Page 31 of Cherry Beats

“Is this why you’re back? To get validation?”

He shrugged beneath the surface of the water. “All I know is that as soon as my manager got me out of that police station earlier, I couldn’t stay with him. I couldn’t go back to my band. I couldn’t go to the record label. I couldn’t go to anyone but you. Everyone else either calls me a dick or sucks my dick. You’re the only one who could help me today. You’re the only one who’s ever felt real.”

His honesty shouldn’t have been such a surprise considering that that’s all he’d ever been with me, and nothing made my resolve crumble more than knowing every word he spoke would always be true.

Walking over to him, I slammed the toilet seat down and sat on top of it, leaning forward and resting my arms over the side of the bathtub to be closer to him. My fingers swirled around the bubbles near his shoulders—those shoulders—and I focused on them while his heated gaze made my cheeks flame.

“You want a therapy session, drummer boy?”

“Please.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“Goody.” He beamed.

“After that first kiss in your apartment that night, the first thing I told you was the one thing I swore I’d never tell you: I’d been stupidly in love with you since the moment I’d laid eyes on you.”

“And I told you that was the sweetest fucking thing in the world because I always thought you’d barely noticed me.”

I looked up then, feeling the intensity of his penetrating gaze. Presley’s perfectly shaped darker brows were pulled together, creating two little worry lines I wanted to rub away. “The thing is, Presley… you were always meant to be a dream to me. Like the way my brother wants to fuck GiGi Hadid and has posters of her on every wall in his bedroom. You were my fantasy. A fantasy within reach, yeah, but before that night we spent at your place, I never thought I’d ever actually get to reach out and touch you.” I let my finger find the skin of his bicep beneath the water. “But my brain would always be on top of my heart, telling me to just be myself, and you’d be okay with that. I argued with that stupid brain of mine so much, I became a crazy chick whenever you were around.”

“I liked your crazy.”

“Sometimes my heart would beat so fast around you, I’d think I was going to die.”

“I’m just an ordinary guy—”

“No, you’re not,” I interrupted. “You’re Presley West, the hottest man in the world right now. You’re Paw, the guy everyone at school adored. You’re my high school crush who rocked my world. I should probably feel embarrassed that I’m so beyond help that I don’t even feel as pathetic as I should for saying that because it’s the truth. So, don’t sit in front of me and act like you’re nothing special, rock star, because you and I both know you’re fucking everything.”

Presley blinked several times, those worry lines never leaving his face as he reached up, a wet hand emerging from the water to pinch my chin between his thumb and finger and tug me closer to him.

“If all that’s true, why do you regret it?”

“Because I have nowhere else to go from there.”

He frowned harder.

“Everything else is just disappointing and flat. How the hell am I going to settle down with an average Joe, lead a life of domesticity, have kids, work like a dog, and pretend that I’m living the best life possible? I can’t. No matter where I went from you, it was always going to be a let-down. From now on, your ghost will be everywhere I go. Your drums beating on the radio, your face in every magazine, your voice on every TV channel, your shitty, perfect blue eyes slapped on every bus that passes me by. No matter who I have next, they’re going to have to compete with you. How could I do that to the next guy? I can’t. I won’t. I’d rather be pathetic without an audience to play to. And, you know, I’m having to learn to be okay with being that pathetic because you don’t belong to me, Presley. You belong to the world. I’m not the kind of girl who could keep hold of you, be the safety net for when you came home, hold your hand from a distance and tell you it’s okay to let the party girls suck your dick while I’m waiting for you to return from a tour. What else did you expect me to do the morning after the night we spent together? Stick around and hold you back?”

“I never asked you for a promise. I just asked to see you again, and you said—”

“I said no because I’d had the best night of my life and knew that if I tried to have one more of those, I’d only end up hating myself for being weak, and hating you for unintentionally ruining my sex life for the rest of forever.”

He released me, his hand dropping down into the water once again, and his body sagging as he blew out a long breath.

“All I heard there was a load of bullshit about what happened to your feelings. Not a damn thing about what you did to mine,” he said as he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the edge of the tub. “And I thought being selfish was my thing.”

“I didn’t hurt you.”

“No?” He huffed out a humourless laugh. “Okay.”

“I didn’t.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

I swallowed, a little lost for words. “Well… I’m sure you’ve gotten over it since. I mean, you’ve been back here just a few hours, and you must have referenced being fucked and sucked about a billion times already. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been pining.”

“You don’t know shit,” he pushed out through a throaty sigh, his eyes still closed as he rolled his neck from side to side.

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