Chapter 14 #2
The hard truth? I never wrote or sang love songs, not just because Matt thought they were stupid, but because I didn’t believe in them that way.
Every song I wrote—every lyric, every note—was an act of love, and for me, that was enough.
I have a whole fanbase whom I could give love to.
I knew love from my grandmother in a familial way.
I had the love of friends at one point, although I’m not sure that ever fully goes away.
But romantic love? I never told myself I didn’t believe in it, but I guess part of me gave up on it long before I arranged for a fake girlfriend.
I didn’t believe it was possible to connect with another person on this level.
All those other songs that were coming out and being made famous by the people writing them and singing them were great for them, but I didn’t buy into it, at least for me.
For others? It was great for them. Looking back, I can see that part of me was jealous.
And how a great big part of me just didn’t understand.
I’d never found a person I could understand with.
Carissa slides off me with more ease and grace than I have at the moment. Then, she turns around and spreads out on the couch with me. There’s not much room with my big body doing its best deadweight impression, but that just means she has to arrange herself half on top of me.
She nuzzles her face into my neck, her body going limp. She’s so warm. So trusting. Her breaths tickle my ear with every exhale. I’m sticky, and she’s a little bit sticky too.
This is better than anything I’ve felt on stage in a very long time.
Maybe at the beginning of it all, I’d get that wild rush.
And I still do, before every show, but it fades with time.
This is the rush, but it’s also the peace.
That’s the aspect that was always missing.
This is a different sensation entirely. It’s not just the aftermath of coming down from all that pleasure.
It’s not my brain going haywire just because it felt intensely good for a while.
Whatever it is that has drawn us together, I haven’t felt with any other person.
My brain screams at me to run and take cover and search for safety immediately.
But my gut instinct, maybe even my heart, says to stay. Be steadfast. Trust.
Carissa raises her head and looks into my face at exactly the moment when I’m warring with myself. My emotions are overflowing from my eyes, and it’s all there for her to read.
Her lips don’t thin out or get pinched. She doesn’t shove herself off me, call me an imbecile, or accuse me of having doubts, all while I sold her on some line of security just so I could get into her pants.
“How are you doing?” She draws a small circle on my chest.
“Trying to catch my breath.”
Something flashes across her face, but she never closes herself off. She’s just straight-up vulnerable. “That’s a good way to put it. I hear that.”
Not just physically. It’s wild to know someone for so long and then realize that, all this time, they were just waiting right there to catch you.
To stabilize you, change your whole life, and be the one who can crack your known universe right in half and overflow it with a tidal wave of wonderful things you could only ever have dreamed of.
It’s crazy to feel that way after such a short time, isn’t it?
I mean, there’s knowing when you know, but then there’s this.
It’s beyond infatuation. It’s beyond the puppy dog stage.
It’s beyond wildly sexual with the blinders going strong.
It just feels right. That’s the only way I can explain it.
It might feel a little too right for an explanation, but we’ve both agreed we can move slowly.
We’ll talk and figure things out. We’ll wait for each other, change with each other, and keep pace together.
So, no, I’m not panicking.
Those twinges of hard and heavy emotion I feel all over my body aren’t bad.
I tighten my arm around her and brush a kiss over her forehead. “You’re beautiful, Carissa. I want to say that in some flowery, pretty, poetic, songwriter way, but all I have is that. Inadequate, but so true.”
“Only you could make a statement about underwear being ironic, then give me the most actual ironic words.”
She grazes a kiss over my cheek, brushes my nose with hers, and heads straight for my lips. “You’re beautiful too.”
I massage her shoulder blade, then down her spine. Wrapping my arm around her, I hold her tightly against me. My arms are full of her. Every inhale? Her. My heart? She’s been slowly creeping up and filling me up. I just didn’t know it until it was almost close to overflowing.
I love the taste of her on my tongue. The tingles are still ravaging my body, from my feet all the way up to the top of my head. Her soft breaths echo right near my ear, and the warmth of her body soaks into mine.
She hooks a leg over mine. My pants aren’t even off all the way. I’m basically a hot mess, but she doesn’t look at me that way at all. She looks at me with her eyes shining, her pupils still enlarged and dark, all that softness just for me, like I’m her dog’s favorite stick in his collection.
I still think it’s the cutest thing in the world that they have a little stick library outside their house.
Can we be that perfect pairing? Can we belong to each other and the world?
I want the answer to be yes. I know that, despite her fears and doubts, Carissa’s answer is yes.
I just want to make sure we can get there safely.
Safe bodily and emotionally. I’d do anything to protect this woman.
To be able to call her mine and proudly and irrevocably belong to her.
“Would you like to listen to what we recorded?” I ask her softly as I scrape another kiss over her temple. “Or record something else?”
She makes a noise deep in her throat, something soft, sensuous, and satisfied-sounding. “I don’t want to do anything other than enjoy this moment with you. At least for another minute, and another, and another after that.”
I hear what she’s not saying. That we’ll have to come back to reality soon enough.
We’ll have to figure out how to salvage the couch, but that’s just the start of it.
The couch isn’t even a problem. I’ll buy the damn thing.
Fuck the couch. I guess we kind of did. Ha.
I’ll buy it and own a piece of history. Our history.
I should stop if I don’t want to spontaneously combust right here.
I don’t think there’ll be any salvaging the couch after that.
“Okay,” I say.
I’m content to settle in and be comfortable with her and savor this time together for as long as she wants to do that without moving.
But my phone has other ideas.
I put it on vibrate, but it goes off across from us, right where I left it when I fished it out of my pocket shortly after getting here.
There’s no question that it’s going to be ignored, but after what has to be ten consecutive calls, I start to worry.
“It could just be my agent. Or someone else freaking out about band stuff.” I raise my head and turn it slightly, hoping the thing will just ring itself out or run out of juice. I fully charged it before leaving, though, so no luck there.
It keeps vibrating away.
“What if it’s an emergency?” Carissa asks. I hate that frown on her forehead. I want to press my thumb to each line and smooth them away before following up with a kiss as an apology for bringing this into our moment and our time here together.
“I don’t have any family. There’s no one who will have an emergency.”
She rolls her eyes. “What if it’s someone from the band?”
The chances of that happening aren’t likely, but they aren’t zero either.
What if something happened to one of the guys?
To Matt? He’ll always be a brother to me, even if he hates me.
It’s been a hard time for all of us. I wouldn’t wish the past two weeks I just went through on anyone.
I don’t have any worst enemies, but if I did, I’d do whatever I could to shield them from seeing some of the comments I saw.
People are disappointed. They’re worried.
They’re hurting. We’re like family to them.
Our songs have stood with them throughout so many major events in their lives.
We’re more than a band. Music is always more than music.
Art is the most profound expression of emotion and communication there will ever be.
The backlash was exactly what I thought it would be.
I wanted to stay offline and not read those comments, but I had some weak moments.
It’s not easy knowing I caused people this agony.
I want to make it better, but I can’t. I can only hope time will do that.
And that forgiveness and understanding can take the place of immediate anger.
What if Matt or one of the guys went out to blow off steam? They could have been driving too fast. Or driving just right, and someone else hit them.
Why won’t my phone stop ringing?
Carissa shoves herself off and vaults over me. She’s all sleek, muscular grace as she grabs my phone and brings it straight to me. She sets it in my palm and says, “Answer it.”
“If I answer it, we might have to leave here. The time I promised you, the time I set aside for us, might be over.”