Page 82 of Not Another Love Song

Gwen checked to make sure she had her debit card and house key and darted up the basement stairs to the street.

She hated goodbyes.

Her grandfather made her sit in the hospital room with her mom as she withered and expired. He’d said she would regret not saying goodbye. He’d been wrong. When it was his turn, she had kissed him goodbye before heading to her chemistry final, and he’d called an ambulance for himself twenty minutes later. She’d liked that better. Not the rest of it—the paperwork and condolences and funeral costs. But the quickness.

She needed to be quick.

If Alex were to come out of that office, hold her hand in the back of a cab, and fuck her on his kitchen counter again, it would just be the beginning of a long goodbye.

Because he wasn’t Not-Her-Boyfriend to her. He couldn’t live in that space.

The soles of her shoes slapped against the filthy sidewalk, and she threw her hand up to grab a cab. A blinker turned on, and a yellow car swerved to her.

She was half inside, calling out for Washington Heights, when a hand gripped her elbow.

Alex’s eyes were wide when she turned over her shoulder. “Where are you going?”

She gaped at him, unable to make her throat work, unable to ask for space when she didn’t want any.

He ran a hand through his hair and climbed into the cab next to her. She scooted down the seat, and let him direct the driver to the Upper East Side.

The cabbie shot down the street, rattling over potholes, and Gwen stared at the screen in the back seat flashing commercials for Broadway shows at her.

“I shouldn’t have taken you to him,” Alex finally whispered once they’d reached Central Park.

Gwen waited for him to continue, but he just stared out the window.

“There are other recording studios,” she said softly.

“I can’t record anywhere else. Contractually.”

She blinked at him. His lips pressed together in a thin line.

The cab pulled up outside his apartment building, and Alex gave the driver cash. He slid out, holding the door for her, but Gwen hesitated.

She couldn’t go upstairs with him if they were only “collaborating” together. She couldn’t be that stupid.

“I think I should go home.” She was half in, half out of the cab, one foot on the street.

That desperation was back in his gaze, the same expression from those first weeks of the season, when she wouldn’t agree to see him. Alex knelt down in front of the open door and placed a hand on her knee.

“I don’t want him in my personal life. Lorenz has a way of twisting up things I love, and I didn’t want to give him anything else of me.” He cleared his throat and looked up at her with dark eyes while Gwen tried to brush the L-word away from her heart. “You are more than my collaborator.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. A horn honked at their cab, and Gwen quickly jumped out, thanking the driver and scurrying to the sidewalk. Alex didn’t make an attempt to escort her to the door of his building; he just stood staring down at her.

“Why are you with Calvin Lorenz if he makes you feel this way?” She squinted up at him through the sun beating down over his building.

“He owns Thorne and Roses as much as I do. Actually, more. The contracts he drew up when I was twenty are… aggressively exploitative. I’m embarrassed for signing them, but I admired him so much back then.” Alex ran a hand through his hair and took a shaky breath. “I’ve been looking for ways out of them for a few years.”

“You can’t just quit them? Break the contract and walk away?”

“Walk away to what?” He chuckled, shaking his head.

Gwen frowned, listening to the traffic pass and watching the pedestrians trot by. She’d never felt like she had absolute freedom—always held back by money or fear—but she’d also never been shackled like this.

She remembered what Mabel had said about him when he was young—He was always set on “ being” someone.

Suddenly, she glanced up at him, her eyes watering against the sunlight. “Is that why you contacted your mother about joining the Pops a year and a half ago? You wanted a way out?”

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