Burning desire

Mackenzie|15

"Where are we?" I ask with a murderous glance because even though I trust him, that doesn't give him the right to drive me out of town in the middle of the night. "Going to a coffee shop", I lift my eyebrows, "couldn't have chosen one in our city?"

He grins at that but answers me, "sorry, I just needed to go somewhere calm. New York is too loud" I get that, so I just turn back to the windshield with my feet shot up on his panel.
The air inside the car is weirdly intimate. The position I'm in like I'm used to this, the way he is nonchalantly with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the window. "She will be loved" by maroon 5 sounds softly in the car and we both sing along to it.

30 minutes later we pull up at a 50's themed diner that looks amazing. We sit and order hot chocolate with syrup pancakes. After the waitress leave, I just look at him with a skeptical look, "so? Start talking" he looks at me surprised by the objective request, with a little fear in his eyes. Good, he should be scared.

"I'm sorry", I lift my eyebrows at that.
"I am sorry Mackenzie. I'm more than sorry and there hasn't been a day since that night two years ago that I haven't punished myself for what I did", he senses I'll open my mouth and just signals for me to shut up. "I know I don't deserve your forgiveness. I know I messed up. I know all of that and believe me I'm not a victim. There are no apologies in the world that will compensate for everything I did to you and all the hurt I brought to your life. I really am deeply sorry and if I could go back I would do it all over again, but I can't. I fucked it all up, Mackenzie. I  had an amazing woman in my life who I loved and I lost her and it's all my fault, I hope that I'll suffer for that forever but right now I'm asking - no, I'm begging for you to give me a chance to make up for all I did. A chance for forgiveness. Please. I know we are terrible for each other and I know you deserve better than an asshole like me, but I am begging for you to give me a chance to prove that I am worthy of you."

I am stunned and overwhelmed. Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let him see me cry I hold on a strong facade for a few minutes in which we sit in silence staring at each other until I ask, with my voice breaking, "why? Why did you do it?" He looks devastated, but answers me.

"I don't know. I thought it was the right thing. Truth is I was terrified, Mack. I was terrified of losing you, and after our engagement, tour came, the media showed up and everything was too overwhelming. I just kept thinking that our time away from each other and with everyone barging in our problems, in our lives would fuck us up. I knew I'd end up hurting you anyway. So it was better do it fast and get away from you as fast as I could. After I saw you cry that night, I knew, I knew you'd never be the same next to me. So I did what I thought was right. I let you go. To fulfill your dreams without me. And I fucked it all up."

I am crying now when I say accusing, "but we were supposed to be there together, Steven. Be there for each other, hold each other through it all. Waking up in that hotel room alone," I sob, "with nothing but a letter and your necklace....that was low."

His eyes are glassy but he looks straight at me when he says with a small voice, "I know. I was a coward and I couldn't face you. God, I was so ashamed of what I did. But I came back, you know. The same day, before the bus tour left. I got to your front porch, Lisa answered the door and she punched me in the face, said I was an asshole, that I didn't deserve you, that she'd just stopped making you cry"

I do recall Lisa getting the door that morning and telling me it was a neighbor. "That night I realized that what I had done would have no turning back. So I let you live, never called. Until I saw you that night and i promised myself I wouldn't pull you down again with my mess, but I couldn't. So now here I am."

I am crying hard in the hotel bathroom. Steven and the band leave tomorrow for their worldwide tour and we will go more than a year without seeing each other. The media is crawling down my neck, calling me stupid names, people are hating me and I can't take it.
I press my back to the cold marble wall, máscara running down my face with the tears. I drag my hands through my face angry. I'm so stupid, so silly. How could I have thought we would be together and the public would be ok? The groupies. Oh god we are doomed. We have been doomed from the start.

I look up at the Harry Winston diamond ring on my right hand. It's breath taking beautiful and ginormous. A lot of people were against our engagement, Lisa and Dane included, but we believed we could do it. Now I'm not so sure.

"Baby? Babe I'm here", Steven is here. I start trying to fix my tears but he opens the door before I have the chance to get up and looks at me  haunted. "What happened?" , he asks, his voice cautious but affirming he would kill whoever did this. Steven pulls me up holding me between his arms, carrying me to bed while cleaning my tears, "please tell me what happened. I can't see you cry"
I give a laugh between sobs, "it's silly. I'm being silly", he looks at me with a hard face.

"It's not silly if it hurts. Please talk to me", I nod before telling him everything about the paparazzi, the media, the threats, everything. When I finish, he looks pale. Yeah, I'm sure he didn't have it coming. "Nate said that could happen", he says before picking up his phone to call his manager, still holding me in his arms. We have no chance, but maybe, maybe our love will conquer it all.

"I'll give you a chance.", he exhales and looks like a weight has been taken from him, "not because you deserve it, but because I need to forgive you. I need this, because no amount of the freedom that you gave me that night got me clean of you." he nods, as if saying he understands.

I swallow my sobs and clean my tears. "I won't come back you Steven, not now, but you can try to prove and maybe, maybe if I'm ready we can try again. But you hurt me a lot and my scars are still opened. You never gave me the chance to have closure."

His eyes are full with sorrow but he nods, accepting, "I will prove myself worthy of you, Mack. But I am okay with this for now", I nod not looking at his eyes. He can't see all my emotions now.

Our pancakes come and we laugh and eat like old friends, a weight lifted from us, but there is something in the air, desire, love, tension, that we choose to ignore.

It's almost a quarter past four when we leave the diner to go back to NYC, and he puts his hands in my lower back in a possessive way when accompanying me to the car. I don't comment on it.

Before opening the passenger seat door he whispers in my ear, making my knees tremble, "I will win you back"

I feel like I just got myself in a dangerous game, and If I don't play well, I will get burned in this desire for him.