His eyes grow wide. “What are you talking about—sorrier that we fell off? What the hell, Bellamy?”
“This will never work.”
“The hell it won’t.”
His tone gets under my skin. It’s as if he doesn’t realize that this is infinitely harder on me than it is on him.
Much to his dismay—and mine, I pull away.
“I really, really need you to go. What’s going to happen is inevitable, and it’ll be easier if I have fewer memories to process at three in the morning, okay?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
My body stills as the tears move silently down my face.
Even though the words tell me he wants to stay, I hear the wobble in them. And I see something else too—a lack of an actual action. Proof that he means the things he says this time.
I want to take him at his word, but I’ve done that before. And I can’t be stupid again.
I reach out and touch his face for the last time. My heart shatters, the pieces so small and jagged that it’ll never be able to be put back together again.
“You need to go,” I say, my voice clogged with emotion. “Now.”
I close the distance between us and press a kiss to his cheek.
With a final look at him, I turn and walk to my bedroom.
My back hits the wall as my legs give out. I try to control the sobs emanating from my chest as I shake violently.
I look toward the door through the mass of tears and hope—stupidly hope—that he comes for me.
But he doesn’t. And when I hear the loud thud of the front door shutting behind him, I know that’s what I need to do too.
Put him behind me. Get up. Move forward.
Alone.
Twenty-Three
Coy
I jam my clothes into my suitcase.
“Fuck this,” I mutter as I slam the lid shut.
Zip!—the sound shoots through the air as I race the track around the perimeter of the luggage shut.
My head is so loud. Snippets of my conversation with Bellamy mixes with her laughter from yesterday and the sound of us kissing in the moments before things were ruined.
I sit on the bed and hold my head in my hands.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say out loud.
My voice is murky from the angst that fills every inch of my body. It’s dread and an anguish so deep that I’m not sure that I’ll ever claw my way out of it.
The worst part of it all—besides seeing Bellamy in so much pain—is the rejection. Because that’s what it is at the end of the day.
She rejected me.
Her points were valid. I understand what she was saying. But, if she really loved me—if she wanted this to work as badly as I do, she’d want to try.
And she doesn’t.
She just wanted me gone.
Knock, knock!
I look up to see my mom standing in the doorway. Concern paints her face, and that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Hey, kiddo. Are you okay?” Mom asks.
“Does it look like it?”
She frowns as she enters my room. “What’s happening? I heard all this racket coming from in here and wondered if you were packing up your things or if Boone was up to no good.”
Her joke makes me smile—sort of.
Mom sits beside me on the edge of the bed and puts her arm around my shoulders. “Talk to me.”
I cover my face with my hands and press my fingers into my skin. The pressure of my fingertips on my forehead strangely helps me calm down.
A little bit.
Enough to talk to my mother without screaming.
“I’m heading back to Nashville,” I tell her.
The thought of being there now feels incredibly wrong.
The house that I love so much—the one that I had designed to reflect this one, the one I grew up in—doesn’t seem sufficient.
Sure, it’s filled with my music trophies and pictures of me with various important people in the music industry. There are memories everywhere I turn that remind me of the crazy, wild life that I live. Every piece of furniture, every stone in the fireplace, was hand-selected. The bed is the comfiest in the history of beds.
It has everything a man could ever want and everything I’ve ever dreamed of. It is, by all accounts, the pinnacle of my career.
Still, it lacks something that I just now realize.
It lacks a smile when I get home from the studio. It lacks a warmth that only comes from being lived in and loved in. It lacks a sink full of dishes because you got sidetracked after dinner and fell asleep wrapped around the woman you love.
It lacks a heart and a soul.
It lacks Bellamy.
“You’re heading back now?” Mom asks.
I nod slowly. “I have to be there at nine in the morning. Meadow says there’s a very real chance that I’ll lose my contract if I don’t.”
“That must be really difficult for you to have to leave on a moment’s notice like that.”
“Yeah.”
“May I ask how Bellamy reacted?”
I sigh and then look at Mom. “I’ll give you one guess.”
Mom sighs too. “I’m sorry, Coy.”
“Me too.” I spring to my feet as emotions begin to stream through me once again. “What do I do, Mom? Do I just not go? I mean, isn’t that what I’m facing here?”
“Did she give you an ultimatum?”
I narrow my eyes at her and stop walking. “You know she didn’t do that.”
To my surprise, Mom smiles.
“I really don’t think this is anything to smile about,” I tell her, annoyance thick in my tone.
“Then you’re not looking at it the right way, sweetheart.”
“Are you kidding me? You expect me to smile right now? Do you think I’ll ever smile again?”
I watch as she stands like she has all the time in the world. There’s a contentment in her features that has me reeling.
“Why are you not upset for me?” I ask her. “Don’t you see how much this fucking sucks?”
“I do, Coy. I honestly do. And I’m sorry that it sucks for you, and I’m sorry, too, that it sucks even more for Bellamy. Because she has to sit over there and wait for you to leave. And then she has to go on with her day knowing that you’ll be signing contracts, singing songs, and returning to your luxurious life … not thinking about her. And her life.”
I balk. “You think that I won’t think about Bells every minute of my life? You don’t even know how I feel then.”
She places a hand on my shoulder. It just sits there, her palm against the blade, like she’s some kind of Jedi that can fix my problems with her touch.
I fucking wish.
My emotions rise again, threatening to swamp me with their intensity. I glance through the window at the Davenport house and wish that I could turn my phone off, throw it away, and run to Bellamy’s and forget this ever happened.
But I can’t. That’s not how life works. That’s not how my life works. The slander against me can literally ruin my career. And future. All my hard work for nothing. All my compromises, pointless. All my sacrifices, moot.
And not to mention the many people who rely on me. The charities I support, the writers that pen lyrics for me. The fans that use my music as a form of therapy or a way to express their love. There are droves of people across the world that rely on me. And walking away from my label—if it were something I could even consider—would be a travesty.