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The warmth of him feels so good against the cold fear inside me.
His hand on my chin angles my face to his.
His kiss, soft and warm, comforts me and I lose myself in him much too quickly, melting into him.
Easing the kiss, his lips graze over mine as he whispers, “If I have to give up my whole career for you and Aurora, that’s what I’ll do. You two are what’s most important to me.”
21
Apollo
Her body morphs from soft and respondent to tense.
Placing her palms on my chest, she forces space between us, then backs away from me altogether. “I can’t let you just give up everything for me, Apollo. I’d never be able to live with myself.”
Reaching for her, I grab her hand before she can get away from me. “I’m not just giving up for you. You know what they demand of me, how they want me to behave. Besides, if my health wasn’t on the line already, my sanity is. I’d never be able to survive without the two of you in my life. I’d go crazy. You and Aurora have become just as much part of my life as the band is. As music is. Even more so.”
Dropping her head, she looks at the floor, instead of me. “You didn’t even know about Aurora until recently. You can’t let having a daughter change who you were meant to be.”
“I’m not. But I want to be in her life. I want to be here with her, watching her grow, listening to her when she talks about her first day of kindergarten, of elementary school. High school. College. I want to be a part of her life, Lucy.”
“I’m not saying to not be in her life.” Pulling her hand from mine, she moves away from me, heading toward the kitchen. “But you are talking about giving up music, the band, and that is something I’m not sure you could live with in the long run. You would grow to resent us.”
Laughter erupts, loudly as I think about what she’s said. “I’m not giving up music. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I can always go back to how it used to be. Just me and Ares writing songs and performing them in smaller venues. It’s not like I need to sell out stadiums or whatever. I’m set for life as it is.”
She begins filling a teapot with water from the sink tap. “But what about your fans? They love you. They’d hate me even more for breaking up the band.”
I lean back on the counter, cross my arms over my chest and look at her, even though she won’t look at me. “Didn’t you hear me say the label doesn’t want me in the band, songbird? Either way, leaving the band is a done deal, and you have no role in it. Besides, I’ll make sure the world knows that. And the bad boy image is already ruined as well, so their plan was to use you to rebrand me as a family man. I told them to go fuck themselves. My family is not something they can fuck with.”
Finally, her eyes meet mine and she nods. “Thank you for standing up to us. But please don’t make any life-changing decisions on a whim.” Hah, Lani was right. Now I’m the one saying it. “You deserve to live your dream, whatever that looks like, band or no band. You deserve to be in front of an audience and have your voice and your songs heard.”
“I’m not, I promise. I don’t want to be a part of the label any longer. I don’t like what they’ve done. I can’t stand by and let them get away with what they did to me. Or to my family.”
“That’s good, then.” She smiles. “Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you. All I want is to be close to you and our baby girl.”
A weak smile pulls her lips up a bit and her eyes droop. “I just don’t want you to give anything away for us. I want you to be happy and live your dreams.”
She turns off the heat for the tea and heads to the living room again without a cup for herself.
“Don’t you want some tea?”
She shakes her head. “I was just antsy. I needed to busy myself for a second.
She sits back on the sofa and chews on her lower lip. “When you left to go find your fame, I let you go. I knew that I could tell you about the pregnancy, and I could keep you with me. I knew the kind of man you were. You’re good, Apollo.”
Her eyes move to mine, and we hold each other’s gaze for a long moment. “And we will always be here, waiting for you.”
“I know. But truth is, there is nowhere else I’d rather be right now.” I have a child. I have a woman I love. I want to spend my time with them and say fuck off to the rest of the world.
“If I hadn’t gone on tour. If I had quit the band right from the start, then you wouldn’t have had to go through everything all alone. Aurora would have always had her father. I would have always had my daughter. Lucy, we would have had each other this whole time.”
“You had a chance of a lifetime, and you couldn’t pass up the chance to become what you were always meant to become.”
“And now I have. So now I want the chance to see what else I can become, get it? I want to be Aurora’s dad. I want to be your man if you let me. I want to be me.”
I sigh and look at my hands. “I’m tired of always being on the road, of not having a home, roots. Of making a fool of myself for the record label. I didn’t become what I thought I was going to be. I became their puppet, doing everything they wanted me to do. And yes, I drank all they gave me so I could be what they wanted me to be. Even to the detriment of my body and soul. And they let me keep doing it. They got mad when I quit letting them ruin me. Do you think I’d want that in my life again?”
