I wake up to my head throbbing, my eyes heavy and swollen. When I go to rub them they're sore, the skin below my eyes and nose rubbed raw from wiping away endless tears and blowing my nose so much last night.
Last night, not long after Addison's visit and I stopped crying, Alex packed our bags and made some calls to arrange a private plane back to Nashville. He said we needed to get out of New York, and I could tell he was worried about his mother and Chris coming to find us.
We got into Nashville around nine o'clock last night, and as soon as we landed I turned on my phone, my screen blowing up with calls and text messages from friends and family—more importantly the boys and my dad. I spent countless hours on the phone with my dad and the boys once I got home, assuring them that everything was fine, though it was all far from fine. I knew they didn't believe the lies spreading about me, but my dad was livid that the world was viewing me that way. He insisted on rushing home to be with me, but I convinced him and the boys to go on with their show tonight and just come home tomorrow instead, there was nothing they could do about the situation anyway. The damage was already done.
It was heartbreaking hearing the anger and the fear in my dad's voice. I don't think I've ever seen him that upset before. But it was even more heartbreaking to blatantly lie to him about everything that's been going on and what all happened two years ago. He still thinks Alex is the one to blame.
I still didn't tell him the whole truth last night—about how Chris initially made my life a living hell and is still out to get me—and Joe and Zack kept their promise on not telling him, because if he knew I know he'd end up in jail with assault or murder charges. For right now, my dad is confused about everything and thinks this is just one horrible misunderstanding I got caught up in.
Usually, my dad never keeps up with the media and tabloids, but the only reason he found out was because so many family members and friends were reaching out to him to ask if the story was true. My dad was appalled by their questions and even more so by the articles being published, calling me a mistress.
I ended up staying on the phone with my dad and the boys until nearly 2:00 AM last night to try to explain things and convince them I'm ok so they don't worry. The last thing I need is to make them worry about me and get them tangled into this mess.
While I was on the phone with my family all night, I didn't know until after I hung up with them that Alex was on his phone calling his publicist. She promised she'd do all she could to try to prevent anything else from coming out, but this story is like a wildfire, blazing quickly and mercilessly.
Cautiously opening my eyes, letting them adjust to the light, I turn my head to read the clock on my nightstand. It's just past two in the afternoon, and Alex is sleeping soundly next to me in my bed. This is the first time he's really slept in days.
I carefully remove his hand from my waist, trying my best not to wake him. I'd stay with him, but I know there's no chance I'll be able to fall back asleep—not that I slept much last night anyway. I maybe got two hours of sleep in total between tossing and turning all night, feeling restless, unable to shut out the negative thoughts.
Climbing out of my bed, I pad across my room and out into the hallway, making sure to softly close the door behind me so Alex can sleep. He's finally getting some rest after all that's happened to him the past few days, sleeping for nearly ten hours straight now.
I walk out to the living room, standing in the middle of it with my hands on my hips, feeling anxious and restless. Spotting our suitcases in the corner, I kneel down in front of mine, itching to do something to make myself feel useful and find some sort of distraction from my taunting thoughts. I roughly tug at the zipper, pulling it around the border, and it whines out sharply in the silence, causing me to flinch and slow down my movements.
Sitting on the floor, I pull out everything from my suitcase one by one, making two piles of clothes: worn and unworn. After separating the two, I stare at the piles of clothes for a long time before just scooping them both up in my arms and shoving them in the washing machine, programming it to the correct settings.
Feeling exhausted but wired, I sit down on the floor in front of the washing machine, watching the clothes spin around the circumference. In a trance, I bring my knees up to my chest, trying to focus on the hum of the machine, but not even that can silence all the thoughts in my head and the gut wrenching feeling in my stomach.
After Addison showed up to Alex's condo last night, I felt like my whole world came crashing down on me. Scratch that—the whole world came crashing into me, like a sudden blind head on collision, knowing my name once again but for a totally different reason this time.
Before I was just Addison's assistant, but now the whole world knows me as a whore, a homewrecker, a... mistress.
Feeling sick, I let out a groan, flopping down onto my back and covering my face with my hands.
