Page 33 of Collide

“Is this for publicity or something? What am I missing here?”

“What?” he repeats, staring at me in disbelief. He sits back against the booth opposite me and looks toward the window. The ocean view is pretty as the sun descends on another day. He stares for a moment and then leans forward, stretching his arms across the table to take my hands. “You have so much to give, Ivy. I sense it, but there’s a wall. The wall you’ve built to protect yourself is so tall, so thick.” His brows pinch in wonder. “Let me climb over.”

“I don’t need rescuing,” I defend. “I haven’t been locked in a tower my whole life.”

“No, you’ve put yourself there to be safe. And I don’t blame you. It must have been hard to be her daughter.”

“You don’t know anything about her.”

He looks remorseful as he squeezes my hands. “I don’t. But being the child of a rock star. The fame. The fortune. It must have been daunting sometimes. Who’s genuine? Who’s fake?”

My skin crawls with his accuracy.

“I’m real, Ivy. I want you. This. Us. You’re going to laugh, but I’m a romantic at heart. I believe you know when you know. Call it a gut reaction. It’s how I knew about my friendship with Cash. I believed we’d do great things together, and we did. I trusted him. He was my family because my family didn’t understand me. That’s why joining a band made sense to me. I wanted to belong somewhere, and the band was my place.” He pauses a second. “I think the same is true of you. You want to trust someone, but you just don’t know who or how. You’ve done some…things…in order to feel connected to someone. You want to belong somewhere just like me.” He lowers his head. “It’s why I want you to belong with me.” He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles.

“You kissed her like that last night,” I remind him, and my eyes narrow at him although my heart races with what he’s said. He nods, rolling his lips, and releasing my hands. Slipping out of the booth, he comes to my side and sits next to me. Placing an arm over the back of the bench, he cups my jaw with this other hand, forcing me to look at him.

“I’ve never kissed anyone the way I kiss you.” His mouth descends to mine, and within seconds, I feel myself leaning backward. If we weren’t in a public place, Gage would have me on my back in this booth, and I’d let him have his way with me. The second his mouth hits mine, I lose my senses, and I want him desperately.

He pulls back abruptly. “No more knuckle kisses. Noted.” He winks and returns to his side of the booth. He lifts a finger as if he has something further to add. “And I’m not gonna rescue you, Ivy. I’m going to love you until you take it all from me.”

His words stump me, but he shifts the conversation immediately to dinner choices, which we promptly order when the waitress returns. When she walks away, he begins talking about anything but us, leaving me to struggle with my emotions. He tells me about his mother. She was Puerto Rican, and his father was Irish, hence the freckles. His mother died when he was young, leaving his father a lonely man who married a monster the second time. He goes into more details about his upbringing in a trailer park with his step-monster and his mentally absent father.

“Everything I do is to prove her wrong. I will be someone one day.”

“I think you’re already someone,” I say with a proud smile. I lean my arms on the table and switch topics. “You say you’re a romantic, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve had a model for it.”

He smiles sheepishly. “It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in happily ever after.” Then he questions me about my upbringing. The road. My mother. I realize I don’t have the perfect example either, but like him, I want to believe in true love. I tell him about my relationship with Tommy.

“He’s the only father figure I’ve ever known.” I rub my belly. “I want someone dedicated to my child like him.”

Gage nods and taps the table. “I need Tommy to be our manager.”

“He told me. Why do you want him?”

“Because he’s Tommy Carrigan,” Gage teases, but my questioning stare makes him continue. “I think he’s smart. He’s talented, too, but he somehow kept your mother’s band together for nearly two decades, which was no small feat with the drama. Plus, he’s told me he sees himself in me, and I want to know what that means. Can he help me be better? Can he help us be bigger than we dreamed?” His voice grows excited with each question.

“I think he should take the job.”

“You do?” he asks surprised.

“I think it would be good for him. Give him new purpose. He knows the ins and outs of the business. His band was successful, so he knows what it takes and what you don’t need. I think finding himself in you is a good thing. Might make him feel he can correct some of his mistakes and find peace in the ones he couldn’t fix.”

“Maybe I should hire you for PR. That was a good sales pitch, but he won’t take the job.”

“He told me that, too.”

“He told you I had to give you up for him to take the job?” His tone lifts with his surprise.

I stare back at him, not blinking. “Um, no, that’s not what he said. Did he say that to you?”

“Yeah.” Gage is silent, and I pause a beat.

“Which leads me back to why would you need me? I’m in your way,” I remind him.

Gage shakes his head and chuckles, a forlorn expression on his face. His fingers come to his lips, tracing over the bottom curve as he looks out at the ocean again before turning eyes the color of midnight on me. “Ivy, you’re what I need. Period.” He doesn’t clarify his meaning. He signals for the check, hands over some bills, and we exit the fish shack.

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