“I am talking!” she shouts, her furious, tear-filled eyes meeting mine. I see the shout in her neck pulling taut, her nostrils flaring, her whole body contracting in the effort. “It’s all I ever do!”
I’m so fucking confused. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, all the guilt from this weekend that I thought we had gotten past rushing back into my stomach. “I should not have blown you off. I was scared. I was a fucking idiot. You deserve a guy so much better than me.”
“No.” Her eyes widen. “You deserve better than me,” she says, slapping her own chest. She waves a palm in front of her face once, then throws a thumb past her ear—Better. She pokes a finger at her chest—Me.
Is she fucking crazy? “I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you, Dessie. Don’t mistake that for a second. You’re too fucking good for me.”
She takes a deep breath, shutting her eyes, and then her lips move.
And this time, I catch the words.
Every word.
I knew what she was going to say because it’s exactly the conclusion I had come to earlier when we ate lunch together at the UC. Her father got her into this school. Her father is a famous lighting designer. She knew Kellen. She’s the reason he’s here, designing the lights for the main stage show.
And she’s the reason I’m not.
“My being here … has ruined … everything,” she says.
But all I see is strength in her. Those tears, she won’t even allow them the courtesy of falling. She isn’t trying to earn my sympathy; she’s owning all of this. If she’d ask me, she’s owning too much of it.
She didn’t ask for Kellen Douchebag Wright.
She didn’t ask to get all intimate with me and put herself between me and my dreams. She just fucking met me a couple weeks ago. She owes me nothing.
And here I am, standing in front of this strong, incredible woman who has so much passion in her that she’s bursting at every carefully-stitched seam, singing on stages and earning artistic respect from all these beer-guzzling morons. That’s respect her father did not buy for her, respect she got all on her own.
And here I am with this incessant raging hard-on in my pants that’s been distracting me for the past hour, and I don’t deserve a single fucking tear of hers.
The truth is, her being here saved me.
“Your dad can give you a school,” I tell her, pushing through the vacuum in my ears as my teeth and throat and chest vibrate with my speech, “your dad can give you a whole play,” and I see her trying to protest, so I speak even louder, praying my words are reaching her, “but your dad can’t give you what you did on that little stage an hour ago. Did you see their eyes? Did you see all those people in that room, the way they listened to you when you … when you sang?”
Her eyes shift, the tears threatening to spill as she speaks to me through her clenched teeth. “The one person … who I want … to hear that song,” she mouths, her whole body trembling, “can’t … hear … anything.”
“I hear you.”
Her eyes flash at those words. Her brows flinch as she stares at me uncertainly, the emotion frozen on her pained, broken face.
“I hear you,” I repeat to Dessie, every nerve in my body pulling tight. “You aren’t the only one who’s had parents try to ruin you. You aren’t the only one who’s fought the destiny that everyone keeps trying to push down onto you. I hear you.” I even feel my voice cracking. Today might set a new record for how many words I’ve let myself speak out loud. It’s all Dessie; she’s pulling me out of myself. “You aren’t alone in this battle to find your voice. To find where you belong. To break free.”
The emotion hanging between her eyes and mine is practically tangible. I worry there’s even tears in my own eyes now, tears I also refuse to spill for that stupid fucking world out there.
“I’m sick of people thinking they know who I am,” I whisper, feeling the breath thrust its way out with each word. I take her face, a hand on either cheek, then pour into her eyes. “People trying to tell me what kind of man I am.”
“What kind of woman I am,” she echoes back.
“Telling me I’m just Texas trash.”
“Telling me I’m just a New York snob.”
“Dessie, I hear you.”
The anger has drained from her face, replaced with something else entirely.
“Clayton …” she mouths.
“I hear you.”
Our lips collide. Dessie’s breath washes over my face in uneven torrents as our hands clasp to each other’s bodies.