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Now, my heart was threatening to beat right out of my chest. “Right now?”
“Yep.”
“But...” Was I ready for this?
She pulled out her phone. “Can I tell him to come up?”
Chapter 35
Bash
More than a month had passed since I walked away from Lacey. Doing it had hurt like hell, but I’d been so sure that I was doing the right thing. I smothered that immense pain because I told myself it was in Kody’s best interest. Playing the martyr and using Kody’s accident as the excuse to end our relationship fell apart pretty quickly. Besides being a shit thing to do, accusing Lacey of not watching Kody closely enough and blaming her for the accident never seemed reasonable.
What I had to figure out was why I did that. I painted her in a negative light, assuming she wasn’t serious about Kody and me, that our relationship was based entirely on sex. I worried that she wasn’t capable of being faithful or sustaining something deeper.
It was harder to realize I was subconsciously doing this and even harder to figure out why. For a guy who rarely thought past the surface, I had a lot of deep, dark digging to do. I needed to strip away all the layers of protection I’d built up — layers that only served to insulate me from the truth.
My epiphany came when I was talking to Ghost. He was trying to give me advice while we were smoking a joint. Somehow, he went off track and started talking about Greyson and Remi. For a guy who never used to talk much, he certainly turned a page. Now, he was practically a relationship counselor.
I was half-zoned out and only partially listening to him. Something he said triggered a light-bulb moment. My criticisms of Lacey were classic projection. I cast her as the villain who wasn’t capable of being in a relationship when it was me all along. I’d projected my fears and weaknesses about myself onto her.
Even blaming Lacey for not watching Kody closely enough was one of my own fears. How often had I caught Kody standing on top of that same table before I’d shooed him down? Kids got hurt. The parent’s job was to set up guide rails, but not completely bubble-wrap their lives until an essential spark of life was smothered.
Instead of acknowledging my own shortcomings, I’d projected them onto Lacey and sabotaged our relationship. It took just about as much introspection as I possessed to figure this all out, but from there, it all fell into place for me.
The love I felt for her was undeniable. My awareness of it had been gradually growing over the last few months, but until now, I hadn’t been able to accept it. There was no questioning it anymore.
Now, how the hell was I going to make her understand my life-changing epiphany, because when I thought about how I reacted from her perspective, I really came up short. It had taken me a month to figure it all out, and now I had one chance to explain it all to her. I was a simple man and not very good at expressing my emotions with words.
That’s why my bandmate’s plan seemed perfect. Was it kind of crazy? Yes. But I needed to do something big to show her just how serious I was about us. As a grand gesture, I felt it was pretty solid. I wasn’t sure my bumbling words would cut it.
Kaylie was a woman, and she was Lacey’s best friend. She’d cautioned me that the guys’ plan to win her back was not going to work. She said I could romance Lacey all I wanted after I had an honest discussion with her.
When I got the all-clear from Kaylie, I headed up to Lacey’s apartment. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in over a month and I missed her like crazy, but it felt like a brick was sitting in my stomach.
I was walking into the proverbial lion’s den, armed only with the truth. Most of the truth was ugly: my weaknesses, my missteps, my inadequacies. Somehow, I had to convince her to overlook all of that and focus on the most important truth — that I loved her.
I didn’t have a bouquet of roses in my hand. I didn’t have diamond jewelry. There were no romantic trips to whisk her off to. No gimmicky gestures. I didn’t buy out an entire restaurant for a romantic dinner. There were no giant flashcards to hold up to profess my love. No Jumbotron marriage proposal. And no yacht rental, as suggested by Sid.
It was just me, and I felt a little empty-handed. Kaylie better not be wrong or I’d kick her ass.
I stepped into her apartment. She wasn’t there to greet me, so I wandered inside. She was sitting on a chair in front of the large windows, looking at her phone.
“Hey,” I said softly. Seeing her again, after so long, had butterflies dancing in my stomach.
She looked up. “Hey.”
The silence grew deafening, and I realized I needed to say something. “If you give me the rest of time, I’ll show you every day how much I love you.”
Her lips pinched together with disgust. “How long did it take you to Google that one?”
Ten seconds in and I’d blown it. “Fuck. I knew it! I should have gone with the first plan. Talking through my feelings was never going to work for me. I’m shit at it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bash, what are you doing?”
I took a few steps closer to her, so we weren’t separated by miles. “It took me a while, but I figured out some shit. Not just that I love you — like I mean, I really love you — but I figured out a lot of my issues. My issues. I put them all on you because I was scared. Please forgive me, Lacey. I pushed you away when all I really wanted to do was wrap my arms around you and never let you go.”
She blinked a few times. “Let me refresh your memory, Bash. You accused me of, let me see, being so bored when I was watching Kody that I invited another man to your house, presumably because we were fucking behind your back and I wasn’t paying any attention to Kody, so I was to blame for his accident. Did I get that right? I’m unfit to be around children, selfish, irresponsible, a liar, and an unfaithful whore. Did that cover it? Or was there more?”
