Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

NOAH

O n Gemma’s last morning with me in Nashville, I ordered a big breakfast for us from room service and we sat out on the hotel balcony, sipping coffee together while we waited. With the thick, white complimentary robe wrapped around her and her short hair still damp from our shower, the scene felt so couple-y and domestic that it should’ve made me nauseated.

But it didn’t.

Absolutely nothing about this scared me with her. I’d dated around some before I’d met Gemma, but it had never felt anything like this. Nothing had ever clicked like this with anyone else.

With her, it felt right. It was easy and effortless, and no matter what we were doing, we always ended up having a blast together.

She smiled at me above the rim of her cup. “I’ve had so much fun here with you. Thank you for bringing me along. I kind of wish we had a couple more days.”

“Same here,” I agreed—and I meant it. “To be honest, I’d have you with me all the time if I had my way. Are you sure you have to go to Gatlinburg?”

She nodded. “It’s a tradition. Plus, the booking has already been made and paid for, and the girls will be waiting for me when Mariam’s flight gets in. I have to go.”

I sighed. “Is it wrong that I wish I could come on the girls’ trip with you?”

While I knew I probably sounded really needy right then, I didn’t really care. I really liked this girl and I wanted her to know it.

She grinned and shook her head. “It’s definitely not wrong. There’s space for you at the cabin where we’re going to be staying if you’d like to join us? The girls wouldn’t mind and I’d love to have you.”

“We’ve still got that show tonight,” I said, intentionally wrinkling my nose. “I guess I could skip it, but there might literally be hell to pay if I don’t go.”

Gemma laughed. “Your fans would burn the world to the ground to find me, and then they’d come after me with pitchforks and fireballs. It’s probably not a great idea for you to skip it. You could always join us tomorrow after the show?”

“I can’t.” I groaned, wracking my brain as I tried to come up with a way to make it possible, but it just wasn’t. “We’re booked for an intimate, smaller performance tomorrow night and we’ve got a few rounds of press interviews scheduled to promote the new album.”

“Crap.”

“Yep.”

She sighed but then smiled again. “That’s okay. Our game plan is that I’m coming back here after the trip for our final meeting about the Christmas party, right? I’ll also be here for the event itself. It’s only a couple days.”

“Right.” A couple days that I shouldn’t even have noticed that she wouldn’t be here, but I had a feeling I was definitely going to notice, alright. “What time do we need to hit the road?”

As she sipped her coffee, she peered around her mug to check her watch and groaned. “We’ve got about two hours and I still have to pack.”

Twisting in her seat, she glanced into the hotel suite. “How on earth did we get everything so messed up in just a few days?”

My gaze followed hers. She wasn’t wrong. Our suite was a disaster, but we’d hardly spent the little time we’d had alone together trying to keep things organized.

All our stuff was strewn around the room, our clothes where they’d landed as we’d ripped them off each other when we’d come in last night and Gemma’s makeup spread around on the dresser. Bottles of hair product—hers and mine—were on the floor after I’d swept them off the vanity in the bathroom to make space for her on it this morning.

Her laptop bag. Mine. Folders of paperwork she’d brought along for work. Notebooks filled with lyrics I was working on with a guitar on a stand beside it.

It was us. In a room. Together.

To me, in that moment, it symbolized how entwined our lives had become in these last few weeks, and personally, I’d never seen a more beautiful sight.

I grinned. “I’ll help you pack up. You don’t have to take everything, though. Just what you need for the weekend. Unless you’d rather stay someplace else when you come back to Nashville after?”

Gemma didn’t respond immediately, which sent a pang of worry through me. Her gaze was on mine, her teeth sinking into her cheek. She’d clearly heard me, but there was a flicker of insecurity in her eyes I didn’t like.

“Gem?”

“Yeah.” She blinked hard. “Sorry. Yes. No. Of course, I wouldn’t rather stay someplace else. Are you sure you want me coming back here, though? You’re not getting a little tired of cohabitation just yet?”

“Me?” I scoffed. “No. I meant it when I said I’d like to have you with me all the time, darlin’. Did you not believe me?”

As I asked the question, I got up and strode around the table to her, sinking down on my haunches when I reached her and taking her hands in mine. I felt that insecurity in her eyes in the deepest reaches of my gut and I needed to dispel it.

“Talk to me, Gem. What just happened?”

