Page 85 of I Do With You

Except Hope jerks on my hand, and when I glance back, she’s looking around like she knows where she is. “Come on,” she teases, pulling me along as she leads me through the side of the lobby and to the bank of elevators.

Upstairs, she guides me to a door, where she unlocks it with a key card. Once the door is shut behind us, she leans her back against it. “We made it!” she exclaims with a bright smile.

We did. In so many ways.

I move into her, pressing a kiss to her lips once more. “I love you,” I say at a normal volume now. I want to make sure she hears me.

“I love you too,” she answers easily.

But this wasn’t an easy place for us to get to. I lay my forehead to hers and smile. “How did you get here?”

She laughs and pushes me back, but only to make her way to the bed. She kicks her boots off and curls up, crisscrossing her legs and patting the bed beside her, inviting me to sit too. I leave my feet on the floor, not wanting to dirty the bed where I’m about to make love to Hope.

After we finally talk.

“Sean texted me that you weren’t okay, sent me a plane ticket, and then ghosted me. I was worried but also wanted to see you.”

“I’m still gonna kill that fucker,” I say, but I don’t mean it anymore. Sean is not without his issues, but I’m no walk in the park to deal with either. And he’s trying to fix things—with me and Hope, and with us and AMM. Trying is enough for now.

Hope pushes at my shoulder. “Get in line. Me first. Stabby-stab.”

She makes a stabbing motion, and I’m reminded of Joy casually mentioning Shepherd doing the same thing to me. It’s amazing how much and how quickly things can change. We’ve gone from meeting each other, to falling in love, to fighting and breaking up, to being back together. I want it to stay like this.

“I’m sorry for not telling you about the band. I wanted to, was going to. That’s why Sean did it first. In a backhanded way, he was protecting me.”

She nods, thinking about that. “I can understand why you didn’t lead with ‘I’m possessed by a demon that I let out to feed on my cult following every few days. Consensually, of course.’”

I snort out a laugh because, well ... she’s not exactly wrong. “Consensuallybeing the key word there.”

“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to your cottage if you’d gone with that instead of the bird thing,” she teases. More seriously, she says, “I know you were telling the truth about the rest. The lie about the one thing just made me question everything, especially when things were moving so fast and felt so big. It seemed like I was giving you the best and worst of me, but you’d left out this major part of who you are because, watching those videos Sean showed me”—she turns her head and cups her mouth, talking over her shoulder in a rough, low voice—“and the ones I’ve obsessively watched since”—she grins and continues normally—“I could tell how important that onstage side of you is. You’re magnificent up there, Ben.”

Her praise means more to me than selling a million albums ever could.

“I still have to hype myself up to actually go out there,” I admit, telling the truth to someone besides Sean and Trent for the first time in forever. “I get nervous my voice will crack, my costume will fail, or that people will decide I’m a poser and boo me off the stage.”

She wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head on my shoulder. “That would never happen. Your voice and your presence are what magic is made of, and everyone in the audience feels that they’re part of that magic because of you.” She pauses, rolls her eyes, and adds, “Fine, Sean and Trent help too. But mostly it’s you.”

“I couldn’t do it without Sean,” I confess. “More importantly, I wouldn’t want to. And nobody else would put up with us besides Trent. Sean and I can be yelling and cussing each other out—like we’ve beendoing the last couple of weeks—and Trent will sit there and drink a venti matcha tea, waiting for us to be done so we can get back to work. As long as we don’t fuck with his family, he’s chill.”

She’s hanging on every word, and I realize I like involving her in this side of me. I want her to be a part of it all. If she wants to be.

“I’m sorry you two have been fighting,” she says. “I feel like that’s my fault for knee-jerk reacting too fast and too harshly. I’m sorry for that.”

Her apology is simple but heartfelt. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “There’s a lot of water that existed prior to us meeting that still needs to go under the proverbial bridge. And in your case, I’m sure all of this was a shock.”

I forgive her easily, but she’s not done. “It’s not okay. I know we joked about me being a train wreck, but I really have been. I’ve been working on it, though. Dealing with all the things I could’ve and should’ve done with Roy but was too chickenshit to follow through on because I had this image in my head. And then I turned around and did the same thing with you,” she admits, shaking her head. “We had this dreamy adventure happening, and at the first sign of trouble, I bolted. I want you to know that despite recent,recurrentevents, that’s not how I usually handle things. And not how I will in the future. I’ll talk to you, tell you what I’m afraid of, and listen to what you’re feeling, too, so we can be better for each other and to each other. I want that with you ... if you still do?”

I’m so proud of her. She’s telling me, blunt and bold, exactly what she wants. Seeing her standing strong in her power after she allowed herself to be weak is a potent thing. It’s stunning to witness her transformation. I can understand why Sean thought she was like my mother, especially given her recent breakup and the state of her spirit when they met. But the truth is ... she’s nothing like Mom. Hope is a mix of steady and wild, a blend of beauty and filth, and I want to spend the rest of my days showing her how to live while she shows me how to love. Because I’ve never done that before. Not like this.

So she’s asking me if I want her. Is she fucking serious? Of course I do.

“I want forever with you, Hope. You can be my adventure, and I can be yours.”

She smiles a soft, happy smile that I want to put on her face every day for the rest of our lives. “I’m kind of a roller coaster,” she admits. “Just with fewer loops. And no safety harness.”

“I fucking love roller coasters. And train wrecks. And hot messes with glitter that attack me at every opportunity.”

Hope grins and bites her lip. “And I love demon-possessed monsters who are a little shy, hate people other than me, and let their chaos live right out in the open instead of shoving it down till it explodes like fireworks.”

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