Only The Beginning (Rockin' Country) (36 page)

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Authors: Laramie Briscoe

Tags: #Romance, #rock music, #country music, #love, #singing

BOOK: Only The Beginning (Rockin' Country)
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He walked over and enveloped her in his arms. She clung to him, needing to feel the closeness they had earlier. “He’s never going to hurt me again.”

“Damn right.”

“Now, how about we get out of this hotel room and go have some fun? I only have a couple days left,” she grinned up at him.

“Sounds good to me.” He wanted to ask her to come home with him, but knew that she probably wanted to go to her own house and check on things there, see her parents and friends in Nashville. But what he wouldn’t give to have her on the plane with him when they all left. It was just another reminder of the lives they led.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

*  *  *

“D
id you see this?”

The two of them were relaxing in their own cabana on their last afternoon in Vegas. In a few hours it would be time for them to go, but they wanted to get as much time as they could away from all the obligations. She would have to go back to Nashville, and he would have to go to Huntington Beach.

Garrett glanced at the cell phone that Hannah held in front of his face and had to laugh. It looked as if Ashton was retracting his statement and issuing a public apology to not only Hannah, but him as well.

“Harmony is very happy with Reaper and it was wrong for me to try and mess that up. I met him, we talked. He’s a really cool guy,” Ashton said as he spoke with Country Daily.

“Yeah, we talked alright,” he snorted.

“Well at least he realized that he did wrong,” Hannah shrugged. “That’s the first time he’s ever admitted to being wrong about anything. Ten bucks says his management saw his face, asked him what happened, he told them what an idiot he is, and then they had to do something to stop the true story from coming out. That’s just how they work in our neck of the woods.” She shook her head, disgusted with the whole thing.

For a moment, Garrett was quiet, and he struggled with what he wanted to say to her. While honesty was working with the two of them, he wasn’t sure that she was ready to discuss what he wanted to ask her about. “You know that if you ever wanted to talk to me about what he did to you, I would listen with no judgment, right?”

“I know,” she smiled softly over at him. “I’ve never told anybody about what he did to me. The hospital took the pictures, and I left with them before they could ask his name to press charges. That was probably the stupidest thing I could have done, but I was so embarrassed and still scared. He truly made me believe that it was all my fault, that it was something that I asked for. By that time, I was so interested in trying to be perfect for him, that I didn’t want anyone to know what had been happening behind closed doors for months. Not the physical abuse, but the emotional abuse. I didn’t want Shell to find out, or my parents, or my fans. I felt like it was my fault, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. To be honest, I still don’t.”

He reached over and grabbed her hand in his. He really needed to know the answer to this question, but he knew that it would scare him to death if she said yes. “Serious question here, Han. Does my temper scare you?”

She was quiet for a long time, and he wondered if he’d overstepped some kind of invisible boundary. “It does,” she admitted.

That crushed him. He never wanted to scare her—ever. At the same time, he couldn’t change who he was or how he dealt with things, but he could try to be better. “Damn,” he whispered. “I never wanted to scare you with the way I am.”

“You’re just so intense sometimes. You and Jared both. There are times when the both of you have scared me, but that’s not on you two. That’s on me. I know that neither one of you would ever hurt me, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t want to worry you.”

“I can’t change that part of my personality yet. Just know that you being here and being able to tell you little things about what happened with Ashton and you standing up for me the way you did, it helped things so much. I don’t want you to change for me,” she assured him.

“Will you at least be honest with me when I do it then? Will you say ‘Garrett, you’re scaring me’ that way I can back my temper down. Believe it or not, I do have some control over it.”

She knew that he did, and she wanted to prove to him that she could also learn a few things. “When I’m being too clingy and to self-deprecating, you have to call me out on it too. We both have flaws and faults that we need to work on. We’ll do that together.” The promise was implied in the tone of voice that she used.

Since they were alone in their own cabana, she got up and walked the short distance to where he lay on his own lounger. Without asking, she lay down beside him and made herself comfortable. When his arms went around her, she knew this was where she belonged, and the fear that it would change when she went home clogged up her throat. Would it still feel this way when half a continent stretched between them? “I love you,” she told him softly as she listened to the steady beat of his heart.

“Love you too,” he whispered back to her, as he kissed her on the forehead. “We’ve worked too hard at this to let a little distance get in our way,” he tried to make joke of what she was thinking about.

“How did you know?”

“Because I’m thinking about it too, and it’s killing me trying to figure out what we can do.”

Neither one of them had an answer that would completely solve the issues they had with a long-distance relationship, so instead of talking about it, she let him hold her in his arms while the minutes and hours counted down until there were none left.

Epilogue

*  *  *

“Y
ou sure you won’t come home with me?” Garrett asked as he and Hannah stood in the airport, getting ready to separate into two different directions.

