Chapter 19
Reid
Fuck.
I take a deep breath before I turn my head toward the trio of girls quickly approaching. One of them looks more tentative to walk over here, but the other two drag her along.
“Oh my god, hi! We’re so sorry to bother you, but we thought it looked like you as we were walking along here and had to come say hi.” One of them talks so quickly I can barely keep up. Penny suppresses a grin.
“We’re huge fans of yours! We actually saw you on tour last time you played at The Forum.” The girl continues to ramble to the point that I don’t even have to say anything. I just continue to listen and nod along, offering the occasional thank you when she stops for a breath.
Finally she pauses for long enough for me to ask, “Would you like a picture?”
They all look like they might faint right there on the spot. I stand up and brush the sand off my shorts. Their necks all crane at my height, and one of the girls mouth’s pops open.
“That would be amazing—”
“Oh my god, yes—”
Two of them speak at once and quickly reach for their phones.
“Do you want me to take them?” Penny offers, standing as well. I shoot her an apologetic look but she doesn’t acknowledge it. If she’s annoyed, she’s hiding it well.
They eye Penny curiously, but thank her profusely and hand over their phones. I’m grateful I kept my shirt on earlier. One by one, Penny takes a photo of each girl with me, before they ask for one all together.
I’m careful to keep my arms and hands high around their shoulders as they stand on either side of me and do my best to crack a genuine smile.
“Alright, I took a bunch,” Penny says and hands back their phones. “Hopefully you got some good ones.”
They all thank her and immediately start flipping through their pictures.
Before they have a chance to, I ask, “Can you guys just do me a solid and not post those with the location for a while?” The last thing I want is the rest of our night getting ruined by people showing up.
They all quickly nod in agreement and assure me they’ll wait until later. “Thank you again so much! I hope you’ll make music again one day! We’ve been loving Nikolai’s new album but it’s not the same.”
A prickle goes up the back of my neck and I brush a hand across it. “I’ll let him know you guys are liking it.”
Their eyes light up at that and after a few more moments of chatter, they thank me again and head on their way.
I turn back toward Penny, apology already on my tongue, but she says, “I didn’t expect you to agree to pictures with them.”
That catches me off guard. I frown at her. “Why not?”
With a shrug, she sits back down on the blanket and I sit beside her once more. She pops another strawberry in her mouth, full lips glistening at the burst of juice. “I don’t know. I just thought you might be the type to say no to that kind of thing.”
“You thought I was a dick.”
“I mean…” She trails off with a devilish smirk and I throw a grape at her. It bounces off her forehead and she gapes me at, causing me to chuckle and shake my head.
“Fans like them are what gave me the career I had and the life I have. If I have a chance to take pictures without it causing a huge scene, I’m never going to say no to that.”
Her face softens. “That’s sweet of you. Not everyone does.”
There’s definitely been times where I’ve dodged photos in public or wished that I could enjoy a night out in peace back during the height of our career.
But as a band, we always tried to make sure we gave back what we could to the people who supported us and our music.
And if that means taking a few pictures, we do it.
Except Nikolai and Hayden have backed off of it in recent years after everything they went through, but that’s understandable.
“Does that bother you?” I ask her. “That I get recognized, and that I’ll take pictures with people if they ask.”
“Why would that bother me?”
“I guess I’m wondering if that’s something you’re going to be okay with when you’re out with me. So far, you haven’t really experienced the full scale of what it can get to, and when we go out, there’s always the chance things like that will happen.” It’s my reality, but it doesn’t have to be hers.
Although the relief I feel when she says, “No, that doesn’t bother me. I respect you for it, actually,” shows just how much her answer mattered to me.
“Good.” We sit in silence for a while as the sun begins to fall. A few bikers ride along the path but we’re not interrupted again.
She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head. “I love the beach,” she muses, a dreamy look on her face as she stares out at the ocean.
“As you’ve said before,” I tease with a soft smile. “Believe it or not, I never really come here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, always seemed so messy with the sand and everything. But sitting here like this”—I look toward the water—“I see why you enjoy it so much. It’s peaceful.” A feeling I don’t get to experience very often.
She hums softly and leans her head against my shoulder. The contact immediately sets me on edge, a low fire stoking in my stomach, as the smell of her bright shampoo overrides the salt in the air. I shift closer so she leans more of her weight on me.
We watch the sun set over the horizon, but I’m more interested in the view sitting next to me.
The golden rays set Penny’s hair ablaze, highlighting the different shades of red and gold and orange in her long curls.
Her freckles are more pronounced, especially the ones across her nose and on the apples of her cheeks.
She’s a ray of sunlight personified and utterly beautiful. It’s not like I haven’t noticed that since I’ve seen her again, but sitting here like this, freely allowing my gaze to wander over the contours of her face, it hits me how truly beautiful she is.
As if feeling my stare, she turns her head and flicks her baby blues up to mine. Her eyelids grow hooded as her chest begins to rise and fall faster. My own does too.
I cup her cheek and bring her face closer to mine. So close we share the same breath.
“I wanted to do this last week,” I whisper, my words a heated rush against her lips.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m trying to do things the right way.” And I knew that if I kissed her that night, in her bedroom, I wouldn’t want to stop. And this thing, whatever the hell it is with Penny, isn’t something I want to risk fucking up.
“Since when are you so concerned about doing the right thing?”
I brush my thumb across her cheek reverently. “Since they concern you.”
Her eyes dance back and forth between mine, tentative hope and trust held in them. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”
“I never say things I don’t mean.” And with that, I close the remaining distance between us. Our lips brush, and it’s not an instant rush of electricity, not a zap of energy, not an untamed, wild unleashing like I’ve felt before.
It’s peaceful, like the rhythmic waves of the ocean crashing against the shore. It’s gentle, like hands through my hair.
It’s like that foreign feeling of home.
Nothing like I’ve felt before.
I would never be so naive to think that time would stop for a bastard like me, but here in this moment, I’m convinced it has.
She tastes like strawberries as her tongue tentatively meets mine.
I angle her head to deepen the kiss, needing more of her.
She obliges, her lips soft against the roughness of my own.
The blood in my veins heats as I shift on the sand to be able to run a hand over her exposed thigh.
Her skin is hot beneath my palm as I knead her leg.
A delicate moan escapes her and I swallow it up. Fueling my desire, I tangle my fingers in her hair as I kiss her again and again, never wanting to stop.
But it does.
She pulls back and my hand falls lifelessly between us, our breaths mixing in a ragged rush. I suddenly grow cold by the lack of contact and it sparks something akin to anger inside of me, but I rush to shut it down. Because I see it on her face.
I feel it. Her hesitation, her walls rebuilding brick by brick. Something shutters behind her eyes and it surprises me how desperately I want to reach out and tear them back down.
“I’m scared,” she admits, and I know where it’s coming from. It’s the same fear that seizes my chest and threatens to ruin every good thing in my life.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I know me saying you can trust me isn’t going to squash it, so I’ll just continue to show you that I’m not going anywhere. Not again.”
“I don’t trust people easily.”
“Me either.” I laugh sadly. But being scared is what has pushed away the people I care about. And I’m sick of that happening. Sick of it ruining things. “That’s what we were taught. But let’s both do something that scares us and trust each other, okay?”
Here we sit, side by side, equally terrified by good things happening because we were taught to never trust that they’d last. Two kids abandoned by their parents and who made their way to the city of dreams to make new lives for themselves…and we somehow found each other again.
Terrifying to free fall with one another? Absolutely.
But exhilarating to do so anyways? I think so.