Starstruck (Heartstrings Duet #1)

26. steady love

[ 26 ]

STEADY LOVE

BAXTER

Three Months Until the Concert

“LOOK AFTER YOU” BY THE FRAY

L ennon leans back against my bare chest, pulling the blanket over her naked body. My fingers play with her hair as I wrap an arm around her, pressing my mouth to her head and holding it there. She tangles her fingers in mine, tracing the tattoos covering my hand.

“How many do you have?” she asks, pressing a gentle kiss to the one between my thumb and forefinger. In the same spot I’ve caught her pinching when she gets anxious.

“Forty-nine, last time I counted,” I return, a small smile forming on my lips. “What about you?”

“Wow,” she chuckles. “That’s a lot of money. I have eleven.”

I smirk, my eyes scanning the parts of her not covered by the blanket. I already knew it was eleven—I’ve memorized every single one.

“Do yours mean anything?”

I shrug. “Some do, most don’t. I have a few music-related ones, and I have the one for my mom.” I point to the tattoo over my heart—it’s a simple one, just my mom’s birth year to the year she died with a rose under it, since that was her favourite flower. Hence why they’re mine, too.

A small smile ghosts across her lips as she traces her finger over it. “I haven’t gotten one for my parents yet. I’m not sure what would do them justice.”

Pressing my lips to the top of her head, I say, “Don’t rush it. You want it to be something meaningful. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Yeah,” is all she adds, fidgeting with the necklace she’s wearing.

“Who gave you this?” I ask, tapping the gold heart charm. I’ve wondered for a while what the significance of it is, since she never takes it off.

“It was my mom’s.” She swallows then burrows her head closer.

Getting the sense she doesn’t want to talk about it, I take a minute to let myself bask in the feel of her like this.

Our touches are primarily sexual, so I relish in any moment I get a glimpse of affectionate Lennon—which is rare, despite my constant need to have my hands on her. It should terrify me, and usually, it would. But right now, in the post-sex haze with her pressed against me, I can’t find it in me to care.

“Tell me something about yourself,” I whisper, pressing my cheek against her head.

She glances up slightly, smiling. “Like what?”

“Don’t know. Anything.” I shrug. “What gave you the idea to host a benefit concert?” I already know it’s for her parents, but I’ve been wondering why she chose a benefit concert to honour them.

She smiles up at me. “Truth?”

I nod. “Always.”

“You did.”

My brows pull together, confusion no doubt present on my face. That was the last thing I was expecting her to say.

Lennon chuckles. “That night back in January, you joked about being friends with benefits. Remember?”

I think back to our first night together, remembering the comment I made. “I wasn’t joking.”

She giggles. “Clearly I know that now. But at the time I thought you were. Either way, your suggestion for being friends with benefits fuelled my idea for the concert. I’d been wanting to do something to remember my parents, but I wasn’t sure what. Then you said that and everything fell into place.”

“Damn. Guess it’s kismet that I’m headlining then, hmm?” I tease.

She scoffs, smacking me lightly on the chest. “Whatever. I only chose you because I had no other options left.”

“Ouch, Trouble. You really know how to hit me where it hurts.”

“What can I say?” She smirks. “Putting grown men in their place is my specialty.”

I chuckle, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She’s slowly opening up to me, and that trust is everything. “What about your siblings—were they on board with the concert? Are you close to them?”

“They’ve been incredibly supportive, but our relationship has always been kind of…complicated, for lack of a better term.” She sighs, leaning into me further. “Paige is seven years older than me, and Dylan is eleven, so they were always more like a second set of parents to me. Especially with how often my parents were gone. When they took their years-long break, I was able to bond with my siblings a little bit more, but never to the extent I wanted.

“I’m closer with Dylan than I am with Paige. Dylan’s always understood me better, and Paige is really good at pushing my boundaries. But they’ve both been super supportive of the concert from the beginning, thank God. And as much as they drive me crazy sometimes, I don’t know what I’d do without either of them. ”

She pauses, shifting so she’s looking at me. “I’ve always been the one of my siblings who doesn’t fit in. You’d think because I’m the one who grew up most like our parents were, it’d be the opposite, but instead it always made me feel so different from the two of them. So I’ve always just tried to stay out of everybody’s way and do my best to please. It’s hard, though, knowing that they both resent me for so much regarding our parents—even if they’ll never admit it, I know they do. And I can’t blame them for it. I would, too.”

My brows furrow, my heart splitting in two. I don’t know who or what made this incredible woman so down on herself, but I’ll stop at nothing to convince her otherwise. “What would they have to resent you for?”

She lifts her shoulders, avoiding my gaze. “The accident. And…other things.”

My throat works as I tilt her chin up to look at me again. “The accident wasn’t your fault,” I rasp, considering whether or not to push further. Her brother’s mention of their parents’ break at the funeral and the way his eyes shifted to Lennon has been on my mind for weeks now, and I’m desperate to know what other things she’s referring to. So I ask just that.

