And I know—I know he doesn’t actually mean me, but fuck if it doesn’t feel like he’s carving the words right into my poor, battered heart. As if the words are and always have been mine and mine alone, and everyone else in this bar is just background noise.

A drop of condensation from my forgotten beer lands on my thumb, trailing over the grooves of my bone-white knuckles, but I don’t move a muscle. I don’t think I’m breathing as I wait for this moment to reach its peak. As I wait for the world to continue spinning. As I wait for the rock in my throat to dislodge itself, shattering into a million pieces of whatever this is.

Look at me.

I know I have no right.

I know I shouldn’t crave it.

But something inside me—familiar and ancient—is whispering. It crescendos into a pulse in my ears that drowns everything else out but his voice, as the moment where his eyes will finally meet mine rushes toward me with the force and inevitability of a bullet.

A frown burrows between his brows as he seems to scan his eyes over the crowd, searching. He’s now got the guitar pressed to his front, inked fingers strumming expertly over the strings as he harmonizes with Mason. Filling in pieces of a song I didn’t think were even missing. Making it his.

And then it finally happens.

Just as he belts from the deepest trenches of his soul, begging for us to not let the days go by, does his gaze finally, finally finds mine. Flitting over me.

Then back at me.

Then into me.

I watch as the skin between his dark deep-set brows bunches. How his shoulders drop the slightest bit. I watch as something wild and sharp and terrifying flashes across his eyes. Eyes I know to be the color of summer and dirt and pine, even if I can’t see them from here.

He doesn’t fumble.

Doesn’t miss a beat.

If anything, his words grow deeper. Headier.

Just...more.

His inked hand grips the stand of the microphone, letting Mason take the lead on guitar as he bows his head slightly forward. Almost like he has to steady himself.

Maybe it’s just all in my head, but I swear...I swear for one dragged out moment, the guy looking back at me from under his thick lashes is actually singing to me. For me. For us. Spilling secrets between talk of needing me more, and wanting us less, and impossible kisses that will only take us back.

Back to where we began.

Back to where we all went wrong so the cycle can begin again.

But then, it’s over. He’s squeezing his eyes shut, and time’s speeding up, and I’m no longer the center of his fucking world.

And it hurts.

It hurts.