We link hands as we take the elevator up. We walk into the same conference room where we were each interviewed months ago before the start of filming and we had no idea that we’d be reunited just a few hours later.
We mingle with people who have become our friends over the last few months, and we see the other contestants who left before we did.
“Down to the final two and you’re still talking to him?” Tyler asks Lexi when he saunters up to us.
Turns out Tyler isn’t such a bad dude. I get why he did what he did, and when last week’s episode aired and we saw his confession to the MFB guys, I had to at least respect that he didn’t fuck up the final two with his shenanigans.
We’re ushered into the screening room.
We watch the episode.
Lexi grips my hand in hers.
I glance over at her a few times to see whether she’s upset since this is the episode where she lost, but I’ve gotten to know her pretty well over the last couple months.
Her eyes are shining. She’s excited for me, but she’s also happy in her own right. Sometimes we think we want one thing, but life has other plans. Turns out sometimes those other plans are even better than what we wished for in the first place.
Lexi loves her new role with Ashmark. She loves writing music and perfecting it. She loves interviewing musicians and managers. She loves building her band with some of the best in the business behind her.
And she loves me.
The crazy fool who used to have long hair and dress up like Nikki Sixx six times a week and made a total transformation from douchebag player to a committed man very much in love.
I watch her up on the screen. She has a beautiful grace about her that translates to the stage.
And then, just before I’m announced as the winner, we see her in a confessional. “I fell in love with him in three days, and then I had to leave him. The last thing I wanted to do was abandon him. It’s too fresh to say those feelings might go away someday, because I don’t think they will.”
Then we see me in a similar confessional. “I really love her. If she wins, I want her to fly. I don’t want to be the one who holds her back.”
Then it’s back to her. “One of us is going to be the winner of this entire thing. We both have hopes and dreams beyond this competition, and I refuse to be the one to hold him back from getting everything he deserves.”
I glance over at her. “I love you,” I murmur. She squeezes my hand.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs back. The show cuts to commercial before I’m announced as the winner, and she leans over and presses a gentle kiss to my mouth.
It’s only later, when we’re alone and the party is long over, that she addresses something she said in that confessional. “I meant everything I said, Gage. The last thing I ever wanted to do was abandon you.” My chest tightens at her words. She knows my fears, and she knows me. “And I never will. I lost the battle, and I may not be MFB’s replacement bassist, but I didn’t lose the war.”
I tangle my fingers in her silky hair and pull her flush against me before I kiss her the way she deserves to be kissed for the rest of her life.
And she will be once I get up the nerve to give her that shiny diamond I’ve got stashed away in the back of my dresser at my place.
It was my first purchase with my first MFB paycheck, and I spent nearly the entire sum on a ring for her. Maybe hindsight will tell me that was a dumb move, but I want to share everything in my life with her—the wins, the losses, the love, and even the hard times.
I finally learned what love is when the right woman stepped into my life to show me. That alone makes me feel like I won the war.
***