Page 129 of Crash & Burn

It was actually something I talked about with my therapist.

My weekly sessions have been going well, and I used a few of our past sessions to voice my concerns about Mia loving me. My feelings of feeling undeserving of her love but also knowing it wasn’t going to be easy for her to give her love away freely again. Not after what happened to her.

When she told me she loved me, my knee-jerk response was to tell myself that she didn’t. Even as she said the words, I was tempted to not believe them because I have been conditioned to learn that I am not lovable unless I am putting on this face that everything is okay. That I am whole. That I’m not broken.

In reality, Mia loves me despite my broken pieces, and she has helped me put myself back together.

We’re supposed to dress-up tonight, so I have on black, tapered slacks and a black, long-sleeved dress shirt. To make it more casual, I have the first few buttons undone, my gold chain on display.

The gold chain was my grandfather’s, but my mom had given it to my dad. He never wore it, always kept it in the drawer of his bedside table, and it was theonething, she later told me, that she refused to leave at that house the night we left.

My phone buzzes on my hotel room’s bed. I’m not exactly sure what the room situations are, aside from me sharing a room with Mateo. Theo and Silas both didn’t get a room, only coming for our show at the reception and then to stick around for the celebration of Drew and Emmett finally tying the knot tomorrow.

I think Mia and Annie are sharing a room, and Luke got his own. Drew and Emmett don’t care about the superstition of not seeing each other before the wedding, so they have their own room too.

When I walk out of my hotel room, the door closing behind me, the door two down from mine closes at the same time. I turn to my left to see Mia, who I was just on my way to go see before heading down to the lobby.

My heart stops when my eyes find her. Her blonde waves are curled, flowing behind her shoulders. She has a black dress that stops just above her knees, and the cut of the top drops low, making me salivate. The sleeves are long, her long bronzed legs and the glow of her chest being what all my attention will be on tonight..

“Hey, raindrop,” she says as she closes the space between us. My feet are glued to the ground because she damn near took all the breath from my lungs, and I’m so glad she is the one to do it.

I see her glance past me and look over her shoulder before grabbing me by the shirt and pulling me in for a kiss. She has red heels that match the color of her lips, so I don’t have to bend down too far.

Her kisses always send me to another dimension, but this one might kill me.

She pulls back and smiles, using her thumb to wipe my bottom lip.

“Sorry, forgot I had lipstick on.”

I want to tell her to never be sorry because the thought of her mark on me, for everyone to see, excites me in ways it shouldn’t.

Especially if those marks are on my neck, my chest, around my—

I cough into my fist. “No worries. You look beautiful.”

“You clean up well too. It’s going to be hard to keep my hands to myself tonight.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t try,” I say too fast, still light-headed from the kiss and forgetting that she wants to wait untilafterthe wedding to tell Mateo.

She said that telling him on tour would be too late, but before the wedding would make the day about us rather than Drew and Emmett.

Since Mia is still set to go on tour with us, it is a big gamble to tell Mateobeforewe go, but Mia is as ready as I am to be rid of this guilt.

I think we have to sit down and explain to Mateo that things just happened, and we aren’t just messing around. That what we have is real, and I have never been so sure about something, or someone, in my entire life.

I want to tell Mateo that I’m all in with Mia, that I always will be. I know if we can explain everything to him, he may be mad at first that we kept it a secret, but he will understand.

“We just have to get through this weekend,” she says. Grabbing my hand and leading us to the elevator. She has her camera bag around her shoulder, so I grab it and sling it over mine. The bag is worn and on the verge of falling apart, and it looks out of place next to her pretty dress.

“How am I supposed to keep my hands to myself when you look likethat?” I push the down button on the wall between the two elevators.

“I’ve heard something like that before,” she teases, squeezing my hand as I feel my cheeks burn.

I will never forget when she opened the door to her hotel room after our first show last year, and all she had on was my t-shirt. I admitted to her what a distraction she was to me that night, practically begging her to put on a pair of pants.

“You’re still as distracting as ever.” I bring her hand up to my lips, leaving a light kiss on the back of her hand as we wait for the elevator to stop on our floor.

She glances at the elevator. “Can we take the stairs? I hate elevators."

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