“I need to go home and see my mom, sleep in my own bed, see my house. It’s not that I don’t want to, I do, but I feel like I should go do things there too.”

He nodded, knowing that what she spoke was the truth. The fact that he was going home to do those things didn’t escape him; it just made him sad to be leaving her. The past few days had been amazing. He had almost let himself believe that she would be there for him every day. What it would be like if they were married and living their lives together.

“I’m just going to miss you,” he whispered against her ear as he pulled her hips flush with his.

“Now you sound like me,” she laughed, throwing her arms around his neck.

Shell was leaving with Jared immediately for their vacation, and the rest of the Black Friday band was going back to California, leaving her as the only one leaving on the plane to Nashville.

“Can’t help it, I got used to you.”

“I got used to you too, but right now we have two separate lives,” she reminded him.

“I know. I’ll see you soon. Right?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think I’m going to stay away from you for that long?”

“Well, I had hoped not.”

“Then you truly don’t understand what kind of hold you have on me, Garrett Thompson.” She leaned in, brushing her lips against his neck.

It was late at night, and they were pretty sure no one of importance was around. It allowed them to be a little more open than they normally would have been in public. Moving his hand down, he cupped it around her thigh, caressing her lightly. “I hope it’s the same kind of hold you have on me.”

“I’m sure that it is.”

The overhead announcement said that it was time for her to board her flight, and he groaned, pushing his forehead against hers. “You really gotta go?

“I really gotta go. But it won’t be long until we see each other again.”

“I wish that we weren’t based on two separate coasts,” he grumbled.

“Me too, but you can’t make hard rock in Nashville, and I can’t make country in California, so we’re just going to have to work this out.”

Again, she was right, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. Gripping her around the neck, he pulled her mouth to his, kissing her lightly.

She wanted him to deepen it but knew if they got started, they would never stop. She would miss her flight and then just fly on to California with him and probably never look back. “I love you,” she said softly as she pulled her lips back from his.

“Love you too,” he answered. “Just like we’re on the road, huh?”

“Just like that. We’ll do all the things we did before to keep up with each other,” she promised.

“Why does this feel different?” he questioned, not wanting to let her go.

“We’re much more invested in each other now. I mean you’ve beaten someone up for me,” she smiled.

“And do it again in a heartbeat if you need me too.” They called for her flight again, and he released his grip on her.

“I’ll call you when I land.”

“You better.” He dug his hands into her hair one more time and pulled it slightly so that she tilted her head back to look at him. “I’m just a phone call, plane ride, Skype session away. Don’t you forget that.”

“You either.” She leaned up and kissed him along his jaw line. “We’ll see each other soon.”

The side of his mouth tilted. “Not soon enough, but I’ll let you go for now.”

And he did, pushing her slightly towards her gate. When she looked back, he was already walking away. She couldn’t take it, the view of his back as he walked away from her. Nashville would still be there in a month, in a day, in a year—whenever she decided to go home. Her parents would understand, her business could be conducted wherever she chose to do it, but Garrett would only be in one place. That was California.

“Garrett,” she screamed as she left the gate, running towards him.

He turned around, surprise evident on his face. “Hannah?”

“I don’t want to go home,” she breathed heavily, tears pooling in her eyes. “I want to go with you, home is where you are. Nashville can wait, but these early days that we can spend together, they won’t. I don’t want to let this go,” she told him.

He hugged her fiercely to his chest. “Then we won’t. God, I didn’t want to let you go,” he whispered.

“I didn’t want you to let me go either,” she told him, reaching up to kiss his lips. Against them, she whispered, “We have our whole lives to finish what we’ve started here, but we only have one beginning to experience, and I want that experience with you.”

The End

If you, or someone you know, is in an abusive relationship, there is help. Please contact
http://www.thehotline.org/
. There are no fees, no names, no judgment, just help.

Acknowledgements

Allison, who always believes in me enough for the both of us. I couldn’t ever do any of this without you. I’m so blessed that we are close enough that you can be honest with me, because there were part of this I needed honesty about. I will always love this journey for how it brought our friendship back together.

Michael, thank you for letting me listen to hours and hours of Brantley Gilbert and Avenged Sevenfold. I know you love me, even if you make fun of me on a regular basis.

Thank you to the readers, bloggers, and authors that I’ve met this past year. I take a little piece of me with you in everything and you’ll never know how much you all mean to me!

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Sneak Peek of Rockin’ Country 1.5

Coming July 2014

Chapter One

I
t was after three o’clock in the morning when the two of them pulled into the garage of Garrett’s Huntington Beach home.

“I hate that it’s dark and I can’t see the views I know you probably have,” Hannah pouted as she stepped out of his sports car.

“Yeah, too bad we couldn’t get a later flight. At least you’ll be able to see what the inside of the house looks like.”

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