Page 59 of For One Night Only

I don’t know. I tug gently on his hand, and we continue walking down the beach. People are still out, but they mostly keep to themselves, tossing Frisbees, playing with dogs, corralling children. As we wander farther from the pier, it almost feels like we’re alone.

I know we’re not. We’re out in public together tonight, and there could be photographers around. But in this moment, I let myself pretend it’s just me and Caleb, and the rest of the world falls away.

“I originally planned all of this to try to saveEpic Theme Song. I’m not proud of it, but we all know that’s the truth. We still haven’t heard anything concrete from The Network, and I don’t know what else to do. That interview with Mary Kate was my desperate last attempt to set the record straight.” I sigh. “And I don’t know what will happen to my career if they pull the plug. I haven’t booked any auditions. Everyone wants a Glitter Bats album, not a Valerie Quinn album. If this renewal doesn’t happen…I think it’s over for me.”

After I admit that terrifying truth, we walk in silence, hand in hand. It’s funny how speaking your fears out loud can make them less scary. I trust Caleb implicitly with the hard things, even now, because I know he’ll hold them with gentle care.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks, finally.

“Of course.” I let go of his hand and cross my arms, suddenly feeling nervous.

“Why do you want this life so much when it makes you so miserable?”

I stare down at my toes in the sand, the coarse, rough grains having already chipped away at my purple pedicure. Because that’sthe million-dollar question, isn’t it? It’s definitely one I’ve been hiding from for months, years, maybe since the day he left. I used to think I knew the answer—that I wanted to share my music with the world. But even that rings false when the thing I’m fighting for the most is a TV show. I loveEpic Theme Song, but it’s also the source of a lot of fear and anxiety and self-doubt.

In the end, it always comes back to him.

“I think I’ve been chasing the feeling of how it was with you, leading the band before it all fell apart.”

He opens his mouth to interrupt. “Val—”

“No,” I hurry to stop him. “I’m not expecting anything from you. I just always think if I find the right opportunity, it’ll feel that way again. But it never does—or, at least, it didn’t until you came back. Being the Glitter Bats again just made me realize how everything else isn’t quite as satisfying.” Now that I’ve started speaking this truth into the salt air, I can’t stop. My gaze locks onto his, and I take a breath, steadying myself. “I feel like I’m so close to having everything I ever wanted.You’reall I ever wanted. And I know you might not feel the same way, and even if you did, I can’t possibly ask you to come back…”

He puts a steadying hand on my wrist, and I let him tug me out of my posture, linking our fingers together. His eyes are soft, solemn, and it twists something deep in my chest.

“Val.”

My heart is in my throat. He hasn’t called me Val in years, and I know what that means. He’s going to reject me as kindly as possible, and then I will just try to survive being this close to him for another few weeks.

I can handle that. It’s fine.

But instead of pulling away, he tugs me closer, reaching for my other hand so we’re standing across from each other on the damp sand. Here, we’re not the lead singers of the Glitter Bats. We’re justCaleb and Valerie, two people staring into each other’s eyes for the thousandth time and seeing the thing we’ve been searching for.

“I never stopped caring about you. Not for a day. Not even a minute,” he says. “Ever since last night, I’ve been losing my goddamn mind. It’s like all of those feelings broke through a dam, and if I don’t get to touch you again, I might explode.”

I think he’s going to kiss me then, but he doesn’t. He steps closer, so there’s nothing more than a breath between us. I can feel the heat of him through his tee, can feel the hard edges of his muscle and the careful surety of his fingers twined in mine. “But I’m afraid of what this will mean,” he whispers, like it’s a secret.

“Me too,” I admit. “But I’m more afraid of spending another day wondering what it will mean if we don’t.”

“Val—”

Seizing a spark of bravery, I smirk up at him. “Kiss me, Sloane. I dare you.”

A fire sparks in his green eyes, and then he’s grabbing my face in his hands and drawing my mouth to his, right in the middle of this very public beach.

Our first kiss all those years ago was shy and tentative, but this is nothing like that. This is open-mouthed and delicious and a little desperate. It’s familiar, picking up right where we left off, but it’s also a balm, soothing the burn of the years we spent apart.

He tastes like sugar from the frosting and salt from the breeze andhim, and I didn’t realize what a craving I had until this very moment.

Caleb kisses me like I’m the perfect harmony to every melody he’s written. Like we are blank pages waiting to be written into songs, and our kisses are the ink.

I slip my arms around his waist, and he groans, deepening the kiss. All I want to do is get lost in him under the peach and lavender sky, to get close enough that there’s nothing between us but lips and hands and skin.

But we’re not alone. “Caleb, Valerie, over here!” someone shouts, and we break apart to see a telephoto lens across the sand dune.

I bite my lip, glancing up at him, afraid of how he’ll react, but he just laughs. “Well, that was inevitable.”

And the thing is, it really was. All of this pretending, playing up our connection—that was all just pretense. It feels like fate brought us together again.

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