Page 28

Twenty-Seven

Isaac

I ’m onstage. The lights just keep getting brighter and brighter the more I sing. It’s hard to tell where the stage ends and I begin. The crowd and I are one. The mass of bodies is alive with energy, and I’m feeding off them, singing my heart out and dancing with the band.

But then, the stage lights go out. I can’t see the crowd, but I can feel them. They become a mob, and I’m holding the mic as they get closer, their low voices mumbling my name in a deep, terrifying cadence.

I cling to the mic and just keep singing. With my eyes tightly shut, I sing and sing and sing until I run out of song and I forget the lyrics.

The horde is smothering me, surrounding me until I can’t breathe anymore.

“Jensen!” I shout into the mic, begging him to save me. But the moment his name comes out of my mouth, I realize I’ve said too much.

The crowd is angry now, clawing at me, punching me, trying to yank my guitar from my hands.

“Jensen,” I cry, trying to get my instrument back, but they’re too strong and the strings cut my hands as they steal it from me.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, but when I search for him in the crowd, he’s not there. Just hazy visions of faces I recognize—Luke, my mother, Adam, Caleb. They’re angry at me. For reasons I don’t understand, they’re shouting at me.

Someone shakes me, and I spin around to see my father. He slaps me across the face hard, and I start to cry like a child.

“Jens…” I sob.

“I’m here,” the voice says again, sounding close but not close enough.

My father grabs my shoulders and shakes me again.

“Stop!” I shout.

The sound of my own voice jostles me awake. I stare into the darkness, someone else staring back. I panic, pushing him away until I can figure out who is hurting me.

“Baby, it’s me,” Jensen whispers.

I blink again, trying to make sense of his face in my bed. Then I glance around and see that it’s not my bed.

It takes a moment before it all comes back, and I collapse onto the hotel bed.

“Fuck,” I groan. “I’m sorry.”

He comes closer carefully without touching me. “Don’t be sorry. You had a bad dream. What can I do?”

Holding my hands over my face, I’m surprised to find moisture on my cheeks and temples. Shit, was I crying?

Taking deep breaths, I relive the whole thing in my mind. The terror feels fresh and real. The way the crowd turned on me. The way Jensen never showed, no matter how much I begged for him. The anger on my family’s faces.

Where the hell did that come from?

“Isaac, you okay?” he presses.

“I’m fine,” I mutter coldly as I roll out of bed and walk toward the bathroom. I can feel his concerned eyes on me as I leave him in the bed alone. It makes me feel like an asshole.

Once in the bathroom, I douse my face with frigid water. To my relief, Jensen doesn’t follow me. He gives me the space I need because, well, he’s fucking perfect like that.

I run a soft white towel over my face and stare at the man in the mirror. He has dark circles under his eyes. Is this exhaustion? Am I going too hard? But I can’t stop. Not now. Not when everything is going perfectly.

Is it stupid to think of going home to my family at a time like this?

Is it stupid to think of coming out?

It’s like everything in my life revolves around my career, and I want this fame so much I’m willing to sabotage everything good in my life to get it. Maybe that’s why my family was yelling at me. Because I’ve put off going home to them for eleven fucking years while I’ve been out here building a fandom and giving my time to strangers instead of them.

Theo Virgil has it all at the expense of Isaac Goode.

When I eventually come out of the bathroom, Jensen is sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. He looks up at me with dread etched into his features.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks.

I let out a sigh as I walk over to the bed, patting the pillow by my side. He lies down and I immediately crawl into his arms. The moment I show Jensen that I need him, he relaxes. His arms pull me closer and he kisses the top of my head.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I don’t get nightmares very often. It just freaked me out.”

“That’s okay,” he replies. “You don’t need to apologize.”

After a moment, he adds, “Isaac, I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I reply, and even I hear how unconvincing it sounds.

“You’re under a lot of pressure and you’re not giving yourself any time off.”

“I know, but I promise, I’m okay. I can handle it.”

“I regret bringing up your family the other day,” he says, running his hands down my arm. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“That’s the problem. I feel like I can’t do anything I want to. I can’t come out. I can’t go home.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, squeezing me tighter. “First of all, you are not under any deadline to do any of those things. And you know that you absolutely can come out if you want. If you lose fans, then they weren’t your fans in the first place.”

“What if it ruins my whole career?”

“What if it doesn’t?”

I look up into his face. The confidence in his eyes calms me. He’s fearless.

He presses his lips to my forehead and holds me tight against him. “You know that no matter what you choose, you don’t have to do any of it alone. Not anymore.”

Letting out a sigh, I hold him tighter and try to push that cruel dream out of my head. I don’t know why my mind seemed to think Jensen wouldn’t be there the minute I needed him. And I never want to feel that way again.

