“… If I had a girlfriend, if I had replaced you,” he continued my sentence in a neutral tone.
I nodded. “… if you were in love, like in love enough to make your life with that girl, marry her.”
Crap! The cat was out of the bag. My hands flew to my face to cover it. Why did I need to stir up the past?
I kept my eyes shut, but I could see the silence hanging between us. I could even taste it: all dry and bitter. Josh wrapped his fingers around my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face. I still couldn’t open my eyes.
“I can’t change the past, Cass, and Lenor will always be part of it.”
I nodded again and swallowed through the lump in my throat.
“I wish you could see inside my heart, see that I never loved her the way I loved you back when we were kids or the way I love you now. But I can’t talk about it because it’d be like betraying her and stomping over her again. I’ve done enough of that.”
He pulled me by my wrists and forced me to shift position and face him.
“Open your eyes, Cass. Please. Look at me.”
I did what he asked and guilt hit me hard. Josh was in pain. The fire in his eyes that darkened them told me so.
“I’m scared you’ll wake up one day and regret giving her up for me.”
“I don’t know if I had to give Lenor up.” He opened my palms and massaged their center with his thumbs. “I only know that I never gave myself to her. Not entirely. The lies about my past didn’t help. More simply, I never gave myself to her because you had kept all of me and I never could let that go.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
He shook his head. “—No, I want you to know what is in my heart, or rather who is. It’s only you. Now. Tomorrow. Always. Only you.”
“Have you forgiven me?”
Josh flinched. He took his sweet little time to answer. “I don’t want to think about what you did to me then. I want to turn the page.”
“You haven’t forgiven me.”
Josh’s jaw locked. He leaned against the back of the bench. It was his way to regain some self-control. “Give me time. We have a life to build together with Lucas. The past will fade.”
“I won’t lie to you ever again. But, this time around, will you fight for me, for us?”
“Why do you want our relationship to be defined by conflict? I want us to find peace.”
“Like the peace you had with Lenor?”
“Stop bringing it back to her all the time.” He jumped on his feet and took three strides away from me. He turned back to face me. “She’s got nothing to do with us anymore.”
I stood and came to face him. His hand palmed the back of my head and he pulled me hard against him so that our faces were almost touching.
“I’ll fight for you though because I can never let you go, Cass. Never.” His voice was coarse. “Because if I do, it’ll kill me.”
His mouth took ownership of mine. His tongue hunted mine. I arched against him, my hands against his pecs. His cupped my butt and he pulled my body against his. I was under his spell.
He broke the contact and took in a raspy breath.
“It will kill me too,” I said faintly.
A smile curved his lips. “So let’s keep ourselves alive!”
I nodded and he claimed my mouth again. I let him. I wanted to give him the peace he was craving for. I so wanted to.
CHAPTER 9
Cassie
As every morning since I’d stepped onto this goddamn bus four weeks ago, my eyes shot wide open at seven a.m. on the dot. I stared at the pleats sticking out from the curtain around my bunk. That curtain between my bunk-bed and the ‘rest of the world’ had been a life-saver. I dressed and un-dressed behind it, wrote songs behind it and dreamed of Josh behind it.
And dreaming about Josh was what I was indulging in right now. Dreaming of how warm his body had felt behind me when I woke before dawn last Sunday. He was still sleeping and I felt his bare chest rising and falling each time he breathed. The time on the digital clock had warned me there were only a couple of minutes before that freakin’ alarm would start ringing. While I’d counted down every second in my head, my eyes had studied his hand enlaced with mine on the duvet. It was strong, but delicate, each vein drawn beautifully beneath his skin. He’d held me tightly throughout the night.
I hadn’t slept much, but really, who gave a flying fu—oops—monkey about sleep when the happiness inside reached ten on the Richter scale?
That goddamned alarm had rung all-too-soon. There’d been the rush to get dressed after a quick shower, and then the goodbyes. My cab had been the first to leave to Ronald Reagan Airport. Josh was flying from Dulles. To Europe.
He’d arrive back from Paris this morning. Maybe he’d already landed. That meant there wasn’t an ocean between us anymore. I tossed and turned a couple of times on that freakin’ bunk-bed, trying to kick my next thought out of my head.
I failed.
Eleanor was in Paris.
Eleanor was in Paris.
Eleanor was in Paris.
La-Di-Da-La-Di-Da! I sang in my head. But that wasn’t enough to cancel the image of Josh and that beautiful girl, having dinner in one of those romantic cafes I’d seen in so many damned movies. I could even hear the violin playing in the background.
I groaned and bit my tongue. I had a guy sleeping above me. Actually I had guys sleeping all around me. Cool, sexy guys. Really, I couldn’t go all insecure on Josh. Josh, who’d pushed me to go on this tour—because he wanted me to follow my dream.
Yep, time to get a grip, O’Malley. In one move, I swung my feet above the edge of the bed and pulled the curtain open. No lacy number for my nights on the bus. Not that I owned anything sexy anyway. I slept in my tracksuit. A dull, brown tracksuit. Plain with nothing written on it.
A tracksuit shouting to all the dudes onboard that I might well be the shittiest lay this side of the Mississippi.
Josh had chosen the tracksuit.
It had been his only request. He didn’t need any others because wearing this tracksuit managed to put me off sex.
“Hey, sleepyhead!” said Shawn through an opened-mouth yawn.
I’d stumbled to the front of the bus. Along the central walkway there were big revolving seats, set two-by-two, on either side of small tables. He was sitting on one of them, a mug of coffee in his hands. Outside, the Arizona desert sprawled out to the horizon, and beyond. Its bright red soil made me blink in awe.
I slumped onto the seat opposite Shawn. We didn’t talk for a minute or two. He then stood and headed over to the mini-fridge in the kitchen corner behind the driver’s seat. When he sat back, he laid a can of Coke in front of me. “The Black Doctor’s gonna help with nausea.” He winked at me.
I hadn’t told anyone about my transport-sickness. I guess the bluish shade of my skin had given me away. That, and the stubborn way I kept my eyes glued on the road ahead of us ninety-nine percent of the time I was on the bus.
“Thanks.” I gave him a warm smile.
I’d been careful with Shawn. Deep down, he was a good guy; but he liked women. Chasing them, flirting with them… sleeping with them. Fooling around wasn’t in the cards for me. I’d been worried he’d hold that against me. He hadn’t. If anything, we had the beginning of a friendship.
“Still working on that song?” I pointed at the sheets spread across the table. I took a sip of Coke and let the bubbles tickle the inside of my mouth and wake me up.