This is the secret he has kept from me. This is the thing that has weighed on him from the first day we met.
“The next night the tour went to Chicago. She was there, too, backstage after the show. She tried to see me. I remember her face when I came offstage, smiling as she pushed through the crowd. She thought...she thought there was something between us. That I would want to see her—that we would, I don’t know, be together. But it wasn’t like that for me. It was just one night.”
“Did you see her again after that?” I ask when he falls quiet.
“A couple more tour stops—she got backstage, tried to talk to me, but I ignored her. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she didn’t understand. It’s like she thought she was my girlfriend. She even told a couple of my bodyguards that she was. But they knew to keep her away from me by then. She was getting obsessed.” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to get warm. Obsessed. Isn’t that how I’ve been feeling? He’s all I can think about when we’re apart, but this is different. It has to be. Tate’s eyes lift, searching for the memory maybe, trying to recall it in the darkness. “I didn’t realize what would happen. If I had known...” His voice trails into nothing, swallowed by the silence.
“What happened?”
He shakes his head. “A week after the Seattle show, my manager told me the police found her. She jumped from a bridge...” He doesn’t finish, but I understand what he means. “She left a note. Said she thought we were in love; that we were supposed to be together.”
“She killed herself?” I shiver at the words, the idea that this girl could give up her entire life because of a boy, because of love...
“I ended the tour early after that. I stopped performing completely. I walked away from everything, all the parties, the late nights. I couldn’t do it anymore. I realized that fame is a responsibility and I took it for granted. If one night could ruin a girl’s life—because of me—I didn’t want to risk hurting anyone else.”
He turns away from the railing, away from me, his entire body a rigid length of muscle, rain sliding over his shoulders.
“Is that why you backed away? That first night at your house, when I told you I’d never kissed anyone?” I move closer to him, touching his arm for the first time. His shoulders flex but he doesn’t pull away. “And again in Colorado? That’s why you thought you needed control?”
“I didn’t think I deserved you. You were perfect—you are perfect. I didn’t want to destroy you, too. Take away everything you’ve worked for.”
I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “I’m stronger than that, Tate.”
“Before I met you,” he says, his voice low, “I thought I had fucked up my entire life, that there was no going back. But with you...with you I keep thinking maybe there’s still a chance.”
“For what?”
Slowly, he turns to face me, his dark eyes on mine. “To have someone in my life that I don’t destroy.”
I shake my head, rain falling between us. “What happened to Ella was not your fault,” I say, my lips trembling from the cold. “You couldn’t have known what she was going to do. You need to forgive yourself for that, otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life afraid it’ll happen again.” I slide my hands around him so my palms are pressed against his bare back, his heart beating beside my ear. His skin is warm, much warmer than I expected with the cold rain cascading over both of us. “You need to let go of what happened.” I feel his chest draw in a breath of air. “You need to trust that you’re not going to hurt anyone.”
He touches my chin and tilts it up, staring down at me, a storm inside his eyes. He kisses me, slow and fluid, and it feels like all the words he wants to say but can’t. “Thank you,” he whispers against my lips.
A moment passes, the rain and the city filling the silence. And then I say, “Let’s go inside.”
He nods, and winds his fingers through mine.
He closes the sliding glass doors behind us and we walk back into the bedroom, dripping water from our feet and fingertips, leaving a trail behind us.
My dress is now wet from the rain, so I unzip the back and let it slip down my legs to the floor. Tate watches me from the other side of the bed. I crawl beneath the sheets and Tate climbs in after, tucking his arms around me. My body is damp and chilled, but Tate’s hands roam across my skin, down my spine, then up again, warming me with his touch. I think for a moment that his fingers might inch to other places, reignite the heat inside me to the point of breaking again—finally take us all the way there—but then he whispers against my brow, “Get some sleep.”
I peek one last time at the windows overlooking the city, now streaked with rain, before I close my eyes. I want it to be like this forever.