19. Chapter Nineteen #2
In all the years I have known him, I never once heard the man sing. There's a very good reason for that. He could not carry a tune in a reinforced steel bucket.
He goes for the high note, the one that stretches the word looooove forever and ever. He doesn't even flinch when his voice cracks heroically, fully committed, swaying side to side on his hooves with the speaker hoisted over his horns.
His eyes do not leave my face for a single second of it.
And I just stand there.
The song crashes toward its finale and he holds the last note longer than any sane person would, longer than the original artist, longer than physics is strictly comfortable with, and then it cuts off.
The backyard goes dead silent except for the sizzle of forgotten burgers on the grill. All I hear is the small sound of my own shallow, fast breathing.
He lowers the speaker. Sets it down on the grass, then he straightens to his full ridiculous height, and the joke drains out of his face. When he looks at me, every version of my life I have ever imagined lines up behind my eyes at once, waiting to see which one wins.
"Maddie," he says, then stops, and I watch as his throat works up and down. "I'm not going to ask you to forgive me."
His voice comes out rough, like the singing scraped something out of it, or maybe that's just the rest of him.
"I haven't earned it, and you would see straight through me if I tried, because you have always seen straight through me."
This is the point where the old me, the one who got left on a pier, wants to cross her arms and say lovely speech, because words are the cheapest thing a billionaire owns. For some reason, I keep listening.
"I know I made a mistake by trying to decide your life for you," he continues. "And before that, a worse one. You're right that I knew I was leaving. I should have told you."
I blink against the sudden surge of hot, stinging tears in my eyes and I fight the urge to cry, because I'll be damned if I cry in front of all these people.
"The whole time I told myself I was giving you a gift.
I wasn't giving you a gift. As someone pointed out to me, I was just scared that if I asked you what you wanted, the answer wouldn't be me.
I was scared that deep down, the man I am isn't enough for you.
I still am, but I also know that I can't lose you again.
I would lay down everything I have, everything I am to be with you.
I need nothing else, not the money, not the cars, not the business.
Just you. You're all I need and I swear that if you give me a chance, I will spend the rest of my life trying to be the man you deserve. "
There is a stone sitting in my throat and I can't talk around it, so I don't try.
"I walked back on the acquisition," he says. He spreads his hands open at his sides, empty. "There's no move, no new job in LA."
If I thought I was unable to speak before, I'm now unable to even formulate a thought. I never, even in my wildest dreams, considered that Demetrius could put anything in his life above his work, his company. His legacy.
But he just did. For me. Without even the assurance that it would make a difference.
He didn't do it to get me. He did it, and then he came here not knowing whether it would get him a single thing. You cannot undo a choice like that. You cannot quietly take it back if the gamble doesn't pay out.
"I don't have anything left to offer you," he says, "except that I'm staying. Here. In Saltford Bay. If you'll have me." A beat, and he swallows hard. "And if you won't have me, then I'm staying anyway, because I am not going to walk away from you twice."
And that is what finally breaks me. Not the speaker. Not the song. Not even the whole magnificent disaster of the spectacle. The empty hands.
The choice to put me first.
That's when I start crying. The ugly kind, too. I have spectacular timing, as always.
"I'd never heard you sing before," I say in between sobs, and my voice comes out fully wrecked. "You're really bad at it, too."
"I am the worst singer in history."
Demetrius takes a step forward and I mirror his movement. Jazz's grip on my elbow drops as I step away from the crowd.
"You are never living that down," I add, wiping away at the still-falling tears. "My father is going to bring it up at every holiday for the rest of your life."
Hope crosses his face, going a few cautious rounds with the part of him that doesn't dare trust it yet.
"I'm willing to pay that price," he says. "We can even make it a tradition, me singing like a fool in your driveway."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."
And then I'm crossing the grass, because I can't survive the distance for one more second. Demetrius comes toward me at the same time.
He meets me in the middle, folding down to my height, and I grab a fistful of his shirt, because the man is built like a cathedral and that is as high as I can reach without a stepladder.
His mouth finds mine before I finish the thought.
His arms are around me and my feet are off the ground and his mouth on mine is the most certain thing I have ever felt in my entire life.
He kisses me like there is no other task in the world and there never will be. One hand cradles the back of my head and the other holds me against him, and I stop caring that we are standing in the middle of a street in Saltford Bay with approximately forty witnesses.
I stop caring about everything. My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt and I hold on like he's the only solid thing left standing in the whole backyard.
His forehead comes down against mine when we finally, slowly, come apart. His eyes are closed. Mine are, too. We stay like that for a moment, just breathing, his hands still in my hair, neither of us quite ready to let the world back in yet.
Then I open my eyes.
And I turn.
My mother is standing at the edge of the yard, one hand pressed flat over her heart. Her cheeks are wet and she is smiling so wide it looks like it might actually hurt her face, and beside her my father is looking at me with an expression so comically shocked I burst out laughing.
Then my father starts the clapping. Of course he does. My mother continues to cry and laugh at the same time. Jazz stage-whispers something that sounds an awful lot like about damn time.
I turn back to Demetrius and he smiles at me like the biggest deal of his life just closed.
It did. Turns out it was me.