It Must Be Your Love (The Sullivans #11)(79)

“Maybe I needed that before, but I’m not a kid dreaming of glory anymore.”

“You keep talking about glory, but when you’re on stage, it’s so much more than that. When you sing to people, magic happens, Ford. You make people happy. You inspire them. You touch their hearts and their souls with what you do and who you are. I know my brothers weren’t exactly acting like your biggest fans last night at my parents’ house, but you should have heard the way they talk about your shows. And it’s not just because you’re so talented and your songs are so great. It’s because you are so happy and inspired up there that there’s no way it can’t rub off on absolutely everyone in the audience.”

He covered her hands with his, closing his eyes as he moved his face so that she was stroking his stubble-covered cheeks. She could feel the ring between them, the ring that she wanted so badly to let him slide onto her finger.

But she could never forgive herself for stealing him away from the place where he truly belonged.

“I love being on stage,” he finally said when he opened his eyes again so that she could see everything he was feeling. “I would never lie to you and say that I didn’t. But I want to be here for you. I wasn’t willing to give up the road before, didn’t even consider it, though I expected you to give up your life for me. But I need you to know how much I love you, Mia, enough to give up absolutely everything for you, without regret, without ever looking back.”

“Oh, Ford.” She leaned her forehead against his. “I used to think love was all about the grand gesture, red roses, and sunset serenades. But now I know love is wanting you to be everything you’re meant to be and never wanting you to push away a part of yourself for any reason. Not even for me. I don’t need you to run through a burning building for me or to write me a love song to know that your love is real. All I need is for you to tell me what you really want.”

“You, Mia. I just told you, you’re what I really want. Why won’t you believe me?”

It should have been exactly what she wanted to hear, but just as she had with Colbie and Brooke in the bar, she knew in her heart when one of her best friends was simply telling her what they thought she wanted to hear rather than the truth. She would never want her girlfriends to feel that they had to hold back what was in their hearts because they were worried about how she’d react...and she wouldn’t let the man she loved do it, either.

“Of course I believe that you want me, just as much as I want you. But I can handle hearing the rest of it, Ford, hearing what else it is you really want. We’re best friends, remember? And that’s what friends do—they talk to each other and say things they really mean, even if they think it might hurt the other person to hear them.”

He hesitated for a long moment before saying, “I won’t lose you again.”

She knew where his fear of losing her came from. When his parents had wanted him to be someone he wasn’t, and he couldn’t do it, they’d turned their backs on him forever. Obviously, it was what he thought she was going to do to him now.

A lightning bolt jumped in the sky just then, and Mia felt as if it had struck her. Because what if loving Ford didn’t mean setting him free?

What if loving Ford meant never, ever letting him go?

She put her arms back around him and hugged him tightly, the sweet press of their still-connected bodies as sensual as it was comforting. “No matter what you say you want, you’re not going to lose me. I love you just the way you are. You don’t ever need to change for me because you think I won’t love you if you’re not following my rules for how life is supposed to go.” She pressed a kiss to his lips. “Now tell me what you really want, and no matter what it is, I promise I’m not going to go storming off or take my love away.”

“You,” he said again. “I want you.” But then he finally pulled out of her arms. As he stood to pace the tower, the blanket pulled away from his body so that he was gloriously naked as he finally admitted, “I want music.” It sounded as if the words were being wrenched straight from his gut. He took a deep breath. “I want family.” Finally, he turned back to face her. “Everything. I want everything, Mia.”

But even though he was finally telling her the truth, she could see the fear in his eyes as he said, “But I could never ask you to leave your work, your family behind for me. Not when I know how much both of those things will hurt you. I don’t want you to change for me, either.”

Another lightning bolt shot through the sky as she moved to stand in front of him and take his hands in hers. “I already have changed, Ford.”

She hadn’t fully realized this truth an hour ago, had believed there was only one way for both of them to stay true to themselves—by leading separate lives. But now she finally understood something that she’d been too young, too frightened, too overwhelmed, to understand before. Even though her mother had tried to help her see it at dinner on Friday night.

“I know who I am now, Ford, in a way I didn’t know before. When I was twenty-three, I was so scared of how quickly I lost myself in you and your life. That fear of not knowing how to hold on to my own identity made me believe that I was better off without you. But now I’ve finally learned that loving you, supporting you, isn’t going to make me any less. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be nothing more than an extension of you, or a footnote in your documentary unless you pack up all your touring gear in a storage locker in Seattle so that you can be home every night to celebrate one of my deals.”