His hands cup my face as he kisses me deeply. I sigh into his mouth, knowing I’ll never know a love like his. That I’ll miss him every second of every day. But it has to be done. Even if my heart gets broken I’ll know it was all worth it.
Chapter Nine
Linc
“Baby, look at this!” I hold up the phone as I spin around the suite. “It’s got two living rooms. In a hotel! We have the whole floor to ourselves!” Everything I say is with exclamations, but from the minute I stepped off the plane, my mind has been blown. Outside of baggage check, a guy wearing a suit and tie was waiting for us. I knew it was for us because he had an iPad with our names on it. He led us to an SUV, stuck all our shit in the back, and whisked us to a hotel nicer than the state capitol–not that I’ve been to the state capital, so I’m making an assumption here.
We’re on the top floor of this bomb-ass place in a suite that has three fucking bedrooms and two living rooms. “We have our own butler, baby. He said that we can ask for anything at any time.”
She laughs. “What outrageous thing did Benjy ask for?”
“An apple bonsai tree.” I flop back onto the couch overlooking the city.
“Why?”
“He said it was the most rare thing that popped into his head at that moment.” Benjy reads a lot of obscure stuff so maybe it is. I have no idea.
“Nick asked for a steak and you…” she pauses and taps her cheek. I can see that some of the pink paint on her nails has peeled away. “You asked for–Is that my doorbell?”
I smile. “You should answer it.”
“Okay. Hold on.” She puts the phone down. I stare at her white popcorn ceiling as she leaves to go answer the door. I don’t hear much for a while and then there’s a squeal and her bright face comes into view again. “Oh my God! Look at this! It’s like an entire garden got delivered.” She repositions the phone so that I can see the giant bouquet of roses. Six dozen of them, to be precise. The whole bouquet is almost as wide as her twin bed. Damn. When they say you can get anything, they really mean it.
“Is this what you asked for?”
“Yeah.”
“You are so–why? You should’ve asked for something for yourself,” she cries, burying her face in the flowers.
“It was for myself. Looking at you smile like this is the only way I was going to get any sleep tonight.” She put on a brave face at the airport, but I knew she was sad as fuck.
“I can’t believe it,” she keeps saying. “Where am I going to put these?”
“Doesn’t matter. As long as I’m not with you, you’re getting a delivery. This is just the first one.”
She pushes the bouquet away and glares at me. “No it’s not. That’s way too expensive. Don’t you know that every dime that the label spends on you, you have to pay back?”
I frown. “Nah, really?”
“It’s true. I did some internet searching.”
“That sounds fucked up.” I look around the hotel suite and my palms start sweating. This place is massive. There’s a dining room that can seat twelve people and a kitchenette that my mom would cry in envy over. “We haven’t signed anything.” I scrub a hand through my hair. Fuck, I need a cut. The bangs are way too long. I can barely see shit. “Can they make you pay for stuff when you didn’t sign anything?”
“I don’t know. That’s a good question. Maybe they plan to charge you in the contract. I hope you get a lawyer.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” she says. Her little lips are turned down. I wish I could kiss them.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you said something.” It sucks I have to cancel the future flower order, but, you know, I don’t mind the cost of the seventy-plus roses at all because that one brilliant smile was worth whatever cut I get from the label signing. “I’ll be more careful in the future, though, cuz I want you to move out here after graduation.”
“You think you’ll be there that long?”
“I don’t know, but I want you with me wherever we go.”
“I’ll have to work this summer.”
“Not if I make enough money. Treat wants us to start doing gigs right away and they pay way more than we were earning back home by a factor of like ten.”
Her eyes widen. “That much?”
“Yeah so while maybe the flowers every day is too much, the bouquet isn’t going to kill me and we should be able to make enough to cover what you could make in Shittsville.”
“It’s Shindale and I’ll think about it.”
“You should think about me.”