I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Of course I do, but are you really willing to torpedo your career?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not willing to let you.”
He let out a sigh. “I feel like you and I…like we might be on the verge of something. And I don’t want to run off, chasing my career when we are finally starting to really understand each other.”
“Okay. Fine. Then forget what it would mean for your career.” It was time for honesty. “Let’s talk about what it would mean for us.”
“Us?”
“Yes. Us. The potential us.”
One side of his mouth turned up in a hopeful smile. “There’s a potential us?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.” My answer was quiet, almost shy.
His smile bloomed fully and his eyes lit up. It was the kind of look that every woman hoped to see on the face of the man she cared about. And it almost derailed my thoughts. Almost.
“My point is”—I pulled my thoughts back on track—“if we are going to be together, then I can’t pretend that you’re always going to be around. These months that you’ve been here? They’re an anomaly. This isn’t how your life is going to be forever. I need to know that I can handle it when you leave. You can’t live your life in one city, Sean. We both know that. You’ll be traveling, and I don’t want to go into something expecting anything else.” I didn’t say it, but I also needed to acknowledge the possibility that at some point he might leave and not come back. It might not work out between us. And I needed to know that I could handle that.
“What if I don’t go back to it?” he threw out.
I smiled, appreciating the sentiment, but not believing it for a minute. “Of course you’re going to go back. Of course you should go back. This is what you do, Sean. You’re good at it—great, actually.”
He picked up the hand that held his and kissed the back of it. “I appreciate that, but I’m not going to go. Not right now.”
It would have been easy—to say okay, to let him stay, to maintain the status quo and pretend it was never going to change. But I knew better.
I chewed the inside of my lip a little and my eyes burned. I pushed to my feet and took a few steps away as I gathered my courage, both of my hands pressed to my lower back. Then I turned back to look at him. “Sean, I need you to go.”
Alarm crossed his face.
“And not just for this concert,” I said. “Take…the next four weeks and do all the things you’ve been putting off. Appease the record label. Glad-hand the higher-ups. Meet the fans.”
His face fell in sadness and confusion. “You want me to leave you?”
I nodded. “Not forever, just for a while. But”—I shrugged, not sure I even understood all my reasons—“yes.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“I…I need to know that I’ll be fine by myself sometimes. And,” I said, with sudden clarity, “I need to know that I’m not doing the same thing to you that you did to me.”
Hurt slashed across his face.
“And I’m not saying that to hurt you. I’m not. We’ve worked on honesty, right? We both have to be honest. And I am truly worried that I’m going to use up all that you’re willing to give. I’m afraid I’ll just take from you because you’re so good, and so willing to do anything I need. But if I can’t reciprocate?” I placed a hand over my heart, where that deep-seated worry resided. “I…have feelings for you. I do. But if I don’t know that I can stand up on my own, then how can I trust myself to stand with you, as equal partners?”
He stood up. “It doesn’t always have to be equal.”
“But I have to know it can be equal.”
He looked at me, so sad and disappointed. So confused. “I’m going to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth,” he said with authority.
“I will. Ask me.”
“Is this a test? Is this you trying to find out if I’ll cut and run at the first opportunity? Because I won’t. That’s not me. Not now.”
“I know that’s not you. I know that now. It took me a long time to trust you, Sean. You know it did. I worried for weeks that you were going to disappear, but this isn’t a test. It’s not. I know that if you go, it’s because you hear me and you respect my wishes. It won’t be because you got tired of me. It won’t be because you’re prioritizing something else over me. I know that now.”
His head shook back and forth for a moment, his eyes grieved. “I love you,” he said. And it was different. He’d said it many times before. We’d both said it many times before. But this wasn’t I love you, my friend. This wasn’t even the kind of desperate I love you that he’d thrown at me when we had fought about Nick. This was different. “I love you like I’ll never love anyone,” he said with conviction. “I’ve loved you for so long. And I need to know that you know that.” The intensity in his eyes left no doubt. The way his body seemed to hum with barely contained energy testified of the truth.
“I do know that.” I reached out and took his head in my hands, pressing my forehead to his as my belly ran into him. “But if I’m ever going to know for certain that I love you the same way, I have to know who I am first. Without Jonas. Without you. I have to know I can be a person after everything that has happened.”
I felt his tears drip onto my cheeks. “This isn’t a test?”
“No test.”
“You know how much I love you?”
“Yes.” I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I didn’t know how to say it.
He pushed a hand into my hair. “Can I please kiss you?”
My mind didn’t know if that was a good idea, but my voice said, “Yes.”
His lips trembled as they touched mine. He was so careful, so soft. I nearly whimpered with the poignancy of those moments. I kissed him, not because I was sad and wanting to feel better, but because I loved this man.
Even though I’d kissed him once before, it still felt a little strange to be kissed by someone other than Jonas, but it was also so, so good. As our kisses started to burn brighter, my baby girl gave a swift kick.
Sean laughed against my mouth, then broke the kiss and buried his face in my neck as he placed one hand on the side of my stomach. “See?” he said. “She doesn’t want me to leave.”
I sighed as his breath tickled my neck. I could have joked about her trying to kick him out too. But instead I said, “Of course she doesn’t. But her mommy knows that sometimes what we need is very different from what we want.”
He held me tighter for just a moment as he breathed me in, then he pulled back and took my hand. “Come sit with me.”
We curled up on the couch together, and we let the quiet be.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Later that evening, he called Randy to make all the arrangements. Randy was ecstatic, even going so far as to send me a text thanking me and using too many exclamation points.
The next few days were an exercise in putting on a happy face when I really just wanted to cry. If Sean hadn’t already made arrangements and commitments, I probably would have told him that I’d changed my mind and asked him to stay. As it was, I forced myself to look brave and confident. I’d gotten through the first two months after Jonas died without anyone here to help me. I could do that again.