Page 82 of Sky Full of Stars

She contemplates in silence what I just told her. I lean back on my hands and stretch my legs out looking at the ocean. “Is she off the tour?” she asks.

I blow out a breath. “No, I backed down from behaving like a two-year-old. She’s still coming with us but it doesn’t mean anything. I will only ever be around her if anything happens with my voice and that hasn’t happened in years. I take care of myself.”

There is a prolonged period of silence before she speaks again. I hold my tongue because I can see she is working it all through. “I never changed my flight,” she says.

My heart drops. Shit, I do not want her to leave.

“You know this situation is hard for me. I’m still trying to figure out what I feel for you. I know there is something there, Adam,” she looks at me and my heart lifts just a fraction. “But I can’t do it if you don’t tell me things. The past is the past, that’s fine,” she waves her hand. “I don’t care about that. But when your past collides with the present and it’s serious, like a woman you once loved, then I need to be able to trust you to tell me about it.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry, I was a dick…So you have feelings for me?”

“Out of everything I just said, that is what you took from it?”

“Yeah,” I grin. I want to do what I can to stop her leaving, to make her realise Erica doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, because she doesn’t. Knowing Jenna has feelings for me, enough that this has really made her think about running or staying, I can’t stop thinking about how much I want her to stay. Or what I feel for her. “I care about you too and it’s hard knowing I hurt you yesterday, that you were sick and it was my fault.”

“I wasn’t sick,” she bites her bottom lip.

“What?”

“I was just saying that cos I didn’t want to talk to you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re a pretty good actress, Jenna.”

“Yeah well, actions by omission seem to be something we’re both good at.”

“I’m sorry.” She looks at me, her eyes moving back and forth over mine, she’s trying to read me, to see if I mean it. I do mean it, of course I do. “Are you going to go back to New York? I don’t want you to leave.”

“Eventually I have to,” she tilts her head back and looks up at the sky.

“But not tomorrow?” I ask hopefully.

“You have my boss to thank,” she blows out a breath. “She convinced me to stay a few more days.”

“I think I love her.”

“Shut up,” she mutters, shaking her head. “No more thinking you’re protecting me, worrying what I’m thinking or how I’ll react. I don’t like being babied, Adam.”

“Okay, I won’t baby you or omit anything again,” I lean closer to her.

“I’m serious, if you have to think, is this going to upset or piss off Jenna, then it means it is something you should tell me. Explain to me.”

“Got it. Same goes for you.”

“What?” she reels back and looks at me. “I’ve been nothing but honest with you.”

“Yeah well what about that meat head at the gym?”

She looks confused but then it comes to her. “Oh, that was nothing.”

“Nothing, he had his hands all over you,” I practically shout. “You said there was no hitting on the women in that gym, feeling you up seems to fly in the face of that rule.”

She laughs. “He was showing off.”

“Trying to make me jealous,” I mutter.

“Yes. Did it work?”

“Of course it fucking did,” I laugh back.

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