A Love Like Ours

Chapter 32

"It's not, I promise. It's just..." I was too excited to keep it to myself any longer, but also a little afraid that she wouldn't like the idea. "I just don't want you to say 'no' right off the bat, okay?"

"That doesn't sound promising either," she said, but she still sounded pretty amused.

I screwed the cap back onto my water bottle after taking a long sip, smiling as I anticipated her response to the question I hadn't yet asked.

"What do you think," I started, staring at the granite countertop in my kitchen, my heart pounding, "about the possibility of you coming out here next weekend, and accompanying me to the Grammy's?"

There was only silence on the line.

I counted to five in my head.

"Mads?"

"Hm?" she breathed.

I smiled even though I couldn't tell over the phone whether her surprise was the good or bad kind yet. "I want you to come to the Grammy's with me."

She was still quiet.

"Mads?"

"I—I don't know what to say," she said over a gust of air.

"Well... that's not a no," I tried to joke, still very nervous that she wouldn't want to come. "Did you take this long to give Marco an answer?"

"But what about the label?" she asked, ignoring my joke, and I knew that meant her surprise wasn't exactly the good kind. It was the nervous kind. "Are they—"

"I talked to them before I spoke to you," I said quickly, trying to calm her down. "They're fine with it."

The truth was they would rather I appear by myself—it was "better for sales, for my image" if I appeared solo—but she didn't need to know that. I'd fought for this, because it wasn't about them, or even about me—it was about us, about her. She needed to know that I wanted her all the time, in every aspect of my life. When we were together last time, I'd made the same mistake over and over again—the mistake of not letting her be part of this half of my life.

And I wouldn't be making that same mistake again.

"Harry, I—I don't know."

"Why not?" I asked, still too excited about the prospect of seeing her, of making this statement with her—finally—to take no for an answer. "We've been back together for a few months now, we know we love each other, we're more solid than we've ever been... it's the perfect opportunity to do this."

"No, I—I know all that, but..."

"But what?"

There were a few beats of silence, during which all I could hear was my own breathing.

"But... are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm—"

"Because I mean, like you said, we've only been together again a few months, and so many things could go wrong. We don't have to go public yet. Especially since you're gearing up to release the album, and—"

"Mads..."

"But I'm not saying that because I don't want to come with you, cause I do! I really do. I just, I don't want you to do this because you think you have to, or because you want to prove something to me, or—"

I closed my eyes. "Madelyn."

"Yeah?" she said weakly.

I grinned. "Do you think you can come next weekend or not?"