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“Well, I guess we’ll go out together.”
She bit her lip and nodded. I unlocked the door and opened it to find myself face-to-face with my dad. He looked flat and if not unhappy, then at least not pleased. Like a parent about to tell you they were so disappointed in you. Well, fuck, this couldn’t be worse timing.
“Campbell, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Sorry. I…”
Blaire pulled the door open a little wider. Her cheeks were still flushed, and she dipped her chin. “Hello, Mr. Abbey.”
My dad looked between me and her. His already-grim expression turned into a full-blown frown. “Hello, Blaire. Do you mind if I have a minute with my son?”
“Of course not,” she said.
She snuck one glance at me before pushing past my dad and out of view. I ran a hand back through my hair. What the fuck was this about?
“You didn’t have to be rude,” I told him.
“I wasn’t rude. I was perfectly nice.”
“You looked like you were going to yell at her.”
“It has nothing to do with her,” he assured me without any reassurance at all. My dad sighed. “I don’t want to have an argument.”
“That’s news to me.”
I wasn’t a kid anymore. I had my own career and my own place and my own life. Then, why did I suddenly feel so small when he looked at me like that?
“What are you doing with Blaire?” my dad finally asked.
“Doing with her? I’m dating her.”
“For how long? You’re going back to LA soon.”
“I know I have to go back, but things are different with Blaire.”
“Different.” He gestured to the bathroom behind us. “This isn’t exactly how you behave on tour and in your myriad of parties in LA? This isn’t how you always treat woman? Love bombing them with fancy dinners and lots of sex and attention and then getting bored?”
I glared right back at him. “I am not love bombing Blaire. And no, this is absolutely nothing like how it is with anyone else but her.”
He shook his head. “You might think that, but have you considered her? That girl is in love with you.”
I opened my mouth to contradict him. She couldn’t be after this little time. It was absurd. But it wasn’t just this little time, was it? It was this and the months we’d spent together in high school. It all blurred together. Wasn’t I falling in love with her?
“You’re going back to LA. And any girl you leave behind will be a wreck. That isn’t fair to her,” he said. “I’m not saying this to come down on you. I’m saying this to protect her. What happens to her when you leave?”
I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t leaving. That I couldn’t leave. That I wanted her above all else. But Blaire wouldn’t want that. Not when my career was everything to me. Music was my very soul, and she was the muse I’d found to burn through it.
But I knew what would happen when I left.
I knew intimately.
It had been raining the night I climbed through her window to tell her I was leaving. I didn’t know why that had stuck with me. But it had.
My Converse were sodden, and when I pulled myself over the ledge, I got dirt on her carpet.
“Ignore it,” Blaire said to me.
She wrapped her arms around me despite the fact that I was dripping wet and leaned up to kiss me. I could admit that I was a bastard and kissed her back. I kissed her hard and rough and desperate. Because I knew it might be the last time she ever kissed me. Ever gave me the time of day. And I wanted her desperately. I just didn’t know how to have everything I’d ever wanted. I had to give something up, and she was what I’d sacrifice to find success.
She tugged on my belt. “Come to bed,” she whispered.
“Blaire, I…”
“Shh,” she breathed, pulling me forward two steps.
She dropped onto the bed and crawled backward, so I could get a look at her. She was just in a long T-shirt. Her bare legs exposed before me.
I wanted to give in more than anything. I wanted to put it off another night. Be here with the girl of my dreams and damn the consequences. But she deserved better than that.
“I can’t tonight,” I forced out.
She sat up and crossed her legs, drawing her shirt over them, suddenly self-conscious. “Why not?”
“I have to tell you something.”
She didn’t move. Barely breathed. “What?”
I took a big enough breath for the both of us.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving,” she said flatly.
“I’m moving to LA.”
She swallowed. “When?”
“After graduation.”
“That’s in two weeks.”
“I know. I talked to my aunt who lives in LA. My mom’s sister,” I clarified even though I didn’t need to, but I was rambling because I hated this. “And she said I can stay with her while I look for a job out there.”
