becoming real.
It’s no longer just a song about me, but a song for all of the guys.
It’s an epilogue and a blank page all in one. It’s hope for a future.
It ends, silence ringing in my ears in the aftermath.
I glance down to find Dax watching me nervously.
Angling his phone toward me, I restart the song, tapping the button to auto-repeat.
I feel more than hear his laugh, and he places a kiss against my stomach, on the exposed strip of skin where my T-shirt has ridden up.
His lips graze an unhurried, scorching path to my hip, my thigh, the apex of my legs, before he drags my underwear down, making good on his promise to multitask.
Go, I’ll get better
He’s making promises in my ears and between my legs.
Come back, I’ll be worthy
He doesn’t know he’s always been worthy.
Go, don’t let me drag you down
The drag of his tongue over me has my back arching, my hand fisting in the sheets.
Come back, let me hold you up
His arm bands around my legs, holding me in place.
Go, live your dreams
He did this in my dreams last night.
Come back, you are mine
I can’t believe I’m his—or that I’m already about to come.
I tug the headphones out of my ears, unable to focus on anything but what he’s doing to me, undoing me.
The melody is barely audible from where it continues to play from the earbuds, intertwining with the rustling of bedsheets and, fuck, the sound of Dax’s other hand working himself.
As he sends me over the edge with a flick of his tongue and brings me back down the same way, I let the rush of endorphins make me optimistic, that everything is going to work out. I drag him up to me, kissing him until he groans into my mouth, spilling onto my stomach as he comes.
Reality creeps back in, the song still playing on his phone restarting, and I hit Pause as we catch our breath. Dax flops onto his back and I press a kiss into his shoulder. “I love it,” I tell him.
“The sex or the song?”
I swat him with the back of my hand. He knows what I mean. He grins over at me. “Do you?” I ask.
He nods, smiling softly at me. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I love it.”
Somehow, we ended up sideways on the bed, and we stare at each other over the crumpled duvet.
My heart rate should be slowing down by now, but the way the word love hovers in the air between us has my pulse racing all over again.
We never said it before, but didn’t we? We said I love you a million times, just never with words.
The way he’s watching me now, I think he might.
I think I might. He wrote me a song, proclaiming it, but somehow those three words still feel bigger.
They’re on the tip of my tongue, stuck in the back of my throat, a future I want but am afraid to grasp.
I want to implode all my plans and make new ones with him at the center, but it scares the absolute shit out of me.
If I can get an AP offer, I can have it all without imploding anything.
I don’t know if that makes me a coward or an optimist.
I get why he never showed me the original song.
It would have been too much then, when we were just starting again.
Even now, it’s a lot to take in. It’s the same reason I can’t bring myself to show him the offer from Rolling Stone.
It feels too big, too much, too soon. This thing between us is both new and old, solid but also precious, fragile.
It’s too early for a test of this magnitude.
I’ve never done this before, always having been on my own.
I’ve never made plans with someone else in mind.
I thought we’d have time to navigate smaller firsts before we got to one like this, time for this fledgling thing to get its legs beneath itself, to walk before it had to run.
“Come home with me,” I say impulsively.
He blinks. “What?”
“For Thanksgiving,” I say. We’ve been in a bubble, and I want to see if we can withstand a few small tests before I throw a really big one into the mix. And if we can’t, if our days are numbered, then I don’t want to waste a single one of them away from him.
“Are you serious?”
I shake my head, confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Dax readjusts his pillow under his head, stalling. “Because I… I’m not really the guy you take home to meet your family. I’m not the guy dads dream about their kid ending up with. I’m the guy your dad gets gray hairs over.”
I wave this away. “He’s a single dad of five. The man’s been gray.”
Dax laughs, the sound throaty and deep.
I place a kiss to the hollow of his throat, the metal of his chain cool against my lips.
“Please.” He studies me warily, and I place a kiss to the sinister oni at his throat.
