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“The power going out was the best thing that could have happened,” she agrees, her hands covering mine where they rest on her stomach. “Did you see their faces? That girl who cried?”
“I saw yours,” I tell her. “You were glowing up there. Even more than usual.”
She turns in my arms, and in the starlight, she looks almost otherworldly. Her hair is slightly messed from the wind, and there’s still that post-performance glow in her cheeks.
“It felt different tonight,” she says. “More real, somehow. Like we stripped away everything that doesn’t matter and just . . . connected.”
“Everything feels more real with you,” I say, and I mean it completely. “You make me want to be more honest, more authentic. Tonight, when we were singing together?—”
“I know,” she interrupts softly. “I felt it too.”
We stand there for a moment, just looking at each other. The city is dark around us, and it’s quiet except for the distant sound of generators humming to life and the occasional car passing on the street below.
“Quinn?” she says, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper.
“Yeah?”
Her hands come up to rest on my chest, and I can feel my heartbeat under her palms. “Don’t make me a song. Make me a promise.”
The words hit with so much force; they knock the air from my lungs. I understand exactly what she means. She doesn’t want to be another muse, another inspiration for lyrics that’ll fade when the feeling does. She wants to be real, permanent, something that exists beyond the music.
“What kind of promise?” I ask, though I think I already know.
“Promise me this isn’t just tour romance,” she says, her eyes searching mine. “Promise me that when the buses stop rolling and the stages go dark, you’ll still choose me. Promise me that what we have is bigger than the music, even though the music brought us together.”
I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing across her cheekbones. Under the stars, she looks vulnerable and strong at the same time, and I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her.
“Justine Floyd,” I say, my voice steady despite the emotion threatening to overwhelm me. “I promise you that this—us—is the realest thing in my life. I promise you that when this tour ends, I want to start a new adventure with you. I promise you that I’m not going anywhere.”
Her breath catches, and I can see tears gathering in her eyes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She rises on her toes and kisses me, soft and desperate and full of promise. The city is dark around us and quiet except for the distant sound of life slowly returning to normal, but up here, with her in my arms under a sky full of stars, everything feels illuminated.
When we break apart, she rests her forehead against mine, her breathing slightly unsteady.
“I love you,” she whispers. “Not the rock star, not the songwriter. You. Quinn James, the man who holds babies like they’re made of gold and who just played a parking lot concert because he couldn’t stand to disappoint three hundred people.”
“I love you too,” I tell her, my voice rough with emotion. “Justine, the woman who makes me want to be better than I ever thought I could be.”
We stay on that rooftop until the power comes back on, until the city lights drown out the stars again. But even when the world returns to normal, this moment—this promise—remains.
Some of the best things happen in the dark, when all you have left is what’s real.
And this, with her, is the most real thing I’ve ever known.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The hotel key card trembles slightly in my hand as I slide it into the reader. Green light. The soft click of the lock disengaging seems impossibly loud in the quiet hallway lit only be emergency lights.
“You sure about this?” I ask Justine, though we both know the question is rhetorical. We’ve built toward this moment for months. Every lingering touch, every night we’ve stayed up late putting lyrics on paper for us to sing, neither of knowing we were writing a love story. . . our love story. And after tonight’s magical acoustic performance in the parking lot, everything feels different.
This feels like she’s been the right person for me, only we met at the wrong time.
She turns to face me, her back against the hotel room door, and the look in her eyes makes my breath catch. “Quinn James,” she says softly, her voice still slightly hoarse from singing in the cold night air, “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
I push the door open, and we stumble inside together, our lips already finding each other before the door even closes behind us. The kiss is hungry, desperate, months of restraint finally breaking free after tonight’s emotional breakthrough. Herhands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I can taste the lingering mint from her gum and something that belongs purely to Justine.