Page 80 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

Silence filled the bubble.

Her eyes were glossy now, but no tears fell. That somehow hurt more.

“You don’t get to do that,” she said quietly.

The sentence knocked the air out of me.

“Do what?” I whispered.

“Decide you’re ready now that something else wants you too,” she said. “You don’t get to tell the universe no until you have a backup plan lined up, then come to me the moment it might feel safe.”

“That’s not why,” I stammered. “Tev’s job offer didn’t make me want you. I already wanted you. It just gave me proof that maybe I’m… worth wanting too,” I whimpered, my voice cracking as tears were rolling down my cheeks.

“I have always known you were worth wanting,” she said. “That was never the question.”

The way she said it made the tears come faster. I swiped at my face, the salt stinging.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry it doesn’t look like that from the outside. I just—I needed time to catch up. To believe I was more than just someone the universe told you to bond with.”

“And yet you did not need time to say yes to him,” she murmured.

“It’s work,” I said, frustration finally sparking through the grief. “It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s not a mystical soul ceremony that changes both our lives forever.”

“This changes our lives forever,” she said, gesturing between us. “Whether we seal it or not. Whether the press knows or not. You standing there and saying to me, ‘I want forever with you’—that is not something you throw out only when you are afraid I might walk away.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said as she looked past me again into the nightlife. “I just know that right now, I can’t breathe in here.”

The bond squeezed painfully, as if it were shrinking in on itself.

“I need space,” she added, and there was a faint tremor in her voice I had never heard before. “From this. From the bus. From you.”

Panic lit up every nerve.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, we can talk. We can fix this. I’m sorry I said yes without—”

She held up a hand, stopping me.

“Vada,” she said. “I am not saying I never want to talk again. I am saying I cannot think in here right now, I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“A hotel,” she said. “In the city. I’m hurt and need space.”

The image of her in some glamourous city hotel room, alone, hurt so much that I actually swayed.

“When?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“Now,” she said.

She shifted in the bubble, getting her feet beneath her. For a second, I thought she might reach for me, but she didn’t.

“When will you be back?” I asked, hating the wobble in my voice.

“I don’t know, Vada,” she said. “Before the show. After. I have to. It’s my job.”

A humorless smile twitched across her mouth.