Even though it's only been a few hours, everything has gotten worse. Much worse. More "incriminating" photos have come out of me with Mike—some photo shopped to make us look closer than we actually were. And then there are the low quality pictures of him walking out of clubs with dark haired girls that could pass as me from a distance, and of course the media is playing them off as me. Then, to top it all off, there's the "inside sources" that give details all about our supposed affair.
Alex hasn't seen any of this yet. It all came out this morning around ten o'clock, and I didn't have the heart to wake him and show him. He's had enough on his plate the past couple of days, and I'm not going to disrupt his first few hours of real sleep after being mental and physically drained and beyond exhausted.
I feel my eyes start to burn, and I mentally curse myself. I need to stop crying dammit. I need to stop worrying over it. But how do you even begin to not worry when the whole world views you as a mistress? It would be one thing if this was some silly high school rumor floating around. I could handle that, but this is the whole world—millions of people I don't know— we're talking about, hearing a nasty and completely untrue rumor about me.
Hot, angry tears spill from the corner of my eyes and run down my temples and into my ears. I feel so embarrassed and helpless, like a sitting target, knowing there's nothing I can really do. It's not like I can just go out and release a public statement to make everything better. No matter what I say or do, the media will always twist it around and paint me out to be a bad person. So much damage is already done that I can't even bring myself to try to fix things, and it's beyond frustrating knowing that even if I did try to fix everything not everyone would believe me anyway. I'd just be wasting my breath and drawing more unnecessary attention to myself.
The washing machine's loud whirling and slight thumping fades, and I hear the drum drain before the machine beeps out, signaling that the washing cycle is done. I realize that means I've been laying on the floor for fifty minutes, but now I don't even have the energy to get up and switch the load to the dryer.
"Joslyn," I hear Alex's raspy, sleepy voice just above me. I didn't even hear him come out of my room.
My muscles instantly tighten, and I immediately feel stupid and embarrassed by having him catch me laying on my living room floor, having a pity party for one. And of course that only seems to make me cry more, making me feel even more pathetic.
"Joss," I hear him kneel beside me, and he places his hands on my forearms, thumbs stroking, but I refuse to remove my hands from my face. "Come on, Joss," he murmurs softly, and he slides a hand behind my back and the backs of my knees, effortlessly scooping me up off the floor and carrying me to the couch where he sets me in his lap. "Well fix this," he promises, holding me tightly to him and pressing his lips to the top of my head.
I bury my face into his shoulder, hiding, trying to stop my tears by holding my breath.
"Shhh, it's ok. It's ok to cry," he assures me, knowing that I hate crying in front of people and that I'm holding back right now.
"Why didn't you wake me?" he asks gently, running a hand up and down my back, but I can't answer, hiccupping back tears. "Did you get any sleep?"
This time I manage a small shrug and he sighs, pressing another kiss to the top of my head.
We sit on the couch for a while until my stomach rumbles, even though I'm far from hungry. But Alex insist that I eat, to get something in my stomach since we both have hardly eaten, so he calls and orders a pizza from my favorite local pizza place he must have remembered. Shortly after he hangs up from ordering, his publicist calls, giving him all the updates and they both chat, trying to come up with some sort of plan for damage control.
Thirty minutes later, there's a knock at my front door, and I know it's the pizza delivery. Wiping under my eyes, I stand up from the couch and trudge over to the door.
"Joslyn," I hear Alex call my name from the kitchen. I look over my shoulder to just catch him removing his hand from covering the receiver of his phone before digging into his back pocket for his wallet. He extends it out to me, but I shake my head. "Take it," he mouths, giving me a look that tells me not to argue with him.
I walk over to him, taking the leather from his hand, our fingers briefly brushing. He gives me a small smile before turning around to continue his conversation with his publicist, and I head back to the door.
Opening his wallet, I stop dead in my tracks just a few feet from the door. In the clear ID pocket where his driver's license should be is an old picture of us. It's a picture Shay snapped of us not too long after she found out we were together. In the picture Alex is standing behind me with his arms wrapped around my middle, leaning in over my shoulder to kiss my cheek while I beam at the camera.