“Do these ‘other things’ have to do with why your parents took a ten-year break?”

She nods, rolling her lips together.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask hesitantly.

Her face falls. She’s silent for a moment, like she’s contemplating whether or not to tell me the truth. She pinches the skin between her thumb and forefinger, so I place my hand softly over hers, drawing her attention back to me.

“Um,” she finally says. “I…I had cancer.”

I rear back slightly as my brows pull together, completely shocked by the words that just came out of her. I’m really not sure what I was expecting her to say, but it definitely wasn’t that.

She holds my gaze as she continues. “Acute myeloid leukemia. It was already stage three by the time I was diagnosed. It’s a rare cancer in children, but I guess I was one of the lucky ones.”

Sarcasm fills her voice as tears begin to well in her eyes. She smiles sadly when I intertwine my fingers with hers, sending her a barely noticeable nod to urge her to keep going.

I could listen to her talk all day, and I want to know everything there is to know about this woman.

“I was six when it happened. I hadn’t been feeling well for a few months prior, but everyone just thought I was anemic. Until I got hit in the face with a dodgeball at school—which should be every kid’s right of passage. Instead, it was the moment that changed mine forever.

“My nose and gums started bleeding and wouldn’t stop no matter what we tried. So my parents picked me up and took me to the hospital. They sent me for a variety of tests, because I was having other symptoms, too—fever, pale skin, random bruises covering my body. I was there for nearly twenty-four hours before they were able to get my bleeding under control, and they finally did a bone marrow biopsy before sending me home. Two days later we got the call.”

Her voice cracks on the last sentence, and so does my heart. I can’t imagine how brutal that wait for answers must have been for them.

“I spent eight years in and out of the hospital. I underwent so many treatments—chemo, experimental procedures, surgeries, you name it. For eight years. And then just a few weeks before my fourteenth birthday, I went into remission. I still go back once a year for an annual checkup, just to make sure everything is okay, but I haven’t had any scares since.”

She pauses, chewing on her bottom lip. I place my hand against her cheek, using my thumb to pull her lip free, and she leans into my touch.

“That’s…that’s actually why we were out that night. It was the tenth anniversary of my remission. But now that day—the day th at for so long was the best day of my life—is tainted with the memory of the accident.”

I rear back, shocked by that revelation. It’s bad enough that her parents died, but for it to happen on what was such a good day for her?

It makes me feel sick.

It makes me hate that bastard in prison even more than I already do.

“I stole my parents’ attention for nearly a decade, and I don’t think my siblings will ever get past that. I’ve never gotten past it. It’s why up until the accident, I played things so safe. I didn’t want to burden them all any more than I already had.”

“I told you back in January that you aren’t a burden. That still rings true. If your siblings had a problem with your parents taking care of you while you were sick, then that’s on them. Not you.” I tilt her chin up so our gazes connect. “The accident isn’t on you either. It’s on that bastard who drove drunk and hit you guys. Just because you were driving doesn’t make it your fault. It could’ve happened regardless of who was driving. There was nothing you could’ve done to prevent it.” My features harden as I speak, a hint of anger present in my tone from the thought of Logan.

A tear slips past her waterline. “Thank you,” she whispers, smiling sadly before swinging the question back on me. “Your turn. What’s your family like?”

My face shifts as I hesitate. Now would be a perfect time to tell her the truth about my mom’s accident, but I can’t find the words. That history is one I’ve tried so hard to forget, and sharing it now won’t do either of us any good.

So instead, I grit my teeth and swallow. “I don’t have any family left,” I tell her, and though it’s not the full story, it’s still the truth. “I lost all my family when I was twenty-one years old. Colt and Levi are the closest thing I have to a family now. It’s been like that since I met them, and it’ll be that way until I die. I’m okay with that. ”

I’m not. But she doesn’t need to know that.

She studies my expression, her hazel eyes swirling with emotion. But thankfully, she doesn’t push.

“What’s going to happen after this ends?” she asks, a raspiness in her voice.

The question catches me off guard, but I know she’s referring to our arrangement.

The truth is, I don’t know what will happen after we end. When I agreed to the timeline, I barely knew the girl tangled in my arms right now. Now that I do, I can’t imagine ever going back to a time when she wasn’t front and centre in my world.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Let’s just enjoy each other’s company for now,” I tell her, unwilling to admit that the last thing I want is to walk away from her in a few months.

She nods. “I like the sound of that.”

She simply presses a kiss to my cheek before leaning back against me, letting the sound of my heartbeat and the steady feel of my breathing lull her to sleep.

I rub circles on her back, letting myself imagine just for a second what it would be like if when August twenty-fourth hits, we didn’t go our separate ways. If she agreed to be mine for real . For more than just sex and for longer than the timeline we agreed on.

I’ve always been so aversive toward falling in love and being in a relationship, and that still hasn’t changed. But it’s nice to picture myself loving her, even if it’s never going to happen.

Until my phone rings, and reality comes crashing back.