“I’m not going to lie. I was hoping you would welcome me back with open arms.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be out, snorting cocaine and banging groupies? I figured you were living the typical rock-star life by now,” she snapped.

“Yeah, I guess I deserved that, didn’t I?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow but said nothing as she waited for me to continue.

“And I assumed it would be obvious why I was here. I’ve missed you.”

“You’ve missed me? If you’ve missed me so much, why didn’t you call me even once over the past six months?”

“Because I couldn’t. After you left, things started to get worse, and I started using more. Then, Eric got the call about the label out in L.A. wanting us to come out and talk to them. My life went crazy from there.”

“I was waiting for Jade or one of the guys to call me and tell me you were dead from an overdose, Drake. All this time, I’ve secretly worried about you, and you couldn’t take two seconds out of your busy life to let me know you were okay. That’s bullshit.”

“At least that means you still care,” I mumbled, feeling like the biggest ass ever. I never wanted to stay away from Chloe, but I had wanted the drugs more than anything.

“I did care, not anymore though. I’ve seen you, so you can go away now.”

“Don’t you want to hear anything that I came here to say?”

“Not really, Drake. You ripped my heart out once already. I don’t need to go through that again.”

“I never meant to hurt you. Honest. You’re the most important thing in the world to me, but my judgment was clouded. I just miss you so much, and I know that I fucked-up.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that, Drake. I already made myself clear back on the bus. I don’t want anything to do with you while you’re on drugs. I can’t stop you from destroying your life, but I can still save mine,” she whispered as a tear slid down her cheek.

I wanted more than anything to wipe it away, but I knew she wouldn’t let me. That wall she used to keep people away was up, and this time it was up for me. I hated to think that I had hurt her to the point where she might never let me in again.

“I’m clean, Chloe. I have been for a couple of months now.”

“What? Why didn’t you try to reach me then? Is it because you finally figured out you could do better than me?”

“You know better than that, Chloe. I love you. Basically, the band and our manager threatened to fire me from the band if I didn’t get clean. I had already lost you, and they were the only things I had left that mattered. I checked myself into a two-month program, and I’ve been clean ever since.”

“So, let me get this straight. You cared enough about the band to go into rehab, but I wasn’t enough of a reason when I walked away from you?”

“No, it’s not like that, Chloe. I knew I was in trouble, and it was just the final straw. I wanted to stay in the band, and I wanted to win you back.”

“How do I even know you’re telling me the truth about all of this? And if it is true, that means you’ve been out of rehab for a month without contacting me.”

I knew she wouldn’t believe me, so I had come prepared with help from Dr. Peters. I stood as I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket, and I pulled a piece of paper out. “If you want proof, then here it is. As for why I’m just now showing up, I wanted to make sure I could handle the outside world without falling back into my old habits. I didn’t want to come back and tell you I was clean, only to disappoint you again.”

She stood up and came a few steps closer to me. She stopped when she was close enough to grab the paper out of my hand. I waited while she read what I hoped was my saving grace. It was my certificate of completion from the rehab center in Los Angeles.

“You really did it then?” She stared down at the paper in her hands.

“Yeah, I did. You were all I thought about while I was in there. I screwed up so bad with you, Chloe, and I want to make it right. I want to make us right.”

“It’s not that simple, Drake. You really hurt me. You let me walk off that bus without even trying to stop me. I’m glad that you got help, but I don’t think I can go through that again.”

“I’m so sorry for what I did, Chloe. I promise you that I will never do anything like that again.”

“How can you be sure, Drake? You’re just starting out in an industry that is full of drugs and sex. Can you really walk side by side with temptation on a daily basis and not give in? Drugs will be easy to get, and women will be lining up for you. It’ll be worse than when we were together. I can’t handle that kind of life. I won’t share you with them.”

“Then, come with me. Stay by my side every night so that you know you can trust me.”

“What?” Her eyes widened in shock.

“I said, come with me. That’s why I came back, Chloe. I want you back, and I want you by my side through all of this.”

“You can’t just walk back into my life and expect me to drop everything for you, Drake. Even if I did want to give us another chance, I have responsibilities here, like school and my part of the rent for this place.”

“So, stay here until you’re finished with school for the year. Then, you can take online classes and come on tour with us. Thanks to me, we’re still in the studio, recording tracks for our first album, and we will be there for a few months. We won’t start touring until several months from now.”

“This is insane, Drake!” she shouted.

“Please, Chloe. I love you. I want to spend every second of my life with you from now until the day I die. I can’t live without you,” I pleaded.

This had gone so much better in my head. While I knew she would be angry, I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to resort to groveling to get her to take me back. If I had to though, I would. I would rather die than spend one more day without her.

“I don’t want to get hurt again, Drake,” she whispered. “I can’t take it.”

I grabbed her and pulled her into my arms. She struggled at first, but I held on tight, refusing to let her go.

“I will never hurt you again, Chloe. Never. Let me prove it to you.”

I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her like I was dying, like it was the last kiss we would ever share because it might just be our last. When I let her go, she might slap me and then never speak to me again. If she did, I wanted to remember the feel of her lips against mine for the rest of my life.

Despite what she’d said, her body responded to me instantly. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me back, showing me just how much she still wanted me. I groaned as her lips parted, and I slipped my tongue inside her mouth, flicking my tongue ring against her tongue in a way that I knew drove her crazy.

She moaned in response before quickly pulling away. “What are we doing?”

“I’m not sure what you were doing, but I was kissing the woman I love.”

“I love you, too, Drake, and I do want to be with you. There’s no way that I can deny that now, but if we do this again, we’re going to take it slow and start over. I don’t know how this is going to work with you being so far away though.”

A smile broke out across my face. If I had known a kiss was all it would take to change her mind, I would have done that first.

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.” I kissed her softly. “But I can’t agree to the taking-it-slow part.”

“Why not?” she asked, confused.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small box. “After I checked out of rehab, the first thing I did was stop at the jewelry store, and I picked this up.”

Her mouth dropped open as I lowered myself to one knee and opened the box to reveal a sparkling diamond ring.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

Before I met Chloe, if someone told me I would be down on one knee, asking the woman I loved to marry me, I would have kicked that person’s ass. Before her, marriage had been nothing more than a trap that others fell into. I was too smart for that, or so I had thought.