Instinctively, I pull the picture out of the slot to inspect it further, and my heart pounds in my chest when I see that there's a blue paperclip hanging from the edge. My mind automatically flashes to the night on tour when we first snuck out to get ice cream together. I stood out on my balcony and threw paperclips at his balcony door to get his attention, and he decided to steal the little piece of blue metal from me, refusing to give it back. I remember finding it once in his suitcase long after that occasion, not believing he held on to it. And this can't be the same paperclip, right? It must be a coincidence. There's no way he would hold on to something so insignificant all these years later.
I flip the picture over to find that the paperclip is holding a folded, worn, crumpled up piece of paper to the back of it. With shaky hands, I carefully unclip it and unfold the note, nearly gasping when I realize what it is.
At the top of the small piece of paper is a hotel logo and below are three little words in my handwriting. This is the note I sat down and wrote Alex the morning I left at the desk in his room, but I quickly regretted it, crumpling it up and throwing it into the trashcan under the desk so he wouldn't find it and have any false hope and come looking for me. I can't believe he found it.
Three sharp knocks on the door bring me back to the present, and I quickly scramble to open the front door, finding a bored, and slightly annoyed, pimply faced teenager standing in the hall holding a pizza. "Thirteen fifty-seven," he says, smacking his gum between his teeth.
I quickly pull a twenty dollar bill out of Alex's wallet and tell the teen to keep the change. Carrying the pizza over to the kitchen, I set the box on the island along with Alex's wallet, the picture, the paperclip, and the note.
I place my palms flat on the counter, bracing myself, still not believing he has all these things in his wallet. I thought he hated my guts. I thought he just forgot about me, wrote me off. But why does he still have these things? What does it all mean?
"Sorry about that," Alex says, coming up behind me. He lets out a sigh. "That was my publicist on the phone, she—" he stops mid-sentence, and I turn to look at him. His eyes are wide and his jaw is slack looking at the items I have pulled out of his wallet.
I swallow past the lump in my throat, my eyes burning. "You kept them?" I whisper.
His mouth opens and closes a few times, and he stumbles over his words before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "Yes."
I feel my bottom lip start to tremble, and a tear falls from my right eye, running down my cheek. "Why?"
"I think you know why."
Without a second thought, I spin around and it takes me three long strides to reach him. I grab his face in my hands and lean up on my tippy toes to plant my lips on his. Alex doesn't miss a beat, grabbing my hips and pressing our bodies together, sliding his lips just as eagerly and fervently against mine, feeling so right. In this moment it seems like nothing has changed—but somehow everything has changed—and he still feels like he's mine.
Alex grabs the back of my thighs, lifting me up and carrying me over to the counter, setting me on top of the surface. He stands between my legs, his lips still soft and commanding against mine.
After a few minutes we break apart, breathless. He leans his forehead against mine as we both try to catch our breath, swiping away a few of my tears. "Shh, baby, don't cry," he pleads, pecking my lips a few more times.
"You kept them," I repeat, still holding his face in my hands. "You found my note?"
He lowers his head, looking pained. "I found it while trashing the hotel room. I knocked over the desk chair and the trashcan went tumbling over with it, and a crumpled up piece of paper rolled out. I don't know why, but something inside me told me to open it." He looks up at me, his eyes wounded. "Why did you throw it away?"
I smash my lips together to hold back a sob, shaking my head. I can't believe he found it and kept it after all these years. "I didn't want you to come looking for me."
"Baby, did you really think I wouldn't come after you anyway?"
I look down at my lap, not wanting to answer his question.
Alex places his finger under my chin, tipping my head up to look at him. He looks conflicted, like he's debating whether to ask me something or not. "Did he—did Chris—really make you leave?"
I feel my bottom lip tremble uncontrollably, and a sob rakes out of my chest as relief washes over me, knowing he's actually starting to believe me. I nod my head, and Alex immediately hugs me to him tightly as I cry into his shoulder.
"Baby," he whispers, like a sigh into my hair. "Joss," he says my name adoringly, surely. He pulls away to look at me, his blue eyes looking a little brighter but glossed over with tears. "Why didn't you tell me?"
I shake my head as more tears spill from my eyes. "I couldn't tell you."
He brushes some hair out of my face. "You know you could tell me anything."
I shake my head again. "He threatened me, Alex. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone he booked me a one way ticket back home. Especially you because he knew you'd fight for me. He threatened to ruin my career if I said anything."
I see anger flash through Alex's eyes, and he grits his teeth. "I never would have let him do that to you."
