Page 179 of P.S. I'm Still Yours

“We will. When the time is right.”

I’m glad she brought it up. We haven’t had a chance to talk about what’s going to happen when the news breaks. It’s one thing to be the most hated celebrity in the world; it’s another to drag her into my shit.

“But before we do, I need you to understand something.”

“What?”

I blow out a breath. “What it means to be mine…”

She nods, her blue eyes filled with curiosity. “Tell me.”

“Once we announce that we’re together, your life is over. Or at least, your life the way you know it. Your image, your body, your freedom. None of that shit will belong to you anymore. You’ll be giving up your privacy to a bunch of soulless creeps with cameras and an obsession with scandal. Once we go public, everything is going to change. Everything. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

She doesn’t speak for long seconds.

“I… I want you.” She gives me a look so innocent and clueless it tears me up inside.

She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.

My teeth clench. “Goddamn it, Hadley. I’m trying to be the bigger man here.”

She thinks on it for a few more seconds.

Her gaze lifts to mine, and my heart caves in on itself. “A public life with you is a thousand times better than a private one without you.”

Thank God.

I can’t help myself. I have to kiss her, so I do, grabbing her jaw and taking her lips with mine. She answers by slipping her hands into my hair and tugging.

I lick past the seam of her mouth and thrust my tongue inside, but then I’m moving away, ending the kiss and uttering words I never thought I’d say in my entire life.

“I’m so fucking in love with you.”

Her jaw nearly hits the ground.

It feels like she doesn’t blink or say a word for a whole minute.

“I… You’re just saying that because I made you come.” She says it as a joke, but I detect a hint of truth in her tone.

“I’m saying it because it’s true.”

Her eyes get misty, and man, my entire body aches.

“I love you, Hads. I’ve loved you since the moment you told my dad to eat shit in the sunroom when we were kids. Jesus, I loved you when I didn’t even fucking know it. When I was on the other side of the planet selling out shows and trying to convince myself that I wasn’t completely miserable. I kept the guitar you gave me to remind myself of how royally I fucked up the day I let you go. So that I’d never forget that everything I have, I owe to you. I never thanked you properly. I mean, fuck, you didn’t just save me from my dad, Hadley. You saved my fucking life.

“You’re the reason I was able to get my mom out of poverty.

The reason I was able to do what I love most in this world for the past five years. You showed me it was okay to follow my dreams when I thought it was impossible. You posted the video, and you believed in me when I couldn’t. Hadley, you’re the only good I’ve ever done. You’re… You’re my whole fucking heart.”

Tears are streaming down her face now, but mark my words, this is the one and only instance where I’ll allow Hadley Queen to cry over me.

“I love you. I love you so fucking much,” I repeat.

She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. “I—”

The door opens, startling the both of us. “Dude, I need to talk to you.”

Scar’s intrusion doesn’t surprise me nearly as much as it pisses me off. I look at my drummer standing in the doorway, staring venom-laced bullets into his forehead.

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