Page 76 of Dear Rockstar (Dear Rockstar 1)

“No and please don’t say anything. It would kill him.”

“How many people have you told?” I asked him softly. He threw his airplane and it joined mine, littering the carpet.

“Counting you?”

I nodded.

“One.”

I moved the bowl from between us and slid over until my hip touched his. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

“You should have to get a license to have a kid,” Dale said bitterly. “Some people were never meant to have any.”

“I’m glad they had you,” I said softly. “I’d be lost without you.”

He turned to me, his heart in his eyes. “I love you, Sara.”

I closed mine, feeling tears behind them. It was the first time he’d said it. The first time either of us had spoken anything like it out loud.

He tilted my chin up and I knew he was waiting for an answer, but I couldn’t. It filled every fiber of my being, my love for him. It was so big it eclipsed everything, even the one thing in my life I counted as the most important. I wanted to tell him, but the words seemed too small to really express how I felt.

Instead, I touched my lips to his. His mouth was soft and he tasted sweet—like Tootsie Rolls. He ran a hand down my hair to the small of my back, pressing me as close as he could. His mouth slanted across mine with more feeling than I’d ever experienced, and I let him kiss me, hard and long, my body thrumming and alive and full of him, oblivious to everything else.

“Oh, Sara.” His lips trembled against my neck. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t stand it. I can’t… I can’t…”

He kissed me again before I could ask or even catch my breath, but as suddenly as it had started, it ended and he disentangled himself from me.

“I’ve got to practice.”

He went to his room, shutting the door behind him, leaving me alone with a bowl full of Tootsie Rolls, wondering what in the hell had just happened.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Can’t sleep?” Aimee whispered in the dark. She was in her twin bed and I was on the floor in a sleeping bag, our usual arrangement when I slept over.

“No.” I was watching shadows on the ceiling, tree branches moving in the moonlight.

It was the night before a Tyler Vincent concert. Of course I couldn’t sleep. It was like the night before Christmas, only better, especially since Dale had procured front row seats.

But I wasn’t thinking about Tyler Vincent.

“Want me to tell you a story?”

in Dale’s arms and thinking about Tyler Vincent and my fantasies about living in Maine and becoming… more… It was just too strange. But I couldn’t share my journals with Dale either. There was far too much truth in them, things I knew he couldn’t accept, things I couldn’t tell anyone. Even Aimee. I started every entry with Dear Tyler, but it might as well have been Dear Diary or Dear Rockstar for that matter. It was just me getting my thoughts on paper, getting them out.

“Did he ever write back?”

“No. I got an autographed picture once. I don’t know if it’s even really signed by him. But that was it.” I really didn’t like talking about this with Dale. I liked keeping Tyler Vincent and Dale Diamond as far away from each other as I possibly could, both in my mind and in the real world. But Dale seemed determined to talk about it tonight for some reason. “Can we change the subject?”

“Don’t mind me. It’s just the irony. I fall for a girl whose heart already belongs to some guy who’s twice her age who she’s never even met. You have to admit, it’s probably the most bizarre threesome in history.”

“You would have been better off with Aimee.” The thought caused a sharp stab of pain in my middle, and if Dale had known, he would have been pleased.

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. She’s not you. I don’t want anybody else.”

“Why do you want to talk about this?”

“I guess I want to know,” he said softly. “Tell me why he’s so important to you. Make me understand it.”

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