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Then he points at me.
“You…”
I’m about to answer when I realize he’s not done signing yet.
I watch him intently as he makes two fists with the thumbs tucked to the tops like he is fingerspelling the letter‘A’twice. Then I see him bringing both fists down to his chest, right over his heart, and tears just completely flood my eyes and spill all over my face as I watch him wiggle the thumbs up and down, up and down.
“Sweetheart.”
Carson stops signing when he sees I’m full-on bawling again.
He pulls me to his chest, and I go willingly, feeling like the heaviest feather that ever fluttered down to earth.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he repeats, his throat working, voice rumbling deep in his chest.
I take a deep breath and look at him, smiling through my tears.
Once I read in some romance novel that when we are too afraid to take the most important leaps, we have to throw our hearts beyond the obstacles and then jump after them.
I’m going to jump now and never look back.
I tap Carson’s shoulder, then my hands move to his face, fingers splayed into the thick, dark beard covering his jaw on both sides.
I hold his eyes with mine, and then I tell him what’s in my heart. “I love you, too, Big Grumpy.”
His eyes grow wide and misty as he listens to my voice for the first time, his fingers coming up the sides of my neck to stroke my cheeks.
And then he’s smiling at me, and I’m smiling back, our grins coming closer and closer as our lips fall into a kiss to end all kisses.
CHAPTER21
Carson
One month later…
Iforce myself to stop pacing. I'm not down with this nervous schoolboy fuckery. I'm about to show Mia my new apartment —hopefully soon to beournew apartment— here in D.C., and I'm so jittery it's almost undignified.
I'm not good at putting surprises together, and I need to get this one right so badly.
I sent a car to pick Mia up at Gallaudet and get her here, but she just thinks she's coming to have a look at a small recording studio I'm renting for when I'm in town.
She has no idea I'm moving here for the foreseeable future so we can be together all the time and that this is no little music studio but a giant ass place that I mean to share with her. Though, by the time I'm back from the Canadian mini-tour, one of the backrooms will have been actually turned into an in-home recording studio where I can do my thing, so technically, I'm not lying.
I've had to go to LA for at least a day out of nearly every damn week for the last month I've been with Mia to deal with all the scheduled crap we couldn't get out of, like having to record a performance of 'Leave No One Behind' for the music video or to do some high-profile interviews with reporters from serious magazines that focus on music.
Normally, we wouldn't give a fuck about most of that shit, but even we wouldn’t turn down the chance to seeBurning 21on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' again —they just did a piece on our tour of the States.
Still, that shit was painful as hell.
Every moment I was away from Mia, I felt like I was not going to survive it.
Sly and Rick have had the time of their life, laughing their asses off at my expense.
Maybe I'm obsessed, co-dependent, or whatever the fuck else is there. My woman’s passion in life, of course, had to be psychology of all things, and that shit comes quite in handy when she wants to tease me about the way I am around her, so she pretty much already has had me try on for size every possible pathological label in the book, but the truth is I don't give a fuck about what I am, I just want to be with her. Always.
So I made it happen.
One would think uprooting my entire life from LA to come live here would be the kind of decision that would take me months to firm up, but I don't roll that way.
