Chapter 30
Sloan
♪ Holocene | Bon Iver
The dip of the bed jostled me from my sleep. Somewhere in my misery I’d drifted off. Familiar hands wrapped themselves around my waist from behind and pulled me in.
Jason…
The scratch of his beard brushed the side of my neck and then in a husky voice, “I’m sorry.”
None of it mattered suddenly. None of it. The change in my brain was so fast it gave me whiplash. All my plans disintegrated. My mind flipped in a single heartbeat. I rolled over in the circle of his arms and kissed him. Even if there hadn’t been an apology, I’d have kissed him. He was forgiven, and I immediately became whole again.
He held my cheeks in his warm hands. “Sloan, I’m so sorry. I should have told you everything. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry too,” I whispered. “I missed you so much. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have trusted you, I just got so in my head…”
“It was my fault,” he said. “I was just afraid you’d think less of me or wouldn’t be able to handle it, and I thought I was protecting you. It was stupid.”
He put his forehead to mine. “You didn’t put the chain on,” he whispered.
I shook my head. No, I hadn’t put the chain on. I couldn’t speak to him, but I couldn’t lock him out, even though I didn’t think he would come home. Not after the way I made him leave.
But Jason never did have self-preservation instincts when it came to me, did he?
He brushed the hair off my forehead in the dimness. “Don’t ever take yourself from me again. Promise me. Please.”
His beautiful deep voice sounded like suffering. The room was dim. The only light came from the glow of my alarm clock on my nightstand. But I could see the dark circles under his lids and the hollow look in his eyes and my heart broke a thousand times in a single beat and I knew instantly that I would never have been able to break up with him when he left for his tour. Never. His plane would have still been sitting on the tarmac and I’d have been calling him, begging him to take me back. Fourteen months of being separated was nothing compared to nothing at all.
“Jason, I don’t want to break up when you go on tour. I can’t.”
“I love you.”
The words sucked the air right out of my lungs and I blinked into the darkness.
“I love you, Sloan.”
“I love you too,” I breathed.
He let out a noise that sounded like a mixture of joy and relief, and I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his beard.
He held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. “Sloan, come with me on my tour. Please.”
I laughed into his neck from happiness. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
I nodded. It was crazy. It was so not the kind of spontaneous thing I did. But it wasn’t even a question. I had to.
I wanted so much to be me again. I’d promised myself I would chase joy, climb out of my in-between, live a life of happiness that was worth living—and the only life I wanted to live was with him.
“I’ll pay your mortgage,” he said into my hair, a grin in his voice. “I’ll give you as much as you need.”
I pulled away so I could look at him. “No, I can’t let you do that. Maybe I can rent it?”
“It needs too many repairs to rent,” he said, his hands on my face. “Why don’t you sell it?”
Sell it?
“When we get back we can buy a new place,” he said. “Something better. Close to Kristen and Josh.”
I smiled at him. “You want to live with me?”
His eyes moved back and forth between mine. “I want everything with you.”
Screw it. If I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it. And I wanted to start over. I wanted to start over with him.
I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do everything. Let’s do it all.”
He paused and beamed at me. And then he smothered me with kisses. My mouth, my cheeks, my neck, telling me over and over and over again that he loved me, and I laughed and clutched him.
Every time he said it, the words filled me up. They wrapped themselves around me like warm, strong arms and made me feel safe and cherished, pushing out every doubt that his past and his fame had made me feel.
He loved me.
And I loved him back.
This was why we could weather his fame. Why I could trust him, always, no matter what came up. He belonged to me and we were in it together. How could I ever question it?
We were in love.