22. Chapter Twenty-Two #3
I didn’t tell him I’m not the same asshole anymore. Mostly because I still am and men who announce they’ve changed are usually one bad decision away from proving they haven’t. Instead, I told him I would shove a drumstick so far up his ass that he would tap out a rhythm as he walked.
Willow now laughs when we talk. She seems happy.
She tells me about her friend Goldie, Adrian Hayes’s widow. I know who she is. Everyone does. Apparently, she has also decided I’m an asshole, which is rude since she has never met me, and annoyingly accurate given everything Willow has probably told her.
I’m still cocky with Willow. Still tease and push when I know she can take it. I still say the wrong thing sometimes and have to shut my mouth before one bad sentence turns into a full fucking disaster. But something in me changes when her voice comes through the phone.
The noise drops out. The restless shit under my skin finally settles. All I want is to see her beautiful face.
I started counting down after the fourth call. Ten days. Nine. Eight. Every night, I crossed one off in my head before I slept, and every morning, one less remained between me and her.
Now there are no days left. Just one hour.
At nine forty-five, a man in a gray shirt walks over, looks at the car, then at me.
I already fucking hate him.
“Sir,” he says as he approaches. “Parking here is limited to thirty minutes. You’ve been here longer than that.”
“Sharp eye. They should give you a badge.”
“You’ll need to move the vehicle.”
I lift my sunglasses to look at him. “No.”
He blinks. “No?”
“You heard me.”
“This area needs to stay clear.”
“Then write me a ticket and fuck the hell off. I’m not moving.”
His mouth opens.
I just stare at him. I have been stared down by cops, photographers, managers, fathers, fans, and women trying to decide whether I am worth the damage. I know how to make a man regret continuing a conversation without wasting another word.
He looks at the car again, then back at me. “I’ll have to call someone.”
“Call the fucking cops. I’ll autograph the ticket.”
He mutters under his breath and walks away.
Good. One less fucking problem breathing near me.
Time starts moving strangely after that. The minute hand drags itself around the clock as if it has been drinking.
I check my phone every thirty seconds, even though I already know what time it is. I look at the doors. Look away and look back. Adjust my sunglasses. Take them off. Put them back on.
I have played in front of ninety thousand people without my pulse moving this much. Apparently waiting for one five-foot-something songwriter is what finally gets to me.
At exactly 10:03, the front doors open and my whole body locks up.
A woman steps out first, a staff member holding a clipboard. Then someone else I don’t know. Then the door opens wider and Willow walks out.
For a moment, everything stops moving.
She stands in the morning light, her hair loose around her face and no makeup on, wearing jeans and a soft sweater that slips off one shoulder. There is nothing staged about her. Nothing polished for a camera.
Just Willow. Fuck, she’s beautiful.
My heart does that stupid fucking thing it has always done when I see her—hitting too hard and forgetting it belongs to a man who is supposed to be cooler than this.
She looks good. Healthier than the last time I held her. Stronger in a quiet way that makes me want to drop to my knees, which is inconvenient as fuck because these jeans are expensive and the pavement looks filthy.
Her eyes find mine as I push off the car and stand up straight.
Suddenly I am nervous as fuck. My heart is beating like it has forgotten who the fuck I am.
She turns to the woman beside her, says something I can’t hear and smiles. The staff member squeezes her arm as a man carries her suitcase down the steps and sets it beside my car.
I don’t look at him. I don’t hear what he says before walking away. I just keep my eyes on Willow.
She starts down the steps slowly, her eyes still on me.
I stay where I am because I said I would learn how to stay, not how to charge at her like a caveman with separation anxiety.
My hands curl at my sides. My throat closes around every word I want to say.
My chest is doing something I refuse to name because it sounds dangerously close to feelings and I have a reputation to protect.
She reaches the path and glances down. Her hair slips across her face. She pushes it back behind her ear, looks back at me, and smiles.
That smile nearly ruins every ounce of self-control I have.
Every part of me longs to go to her.
Then her steps quicken and she runs.
I move before I can think better of it.
She falls against my chest and I catch her. My arms close around her and my eyes shut the second her arms wrap around my waist and her face presses into my chest.
For one brutal second, I am back in that hospital room, holding her limp hand and telling her not to fucking die because I hadn’t loved her properly yet.
I never thought I would get this.
I thought I had lost the right to hold her at all.