I leave his stare, casting my eyes down, the pain in his face almost too much to bear. Fresh tears break free down my cheeks.
“I’ll give it all up,” his tone is suddenly fixed, serious.
I’ve only heard him sound like this once before – when he was going to cancel the PR for the tour and come to me in the London.
“I’ll leave it all behind – the band, the label, everything,” he adds resolute.
My eyes flick back up to his. “No, Jake, you can’t do that for me.”
“I can, and I will,” he says steadily. “I’ll give everything up without a second thought if it means being with you. We can move away from everyone just like we talked about that time. You remember on the phone? When we talked about building a house on an island. It doesn’t just have to be a pipe dream, we can really do that. Just me and you. We can have a house built wherever you want, away from all of this.”
“Jake…” I shake my head. “It wouldn’t work because it’s not who you are. This is what you live for – the music, the performing. It’s who you are, and if you gave it up for me, after a time you’d start to resent me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Yes you would. And even if by some miracle you didn’t, it still wouldn’t make a difference … because they’re not ready to let you go.” I gesture in the direction of the chanting crowd out beyond in the stadium, the ones calling out his name. “The world, your fans, they love you too. And they’re not ready to let go of Jake Wethers – not yet … maybe not ever.”
His eyebrows pull in. “And I’m not ready to let go of you, and I never will be.”
Briefly closing my eyes, I say, “I’m not enough for you, Jake, that’s why you turned back to the drugs after the news story broke about your dad. I don’t know what is enough for you, but it’s not me. I’m not enough to keep you straight like you once said I was.”
“You can’t honestly believe that? Jesus Christ, Tru!” His tone is so forceful, it yanks my eyes back to him.
His eyes are as fiercely determined as his voice.
“I was just being a weak fuckin’ idiot! It was about me and him – my demons that I never exorcised, never about you or us. And I promise you I will never go back there again. Losing you because of what I did – because of the drugs, was the single worst thing that has ever happened to me. If I was ever going to need to keep using it was this last week losing you. But I stopped, Tru. I haven’t touched a thing since that night, and I won’t ever again.”
“When I drowned that night in LA, nearly dying like that, I thought it was enough to stop me, but it wasn’t … because I didn’t know the meaning of the word dying until you left me. This last week without you…” He pulls in a sharp breath, briefly closing his eyes. “I’m nothing without you Tru, nothing.”
His words on some fundamental level are reaching me, touching me, because I know exactly how he feels. I’ve felt so lost, so adrift … so dead inside without him.
But how can we be together with all these problems we have sitting between us? I know I can’t deal with the life that accompanies him.
I shake my head. “I just don’t know, Jake.”
“I do.” He tightens his hold on me, clinging to my face desperately with his hand, tangling his fingers into my hair.
My emotions are rising to epic proportions, so I clench my teeth forbidding anymore tears to fall.
“When we’re good, we’re great, Jake. But when we’re bad, we’re fucking horrendous. From the moment we came back into each other’s lives all we’ve managed to do is hurt one another, badly – and too many times to think of.” I exhale. “I once used to think we were meant to be together, but now … now I’m not so sure. Maybe we just wanted to be together so badly when we were younger that we tried to force it so desperately now. Maybe our time just passed long ago.”
“No,” he shakes his head vehemently. “We’re meant to be.”
He puts his other hand on my face, forcing my eyes to his.
“I’ll never be good enough for you, I know that. But I’m no good without you, and if that makes me a selfish bastard for wanting you as badly as I do then so be it because I can’t live a life that doesn’t have you in it.”
He stares deep into my eyes, breathing deeply. I can feel his hands trembling against my skin.
“Marry me,” he says without hesitation.
Every ounce of air in my lungs whooshes straight out of me, a thousand thoughts scattering across my mind.
Freeing a hand from my face, Jake reaches into his jean pocket and pulls out a ring.
The ring.
I stare at him, my eyes wide.
“I got it before we left Paris.”
It’s the pink diamond ring I was looking at in Tiffany’s the night he bought me the necklace.