Page 90 of Gabriel's Album

My mind flashes back to the conversation we had in New York, and I feel as though my heart has cracked open in my chest.

“Is this—” I pause mid-sentence and look around while collecting my thoughts. I notice at once that her belongings, which are usually strewn throughout the room, are missing, “—Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I am,” she replies.

“And you’ve already packed,” I sigh, dreading her confirmation.

“Yeah, I have. I promised that I would never leave without saying goodbye.”

God, this is the worst pain. I don’t even know what to do.

“Why are you doing this, Ariana?” I ask, because the concept of her leaving is killing me.

“I’m sorry, Gabe, I just have to.” Her voice cracks as she says it.

My eyebrows furrow as I tell her, “That’s not an answer. I love you; you know that. This bullshit will pass.”

I’m staring at her, sitting on the end of the bed. She looks so sad and forlorn, so close but so far from me emotionally. I miss her already and she hasn’t even left yet.

“I’m just causing trouble for you, though. You’ll be better off without me here.”

“What trouble? Nobody’s mad; we just needed to work out how we’re going to officially react to this.” I am trying desperately to reason with her.

When she doesn’t respond, I start to move toward her again, but she holds her hand up to stop me. She gets up off the bed and walks to where I’m standing in the doorway.

When she reaches the door, she opens it, but pauses before she leaves to say, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Don’t do this, Ari,” I beg her.

She doesn’t respond, just walks past me and out of the room. I hear the door to the hotel suite close a moment later, and I can’t stop the sound that escapes me as tears take me over.

The pain intensifies, and I don’t know what to do, because I can’t have Ariana. I want to go get her, bring her back, tell her that I love her. I don’t know if that would do anything, because I would still be a rock star.

I cry for a long time, and eventually, I hear a knock on the door to the suite. I’m incredibly hopeful that it’s Ariana coming back to tell me that she’s reconsidered, the way she did in New York. It takes me about thirty seconds to get to the door. When I see Sebastian on the other side of it, a massive wave of disappointment envelops me, and I’m sure that I will drown in it.

“Are you okay?” he asks, looking stunned at the sight of me. He doesn’t wait for an answer before asking, “What happened?”

“Ariana’s leaving me,” I tell him, and the cracks in my heart widen as I do; it feels like this damage will be permanent.

“What the fuck? Why?”

“Who the fuck knows,” I say as he follows me into the sitting area of my hotel suite.

I sit on the sofa and drop my head into my hands, thinking about how painfully true that is as the tears take over again. She didn’t really give me a reason, and even though I know about her fears and anxiety, I truly thought that she loved me enough to get past it.

I stupidly believed that if I just waited long enough, she would be able to be the girlfriend I needed her to be. Fuck. She’s the girlfriend I want, though, even if she can’t face the paparazzi.

When I can finally speak again, my voice comes out sounding flat. “She already had her bags packed. She did it while we were at the meeting.”

It hurts so much to know that while I was defending our love to Cooper, she was planning to leave. I feel so embarrassed that he, the execs at Sierra, and Tristan are all going to know that Cooper was right after all.

“I’m so sorry, Gabriel, it was me bringing that bitch that caused this,” he spits out.

I give him a hollow laugh. “Maybe. Or maybe Ariana just doesn’t love me like I thought she did. Or maybe…”

My voice cracks, and I trail off instead of finishing my sentence. I had been going to say that maybe she never really loved me at all. I know that’s not true, though. She loved me; she had to have loved me. I clench my eyes tight against the tears, as though that might be some help against the stabbing pain in my heart.

“Do you think she’ll change her mind?” Sebastian asks quietly.

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