“Stay with me,” he whispered into her neck, not even sure she was awake enough to hear him.
“Hmmm?” she hummed sleepily.
“Stay with me, contessa,” he repeated, losing the battle to keep the desperation out of his tone. “Enroll in the graduate program. Build this program with me.”
Her body stiffened in his arms and he winced, knowing he was losing already and yet powerless to stop now that he’d begun. She shook her head, the quickened pace of her breathing pressing her ribs in a rapid rise and fall against the circle of his arms. “Liam…” He squeezed his eyes shut against the threat of tears in her voice. “I can’t,” she said into the darkness of his bedroom.
“You make me a better musician. A better man,” he said, turning her in his arms so she could see how fervently he meant it. “I want to build something worthy of the way you look at me. Spend the next two years building something with me.”
She moved out of his arms, sitting up in bed and tucking her knees to her chest, her arms circling her legs and closing her off from him completely. He felt her absence like a gaping wound.
“Two more years of hiding,” she said, her voice hard.
“No.” He sat in front of her, knee to knee, and cradled her face in his hands. He just needed to touch her. He couldn’t stop touching her or she’d slip through his fingers like water. She was slipping away even now. “No more hiding. In June, after you graduate and before the fall semester, I will go to Dean Van Aller and disclose the relationship. I’ll recuse myself from any casting decisions that involve you. I’ll –”
“And if the dean says no?”
“He won’t,” Liam growled.
“You don’t know that.”
His fingers tightened in her hair. “I told Noah about us,” he confessed.
She drew in a sharp, surprised breath, her eyes going wide. “You didwhat?”
“He’d already figured it out on his own. I just confirmed it. But it’s okay –“
“It’s not okay,” she said, pushing his hands out of her hair. “What if he tells someone?”
“He won’t. He’s my best friend.”
She shook her head. “You can’t just make these decisions without me. They affect me, too.”
“Noah would never do anything to hurt us,” he said, reaching for her again.Why doesn’t she understand?“He’ll help his uncle come around.”
“Liam,” she said gently, “even Noah can’t make the dean –”
“Then I’ll fucking figure it out,” he said more roughly than he’d meant to. His stomach sank and he sat back on his heels, his hands dropping away from her. “Don’t you want to keep performing together?”
“Of course, I do!” she said, reaching for him and bunching her hands in his t-shirt. “You’re the only person I ever want to sing for. But I…”
“You what, Min?”
“I want to be more than your songbird,” she said, her eyes crinkled in anguish.
“You think that’s how I see you?” he asked, the idea twisting in his stomach.
“No. But that’s what I’d be if I stayed.”
He shook his head, not wanting – not willing – to believe she was right. She took his hands in hers and scooted closer, pressing her forehead to his.
“This is my life,” he said, meeting her eyes. He had thought she understood. He’d spent so many years getting to this point, didn’t she get that hewashis music? The two were inseparable. “I am finally on the brink of making something real. I am finally getting what I’ve been working for. And I want you to be a part of that.”
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with people wondering if I succeeded because of who I’ve slept with.” He reeled back as her words hit him like a slap in the face, but she continued. “I want to hold your hand in public. I want to kiss you whenever I want to. And when we perform together, I don’t want to have to pretend that I’m not in love with you. I can’t do that in your grad program. And I sure as hell can’t do that singing in theaters named after people like Aidan Dietrich.”
He knew she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but her vehemence stung all the same. The insinuation that he was putting her in a vulnerable position just like Aidan had, that he was capable of wounding her as deeply, even if by different means. His own guilt that he’d been unable to keep her attacker’s name off their sacred space, that he’d allowed their theater to become emotionally fraught for her.
“What would you have me do?” he asked, holding his arms out to the side, as if he was welcoming her to shoot him, to pierce his heart more than she already had. “I can’t run an opera program without funding. And I can’t control where the university gets that funding. Especially when you aren’t willing to give them a reason to turn down the Dietrich money!”