"I know. But he assured me your career would take a nose dive if I stuck around as a distraction, anyway. And then he played on my insecurities, telling me how I was just convenient, and you could have any girl you want," I continue, unable to look him in the eye.
He takes my face in his hands, making me look at him. "You're right, I can have any girl I want," he says, making my heart stop momentarily, preparing myself for rejection. "And I only want you."
My heart immediately melts and I fling my arms around him, burying my face into his chest. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," I cry. "I didn't know what to do. I was scared. You had the whole world in front of you and I basically had nothing. I didn't want to ruin my career or hold you back either. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought ultimately I was just going to hurt myself rather than drag the both of us down by doing what he said. I'd thought you'd just forget about me eventually."
"I could never forget about you," he declares, holding me tight. "And I'm sorry too, for not believing you when you told me the truth. I get it now."
"Still, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault," I cry.
"Hey," he says sternly, pulling back and taking my face in his hands. "This is not your fault, you hear me? He did this. He made you leave despite knowing you were the best thing that ever happened to me, because of his own damn selfish and greedy reasons. You did nothing wrong, baby. You were given an impossible ultimatum. I understand that now," he assures, placing a soft kiss on my lips.
His lips linger on mine, slow and sweet, the both of us communicating our apologies in the softness of our lips.
"Fuck I missed you," he mumbles against my lips. "I missed you so much."
"I missed you too," I admit, and he snakes his hands beneath my thighs. I wrap my legs around his torso as he secures me to him, lifting me off the counter. Reattaching our lips, he walks us backwards down the hall towards my room.
"Is this ok?" he asks, his back pressing into my bedroom door, opening it.
I can't help but smile, nodding my head, the tip of my nose brushing against his.
Alex smiles wide, turning and gently laying me down on my bed. He slowly climbs over me, his body hovering over mine as he leans down to kiss me again. I place one hand on his cheek, the other on his chest over his heart. He deepens the kiss at the feeling of my touch and begins to rest his weight in his hips, keeping me pinned beneath him—not that I mind. I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon.
His hand travels to my cheek, sliding down my arm to land on my waist. His fingers sneak under the hem of my T-shirt, seeking skin. Eventually, I help him lift my shirt up and over my head, his eyes darkening, drinking me in.
"You're so beautiful," he murmurs, quickly reclaiming my lips with his, his kiss and touch so gentle that they're almost tear-jerking in their tenderness.
Our lips barley depart, unless it's to remove clothing or place a swift, sweet kiss to a new piece of exposed skin. We both take our time with each other, getting reacquainted with each other's bodies. I can tell we both want to get this right, to get as close as possible and make up for all our lost time, the both of us wanting to show the other how much they mean to us.
"I love you," he assures me before we go any further, staring deep into my eyes, searching for any signs of hesitation. "I never stopped loving you."
The corners of my mouth twitch up, and I lean up to press my lips to his. "I never stopped loving you either."
He smiles, leaning down to reclaim my mouth with his at the same time he reclaims my body, sealing my breath and my heart.
I clutch onto his shoulders to steady myself as his kisses along with his movements grow hungrier and needier by the second. His rhythm never falters until we both hit our highs and both of our bodies go limp.
Alex slightly rests his body on top of mine, his weight comfortingly pressing me into the mattress. His forehead rests against mine as we both fight to regain our breath, panting against each other. He drops his head to my shoulder, his lips brushing my collar bone as my fingers reach up to toy with the damp curls at the nape of his neck.
With one final kiss to my shoulder, he lifts his head to look at me, giving me a lazy smile before rolling over onto his back, bringing me with him. I fling an arm and a leg over his body as he pulls the covers up and over us, and I rest my head on his chest.
"I love you so much," he whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of my head while his fingers trace lazy circles on my back. "I'll never love anyone the way I love you," he vows, making my throat clog with emotion.
I place a kiss to the center of his chest. "Scouts honor?"
His chest lightly rumbles with a chuckle. "Scouts honor."
Ok so my heart really hurts... but, like, in a good way?
Anyway, AHJKSSDJKF! Sorry, that's literally all my brain can process rn. lol
If you liked this chapter please vote and comment your thoughts down below! I'd love to read them! <3