Catch Me When I Fall (Falling Stars 2)

With the pads of my thumbs, I swiped the tears from under her eyes.

“I’m going to end him, Emily. I promise you, I’m going to end him.”

She brushed her fingers across my mouth, hope breaking across her gorgeous face. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to enact revenge for me, Royce. I told you because you need to know what I have to come out and say. What this is going to mean for your job.”

“Fuck my job.”

Her voice softened, those fingers tracing my lips, their own brand of comfort. “But I told you for more than that, Royce. I told you because you are the only person I can trust. Because you’re the first person in forever who I feel like understands me. Because you? You are the person I want standing by my side.”

I wanted to be him.

Fuck, I wanted to be.

I wanted to be the guy she thought she was talking to.

“You’re the reason I want to get on that stage each night, Royce, because I want you to see me. I want you to hear my songs because I think you might be the only person in this world who can understand them. I want to sing them with you.” On the last, her voice dipped with need.

With outright desperation.

“Emily.” It was both a plea and a warning.

“Royce,” she whispered back. “Don’t you see it? I found you when I needed you most.”

That feeling rose in the middle of us. Intense and deep and bigger than I ever should have let it grow.

I gathered up one of her hands and pressed her fingers to my lips. “I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that. I wish that I was,” I murmured, searching for strength. For a reason to keep this charade up.

Guilt crushed me under a million pounds of stone.

Obliterating.

Too much.

I had to get out of there before I made this worse. Before I hurt this girl any more than she’d already been.

“You are that person,” she almost begged. “I see it. I feel it.”

She traced her fingertips over the battering going down in my chest.

My head shook. “No. I’m not, Emily. You are too precious for me to allow myself to be another man to do you wrong. But I promise you, Cory Douglas will pay for what he did.”

It took everything I had to straighten and head for the door, my stomach somewhere in my throat and my heart on the floor. Her voice stopped me halfway out.

“Before you walk out that door, Royce, I need you to know something.” She slowly pushed to standing. Her presence slammed me from across the space.

Wholly consuming.

She took a step forward. “Before we sign after the show on Sunday night, before I stand up and take a stance against Cory and risk losing it all, before I put my brother’s future on the line, I need you to know.”

Energy hummed, as powerful as her words. “I love you. I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone before. I know you don’t feel it back, but I need you to know.”

Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.

It screamed in my mind.

A lump grew in my throat, my tongue so thick that I couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t answer.

Couldn’t process what she’d said.

I stepped out and snapped the door quietly behind me.

Darkness consumed me out in the hall.

I stood frozen in it.

Unable to move.

Stuck by the sound of her heart crying out. The girl the loudest song.

Truth.

Truth.

Truth.

And I realized I had nothing left.

Only her.

Without thinking it through, I swung the door back open and pushed back inside.Twenty-OneEmilyShock ripped up my throat when the door banged back open without any warning.

Energy raced, Royce’s presence surging back into the room.

A storm that’d hit land.

Overpowering.

As terrifying as it was beautiful.

I guessed that’s what I felt when he wrapped one of those strong arms around my waist and tucked me tight against the erratic beat of his heart.

Terrified by the intensity of what I felt.

The stunning relief.

The overwhelming joy.

By the realization that I felt more for this man in the weeks that I’d known him than what I’d felt in all the years I’d been with Nile.

He splayed his other hand across my face. Onyx eyes flashed like strikes of lightning in the muted light. “You think I don’t feel it back? Fuck. I love you, Emily. I love you so goddamn much I can’t think. Can’t see. Can’t feel anything but this need I feel for you.”

My heart pressed and pulled and thudded, growing so big inside of me I was sure it was gonna rupture where it pressed against my ribs.

“I love you,” I rushed to whisper back.

“Fuck.” Royce dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes squeezed tight. “Say it again.”

“I love you, Royce. I love you so much more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. You’ve ruined me.”