Love You Enough

Sixteen

It was about one week later, during their last night of the European leg of the tour, when Lindsey suddenly jolted awake in the very early hours of the morning. As per usual, he and Stevie had come back to the hotel together, even though it had been later at night since they had agreed to join the rest of the band and crew for one final dinner followed by some cocktails at the bar. After a lengthy back and forth in the back of the car and a great deal of persuasion of his part, Stevie finally agreed to sleep in his room where they soon curled up together in bed. They had kissed for a while, talked a little about the final show and the end of the tour before Lindsey must have fallen asleep.

Listening into the deep silence of the night now, he could faintly hear some whimpering and sniffling next to him in the darkness. He turned onto his side and found Stevie to be slightly shaking as she was facing away from him. "Hey.", he said softly, touching the small of her back, "Are you okay?"

Stevie stilled for a moment, then hastily she started wiping away her tears before replying, "Everything's alright. Go back to sleep, Linds."

"You're crying.", Lindsey stated the obvious as he turned her onto her back and took a worried look at the features of her face he could make out in the darkness of the room. "Did I do something wrong?"

Stevie closed her eyes as he reached out to caress her still slightly damp cheeks. "No.", she shook her head, escaping his intense stare.

"Then, why are you crying?"

"I'm an emotional mess, right now. Please, just ignore me. Go back to sleep. It's late."

But this time, it was Lindsey who shook his head. "These past couple weeks were so beautiful. Being that close to you, again... like this, after all this time... And then, finding you to be crying... That breaks my heart, Stevie. Please, tell me what's wrong." His words caused Stevie to cover her face with both hands as she then began to sob in earnest. "Steph..", Lindsey whispered. Seriously worried at this point, he wrapped both arms around her shaking body to pull her against him. "Hey, what's going on? What's making you so sad?"

But Stevie didn't anwer him. Instead, she dug her nails into the soft skin of his back and cried right into his chest. Lindsey closed his eyes and pressed his lips against her forehead, kissing her softly as he held her. "I'm just... I'm....", Stevie stuttered in-between sobs, "I'm so... so.."

"So what?"

"So stupid.", she said.

"What, why?", Lindsey asked, clearly confused.

"Because I knew this was going to happen and-and that's why I swore I would never get emotionally involved, again. And, here we are, now. And I'm so stupid.", she rambled on while tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"What are you talking about?", Lindsey asked, again. He cradled her face in both of his hands and forced her to look at him.

Having to stare into those intense blue eyes of his, Stevie felt all her walls crumbling down right in front of him. "I love you.", the words suddenly tumbled out without having any control over them, anymore. "I'm in love with you, Linds. And this isn't going to turn into anything because you're married. And I'm- I'm so stupid for letting you go all those years ago. And for letting this happen between us in the first place, even though I knew, I was just going to get my heart broken, once again."

Lindsey stared at her with wide eyes, not a single sound escaped his lips as he just lay there with both his hands still holding onto her face, frozen in motion, until he let go of her all of a sudden, and rolled onto his back to look up at the ceiling.

"Can you please say something?", Stevie asked him and wiped away some stray tears. His complete silence was beginning to freak her out.

"I-I don't know what to say.", Lindsey stuttered. But obviously, of all the things he could have said, this had been the wrong thing to say in a situation like this, as Stevie jumped out of the bed and started to put her robe back on to get back to her own room. "Stevie! Stevie, wait.", Lindsey said and jumped to his feet, as well, to walk around the bed and stop her from leaving.