No Commitment (Capital Kingsmen #1) - Lisa Suzanne Page 0,23

went away. It’s in the way her eyes brand me with heat and lust and fire like they always did, in the way she turns toward me when she talks even though she’s mad at me for things that were beyond my control, in the tone of her voice as she tries to fight against all those feelings that must be a mix of confusion for her.

“I had to move on with my life. I didn’t know how long you’d be gone. I didn’t know when I’d ever get to see you again. Being with a touring musician...it was never the sort of life I wanted.”

It’s not the first time I resent my career choice when it comes to my relationship with her.

I realize I’m blessed to do what I love and to have a successful and lucrative career. Beyond blessed. I’m grateful for it all. Playing the bass guitar and jamming with my buddies for a living is a pretty fucking sweet deal—when Tommy’s not being a dick, anyway—and making music is my life’s passion.

But at what expense? At losing the one girl I’ve ever really loved? Is that worth it?

If I have to make the choice between playing with Capital Kingsmen or being with Danielle...I don’t know how to make that choice. It’s not on the table, though, so I don’t need to worry much about it.

It could all go away tomorrow, and at the end of the day...would I be happy with how my life turned out if she wasn’t in it?

She hasn’t been in it for two years, and I’m sure as shit not happy. I’m not happy with Tommy. I’m not happy with Capital Kingsmen. I’m not happy about the two albums we need to release in the next eight months or the tours that’ll come with those albums.

But the second I received a text message from her, I felt a tiny spark of happiness again. Of life again.

When I walked in and saw her for the first time in far too long, I transcended happiness and went for pure joy and contentment.

I can’t make the choice between the two. I have too many people depending on me to choose the thing my heart wants. I don’t get to come first, and that’s the life I chose.

If she can’t understand that, then maybe we don’t belong together.

Except we do. I know we do. I knew it when I was seven-fucking-teen years old, and I still know it twelve years later. She thought I was joking every time I asked her to go out with me when I passed her hostess stand twelve times a day. She thought I was being funny because we were such close friends, and then I quit Carne’s when I went off to college and she quit a year later when she did the same and that was it. We lost touch.

But I never stopped thinking about her.

“Even if it was with me?” I ask. I’m showing my cards in response to her claim that she doesn’t want my lifestyle, and it’s scary as fuck. “You wouldn’t sacrifice that picture-perfect future to be with the right man?”

“If I have to sacrifice my ideals, then maybe he isn’t the right man.” She looks me in the eye as she says the words, but it almost seems like even she doesn’t believe them.

“You know we were right together,” I say softly.

She glances away from me, and it’s all there in that one little move. She has to lie. She has to maintain this image like her life is perfect now. And I suppose one part of me gets it. She’s married. She has a husband to go home to, so she has someone else to think about, to love and honor and be true to.

“It doesn’t matter,” she finally says, neither confirming nor denying my claim. “I moved on with my life, and there isn’t a place for you in it anymore.”

Her words stab into me. They’re the death blow, that final one that hurts more than all the rest combined.

She doesn’t look at me. “That’s why I agreed to see you today...to tell you that I need you to leave me alone.”

“You’re the one who texted me,” I point out. “I was on my way home, Dani. I tried to find you, but you blocked me in every possible place you can block a person, and you don’t work at the arena anymore, and I was out of ideas. I didn’t know