She stared into my eyes without saying anything for a long beat, finally giving her head a quick shake and smiling. “It’s nothing. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck with me somehow, you know? If you’re over this?—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence.” I brought my forehead to our joined hands and rested it on top of them. “I’m not even close to over this. Literally two minutes ago, I was trying to figure out if there was any way I could come with you just for the weekend because I didn’t want you to go without me.”

I heard her pull in an audible breath, but when I glanced up at her, she was smiling again and the rock of dread in my stomach dissipated. “Okay, then. Do you want to start helping me pack while we wait for our food?”

I shook my head but got back on my feet anyway. Following her into the room, I dutifully helped her gather all her things. Even though I knew why she had to go and that she would be back soon, I couldn’t deny that extricating her stuff from mine felt like I was severing a bond.

It had looked so good all mixed up together. All too soon, her overnight bag was packed for the weekend and everything else had been organized. Before I could even tell how I felt about it, our breakfast arrived and we ate together. Then she started getting ready to leave.

Going to sit down on the bed, I watched her dress, apply her makeup, and do her hair, and finally, I watched as she put on her shoes. My insides got heavier and heavier with each step she completed, and when she finally got up from the dresser, I felt like my organs had turned into solid rock.

“Do I need to call an Uber yet, or are you going to take me up on my offer to take my driver and the bodyguards?”

She chuckled. “I don’t need bodyguards, Noah. I’ll be fine, and I can call an Uber.”

“So can I, though,” I said, pulling my phone out of the pocket of my sweats. “I’m on it. Don’t worry. Let me do this for you.”

A soft smile appeared on her lips. “Okay. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” My gaze hooked on hers, and once again, I wished so damn hard that she didn’t have to go.

Shit, man. Codependent much?

Shaking it off, I climbed off the bed, slid my arms around her hips, and brought my head to hers. “Have a great time, baby.”

“You too.” She smiled against my lips and stretched her arms up to wrap them around my neck. “Tell the others I said to break a leg tonight, and tomorrow night.”

“Will do.” I lifted her clean off her feet and held her to me as I claimed her lips as my own, kissing her with the full weight of the emotions pressing down on me.

How I’d become so deeply attached to her in so little time—or at all—was a mystery to me. At the same time, I totally understood it. Just not on a level I really knew how to comprehend with my conscious mind.

This was a heart thing. A soul thing. My brain had very little to do with it.

She kissed me goodbye as ferociously as I was kissing her. I groaned into her mouth, threading my fingers into her hair and deepening the kiss. My entire body wanted her all over again, and it killed me to let her go, but I did, knowing she had to be on her way.

Slightly out of breath and with a flush on her cheeks that made me hard as a rock, she giggled as she took a step away from me. “To be continued?”

“You know it.” I walked her to the door and leaned against the frame after opening it. “I’m sorry I can’t take you myself.”

“That’s okay. I’d prefer not to get asked if I’m pregnant again anyway,” she teased. “If you’re there, we’re guaranteed to get either that or a different cringey question. It’s better this way.”

“True.” That didn’t mean I didn’t want to be there until the very last moment, though. Even so, I reached out and spanked her, unable to resist the urge while she was wearing jeans that showed off her perfect ass so well. “You’d better get out of here before I drag you back to bed.”

“You have lunch with the band in, like, less than an hour.”

“I know, but they wouldn’t even miss me, and even if they did, they’d understand.”

She laughed. “So would the girls, but we can’t get so wrapped up in each other that we forget about our people and our commitments. See you in a couple days, darlin’.”

“See you.” I smacked another kiss onto her lips, then headed back into the room as she took her bag and strode off to the elevator.

Sighing as I shut the door behind me, I scrubbed my palms over my face and wondered what the hell had happened to my life. I felt like Gemma had taken my heart with her, and she’d only just left. I wasn’t this guy and yet it looked like I was.

Wrestling with what to make of it, I got changed and went to meet the guys at the bar on the rooftop level of our hotel. I spent the afternoon with them before we headed to another sound check and the concert after. As I looked out at the crowd that night though, knowing Gemma wasn’t there, it made me want her even more.

This girl was doing stuff to me and I had no idea how to stop it from happening. Even more concerning, I didn’t know if I wanted to stop it from happening. In fact, I was becoming more confident by the day that Brandon had been right back in Austin.

Gemma was what I’d been looking for, potentially even the elusive one . I just didn’t know if it was the same for her and that? That was the very first thing in all of this that really, truly scared the crap out of me.