I wake up the next morning to a pair of lips softly pressed against the back of my neck.

I hum with my arms wrapped around my pillow as Jensen leans into me, kissing his way down my spine.

“Is this heaven?” I murmur sleepily.

His deep chuckle buzzes against my back. “I was just thinking the same thing,” he says as he reaches my boxer briefs, tugging on them with his teeth.

My phone lights up on the nightstand, and I peep my eyes open long enough to see it’s an Instagram notification. Ignoring it, I wiggle my hips from side to side as Jensen continues to spoil me with kisses.

It lights up again.

Maybe my publicist posted some photos from the shoot or something.

Jensen straddles my hips with his stiff arousal against my ass. I groan into my pillow as I shift my weight backward like an invitation.

He lays his weight across my back. “I enjoy waking up with you.”

“I enjoy waking up with you, too,” I reply with a sleepy smile.

My phone is incessantly buzzing and lighting up like crazy on the nightstand.

“Fuck this thing,” I growl as I reach for it with the intent to turn it off. But then I see the notifications. They’re not just from Instagram. There are texts and calls and DMs.

“What the…fuck?”

“What is it?” Jensen asks.

I open my phone and start with the texts. There’s one from my tour manager, telling me she’s sending a car to the hotel to get me. Multiple from my publicist. Even a couple from Lola asking me to check in.

As I sit up, Jensen climbs off me and watches with concern. “Everything okay?”

“I have no clue,” I reply.

I text Lola first because she’s the easiest person to talk to.

What’s going on? I just woke up.

She replies immediately.

Morning, sunshine. Your little performance last night caught some serious attention.

What performance?

Go look at your Instagram.

I quickly open up the app and immediately see myself on the stage. It’s a video from last night of my song for Jensen. What’s the big deal about that? It’s not like I said who it was about.

Scrolling to the comments, I search for answers, but most of it is pretty expected.

Who is Theo dating?

Is it the actress from his music video?

Except for one…

Did you see pics of him with that guy?

Oh, God.

Immediately, I check my tags. And my heart drops. There are candid photos of me and Jensen. Photos of me and Lola. Of me and random guys at bars when I had no clue people even recognized me.

Sitting up, I dig my hand in my hair.

“Breathe, baby,” Jensen says, rubbing a hand up and down my spine.

I’m trying to relax, but it feels like an invasion. It feels like they’ve just splayed open my life and slapped it on a platter for the whole world to see—my personal fucking life.

All this because I said I was in love? No one gave a shit before.

“They have pictures of you,” I say, giving him a terrified look.

The calm in his expression glitches and I see the same look in his eyes I saw that night at Lucas’s house. He’s scared. He’s just hiding it better now. Jensen has been shoving his feelings down for so long, but he’s as frightened as I am. Maybe even more so.

“We’ll deny it,” he stammers as he stands from the bed, feigning confidence.

“Yeah,” I reply, nodding my head.

“We’re from the same town. We’ll explain that I’m an old friend, a preacher, just like your father. No one will suspect anything…”

My breathing sounds heavy as I force air in and out of my lungs. As I meet his gaze, I give him a nod and an expression filled to the brim with forced conviction.

We said we would hide it, so that’s what we’ll do.

But things are different now, aren’t they? Because we’re not just hooking up anymore. We’ve established that this is the real thing. This could be…a forever thing. It feels wrong to hide it now. This relationship deserves better.

I watch as Jensen rushes to get dressed and I stare at him with doubts brewing in my mind. He said he loved me. He meant it. But was I filling in the blanks? Was I imagining that this could be a real relationship, even after he made it very clear that he could not, and would not, ever come out?

Does being in love make a difference?

What is wrong with me?

“What if we…don’t?” I ask.

“What?” He stands up and stares at me with confusion.

“You said it yourself last night. You said what if this doesn’t ruin my career? We have an opportunity to come out and just get it over with before someone else outs us first.”

His shoulders slump and he wets his lips as he readies his reply, although I know what he’s going to say already.

“I was talking about you, Isaac. Not me.”

“What’s the difference? Do it with me,” I say, moving to my knees. “You said you would be here for everything, so be here, Jensen.”

He wants to shoot me down. I can see it in his eyes, but he doesn’t, not like that night at Luke’s house. He won’t run again. I know it.

“Let’s talk about it later, okay? Don’t make any rash decisions today. We’ll…figure something out.”

I swallow down the rising discomfort, and I remind myself that this is not his fault. It’s not his fault that someone conditioned him for so long to be so afraid of coming out. I was too, but not like that.

“Okay,” I reply.

We stare at each other for a moment before he quickly crosses the room toward me and pulls me into his arms. Holding me in a tight embrace, he whispers into my neck, “Everything is going to be okay.”

I don’t believe him, but I try.