“You are so kind, Dax Nakamura. And you are so good to me. And you make me come, like, all the time.” He smirks at that, and I flick his septum piercing playfully.
“You feed me, you let me talk your ear off about everything and nothing, you believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself, but mostly, you make me really, really happy.
” I press my lips against his stubbled jaw.
“And for that reason alone, I know my dad would want to meet you.”
He pulls me in for a kiss. When he slides one leg between mine, I squirm out from his grasp, knowing exactly where that will lead if I don’t eject myself from the bed immediately.
I slip into the bathroom to clean myself up, and Dax follows shortly after. “I know you have plans with your family, so if you don’t want to miss that, I get it,” I hedge, preparing for rejection.
“I’ll come home with you,” he says with a smile.
“Yeah?” I ask, trying to keep my excitement at bay and failing. I can practically see my Dax-days counter filling back up, regaining the time I would have lost going home.
“On one condition,” he says slyly.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What’s that?”
“You have to ask John to make you an offer today.”
I grumble, resting my hip against the bathroom counter and burying my face in his chest. I wrestle with myself internally.
I’ve waited weeks hoping John would bring it up so I wouldn’t have to.
I rationalized it, thinking he was waiting until Robb was gone to offer me her spot, but in the week since, nothing.
“What if he says no?” I mumble against his skin.
“Then at least you’ll have your answer,” he says sagely.
I can’t meet his gaze, so I stare off to the side blankly.
The real reason I haven’t pushed John for an offer is because if he says no, then I only have one choice left.
A choice that, on paper, is the better choice but feels like putting my heart through a shredder.
But damn if every day spent waiting isn’t death by a thousand cuts.
“Okay,” I concede with a sigh. “I’ll ask him after the meeting.”
Dax tips my chin up before grabbing me by the shoulders. “You got this.”
I try and fail to smile. “I hope so.”
“I know so.” His gaze softens, drifting over my face.
“Tell me it’s all going to work out,” I whisper.
Dax’s dimple winks at me. “It’s gonna work out,” he reassures me, and I wish I could believe him.
He leans over, planting a kiss on me and blowing a raspberry on my neck that has me squealing away from him.
He turns on the shower for me, cranking the knob as hot as it will go.
As soon as it heats up, he smacks me on the ass.
“Now, hurry up before you’re late for work. ”
I rub my smarting cheek dramatically as I step into the shower.
He slips out of the bathroom, returning with his laptop and sitting on the counter with one leg up, searching for flights to Boston.
I finish my shower and get ready around him.
There are no seats left on my flight, nor on any flights today, so he books the only available flight tomorrow morning while I scramble to gather my things before I actually am late for work.
“Have you seen my—” I call from the kitchen, dumping my backpack upside down, searching for my keys. They’re not in the bowl on the foyer table, and I rifle through the contents of my bag, which I didn’t realize had accumulated quite so much junk at the bottom.
Dax emerges from the bedroom, my keys in hand, and I sigh in relief.
“In the bathroom,” he tells me, and I remember my mad dash to go pee last night after getting stuck behind a train on my way home.
“Thank you.” I plant a kiss to his cheek, and his hand goes to the small of my back, holding me there until I give him a proper kiss. “I cannot fucking stand you,” I murmur.
He smiles softly. “I know. Me, too.”
I’ve given up trying to decipher what he thinks that means. He might not remember our old bit, but maybe it’s okay to make a new one as this new version of us.
“I’ll clean that up later,” I call as I shove my shoes on, gesturing to the mess on the kitchen counter formerly known as the bottom of my bag. I pause by the door, grinning.
“I’m really excited you’re coming home with me.”
He matches my grin. “Me, too. Now, go get that job offer,” he says with a jerk of his head toward the door.
My thumb goes to the scar on my ring finger, but I don’t allow myself to trace it. For once, I let myself hope, my cheeks aching with how hard I’m smiling.
It’s going to work out. Please let it all work out.