Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RILEY
Seeing Addison coming out of someone else’s room felt like being unexpectedly doused with ice water. It stung. But only for a second. It was more of a shock to my system than anything else.
While Addison may not have wanted to speculate last night about what her ex-wife wanted from her, that doesn’t mean I didn’t speculate. And I was still worrying over my speculations after she fell asleep in my arms. Because what else could it be other than the horrible woman wanting her back?
I trust Addison. I don’t believe she’d ever cheat on me. But the thing is... I’m not sure if we’re actually like together together. It feels like we are, but we haven’t said anything to make it official. So I don’t know if it would even be cheating if she did hook up with her ex.
Her immediate denial was all it took to reassure me that nothing happened. But that split-second moment of doubt made me realize I need to know where we stand. I need her to know where I stand.
I don’t want to leave space for her to consider being with anyone else.
So I ushered her into my room, and now we’re standing in the middle of it, facing each other, the meager two feet of space between us filled with unspoken words that need to be spoken if we’re going to make this work.
“I couldn’t let Christy make a scene downstairs,” Addison starts. “She was demanding to talk to me, so I figured the easiest thing was to let her say what she wanted to say, and then hopefully she’d leave. That’s the only reason I was in her room.”
“I get it,” I say with a half-shrug. “I’m not upset.”
She lets out a sigh of relief, and then she steps closer to me, her fingers tentatively reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Thank god. Because I’d never want to do anything to hurt you.”
I catch her hand before she can drop it back down to her side. “I still think we should talk, though.”
“I do too.”
Well, damn. Now I’m nervous. But what I want to say to her isn’t bad, so hopefully what she wants to say isn’t either.
“Wanna sit?” I ask, tilting my head toward the bed.
She hesitates, shifting her weight. “Uh, actually, I’d rather we go back to my place. If that’s okay? I can’t be here with you knowing Christy’s right across from us. I don’t want her anywhere near us.”
“That’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” She looks worried, though she has no reason to be. “Please don’t take this to mean I’m not over her or anything like that.”
Slotting my fingers between hers, I give her hand a squeeze. “I understand. Really.”
“Thank you,” she says. Then she raises our joined hands to her mouth and kisses the back of mine. “You’re so...”
She doesn’t finish her thought, but the affection in her voice feels like a hug.
We hold each other’s gazes for another moment before I slip my hand from hers so I can gather some of my stuff in a bag and grab my guitar.
Once I’m ready to go, we leave the room and walk out of the inn side by side, waving to Brenden as we pass him at the front desk.
I’m not quite ready to hold her hand in public where strangers might take photos to post online.
But it’s only because that kind of invasion of my privacy feels gross.
I’d rather let the world know who I am in my own way, through my music.
That’s what I’m best at. And then after I’ve done that, I won’t have to worry about hiding anything anymore.
Then I can be free to love who I love out in the open.
I’m not na?ve enough to think people still won’t take photos. But maybe at some point, my dating life will become less of a hot topic for celebrity gossip. Maybe, hopefully, the world will see that I’m happy, and they’ll be content to leave it at that.
I don’t know how Addison feels about the public knowing she’s with me, though. I don’t know if she is with me. If she wants to be in this with me for real.
On the ride to her house, we’re both silent, like we’re holding in everything we want to say until we get there.
It might be unnerving, if not for the way she immediately reached over and took my hand as we pulled out of the inn’s driveway.
She steers the car one-handed the entire way, never once dropping mine.
And that feels like a good sign.
When we get inside and I’ve set my stuff down, however, my nerves start to come back. Even though I’m more than ready to tell her about the feelings that have been building like a tempo inside of me for weeks. Possibly all summer.
I want to be with you and only you.
I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine.
I’m falling for you.
The words are all there on the tip of my tongue. But what if I open my mouth and everything comes out wrong?
This is why I use music to express myself. When I have something important to say, I like to write it into a song where I can rearrange the words until I’ve gotten them exactly right. Where I can let my guitar chords back up my emotions.
