Still, he couldn’t resist running his thumb over her damp lips. And when she licked out against the pad, he groaned at how good it felt. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
“If it’s anything like what you do to me...” She bit her lower lip, and desire nearly won out over the talk he knew they needed to have. “Now that I said what I said...” Her skin flushed again. “Well, now you know exactly what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling.”
It was huge that she’d told him just how much she loved making love to him—the words I want you inside of me every second of every day were better than the best lyric ever written—but he still wanted more. “I love you.”
Her eyes went huge, and her lips parted in shock. “What?”
“I’m in love with you, Ash.”
She licked her lips, shook her head, tried to slide out from beneath him. “How can you...”
He threaded his fingers through hers to keep her from moving away. “How can I not? I want everyone to know. My family already guessed. And I know my crew and band aren’t stupid either. I promised your father I’d keep you safe, and I want him to know that I have.” He stroked her cheek. “Safe with me.”
She shook her head, the force of her panic strong enough for her to wriggle out from beneath him, the sheets bouncing over her naked skin as the bus hit a rough patch of freeway. “He won’t think I’m safe.”
Drew had never told a woman he loved her. He hadn’t honestly thought he’d do it anytime soon. But then Ashley had appeared in his life and made him feel whole again.
So now, even though it hurt not to hear her say the words back to him, he tried to tell himself that with enough patience, they could work through her fears together. He understood how deeply the pain of losing a parent—even to divorce rather than cancer—could run. Knew, too, that he’d do anything to avoid that kind of pain again.
Anything, except giving Ashley up.
“Your father knows me. From before all of this.” He was sitting across from her on the bed now. “He knows the family I come from. He wouldn’t have trusted you with me if he didn’t.”
“But if we tell him about us, everything will change. I know I’m an adult. I know my choices are my own. It’s just that I’m all he’s ever had. I know what he wants from my life. And I know what he thinks of this one. How much it scares him to think of me anywhere in it. I had to fight to get him to accept that I wanted to be a part of this tour. And now...I just don’t want it to end too soon.”
Even as a kid, Drew could hear between the lines to what people were really saying—but never more so than now. Ashley kept saying that she didn’t want things to change, that she didn’t want the summer to end too soon, and that it all tied into her father.
But Drew was afraid her reasons for trying to keep space between them didn’t have nearly as much to do with her father as she thought. What if the real reason she didn’t want her father to know was because all she thought they were doing was sleeping together? After they’d broken past trying not to touch each other, he’d assumed they were on the same page with everything. But what if they weren’t?
What if he was gunning for something that looked like forever...and she wasn’t?
“Are you really sure your father is the one who won’t think you’re safe with me?”
In a split second, he saw her eyes shutter. From as open as they’d been before, when she was whispering every second, every day to him...to completely closed.
“You’ve got early radio tomorrow, and it’s been a really busy day and night for you.” She moved to slide off the bed. “I should let you get some sleep.”
Drew didn’t think, didn’t pause, before reaching out and wrapping his arm around her waist. “Don’t run, Ash. Please don’t freeze me out.”
He could practically hear the thoughts racing through her head, not in straight lines the way they normally did, but in jagged zigzags. He appreciated that she was a woman who didn’t like being confused by anything or anyone—it was one of the reasons she looked so deeply into everything. And he would have done anything he could to clear up her confusion about the two of them, if only he could figure out exactly the right thing to say.