Glancing at my guitar case propped against the couch, I realize that I already have written my feelings for her into a song. More than one. And I can use that.
“Can I play you a song?” I ask.
“Right now?” She sounds puzzled.
“Please,” I tell her. “I really need you to hear it.”
She offers me an encouraging smile. “Sure, of course.”
Grabbing my guitar, I bring it back outside to the porch. My confidence grows with the reassuring sound of her following behind me. I could play inside, but we’ve spent so much time together on porches this summer, it feels right to be out here.
I take my guitar from the case and sit down on the bench seat with it. I expect Addison to lean against the porch railing, but instead she sits cross-legged on the porch, gazing up at me like she did in her living room the night I first played for her.
Everything that’s happened between us since then flashes through my mind, and I find myself grinning as I begin to pluck the guitar strings.
I’ll probably call this song “Sweet Like Peaches,” but in my mind, I’m going to call it “Addison’s Song.
” I promised I’d play it for her when it was finished, and I finished it in the early hours of this morning out on the inn’s back porch while she was working in the kitchen.
While I was praying that her ex’s arrival wouldn’t take her away from me and wondering what I could do to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I might not have found all the answers, but I’ve found a place to start. Right here, with telling her how I feel.
So I sing her the song.
And as I sing about the sweetness of being with her, about the comfort and warmth, I realize the full weight of what I feel for her.
I’m not falling for her.
I’ve completely fallen.
I’ve gone through so many relationships in my twenties—most of them very short-lived—and I’ve let the failures of those relationships define me.
I’ve let it become how the world defines me, at least. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying something and then walking away when it doesn’t work for you.
That’s better than not ever trying at all.
The problem is that I’ve tried and tried with men who never seemed to be trying as hard as me.
I’ve been desperately searching for love like I search for that perfect chord when I’m writing a song.
In a song, I know right away when I’ve found it. But I’ve learned love isn’t always like that. It might not be instant recognition. If you keep playing the chord over and over, though, eventually you’ll hear it. And you’ll know. This is the one.
It’s her. The way her eyes are watching me as I play for her, the way she’s smiling. She always looks at me like she sees all of me and she likes what she sees. It’s so simple, but it’s everything I’ve been searching for.
I sing the final chorus with more feeling than I’ve ever sang anything, glad I chose to let the song speak for me. But I think I’ll be fine without it now.
Sweet like peaches, like syrup, like blueberry pie
Let me bask in this world
I don’t want to say goodbye
Sweet like strawberries, vanilla, a bottle of cheap wine
Your touch stirred me back to life
Please don’t ever make me say goodbye
My voice breaks somewhere on the last lines, but I keep pouring my heart out to her until the very last note.
Don’t, no, don’t make me say goodbye
Please don’t ever make me say goodbye
And then I’m still. As the absence of the music settles around us, I sit here clutching my guitar, staring at her staring back at me. Until a bird chirps from somewhere in the tree in her front yard, and Addison blinks as if just remembering that’s something her eyes are supposed to do.
She gets to her feet, takes the two steps needed to reach me, and slowly wraps her fingers around the neck of my guitar. I let her take the instrument from me, unworried, because I know she’ll handle it gently. Like she handles me.
Except for the times when I don’t want her to be gentle.
After carefully placing my guitar back in its case, she reaches for my hand, threading our fingers together and pulling me up to stand with her.
“That was beautiful,” she says. Then she shakes her head.
“Actually, beautiful is a wholly inadequate word for what that song was. But I’m not a lyricist like you.
So I don’t have the fancy words to tell you how I felt about it. .. or how I feel about you.”
My breath catches in my throat, but I manage to say, “I don’t need anything fancy.”
She smiles softly at that. “You deserve it, though.”
“All I want is something real.”
I want to know that this is real. That I’m not the only one feeling it.
“I’d like to think I’ve been real with you from the start,” she says.
I let out a laugh, thinking of how real she treated me when we first met. She didn’t treat me like a celebrity, but simply like a regular person she kept finding in her way. “You have,” I tell her.