***Later that night***
Ashton turns off the light to the room and we both lay down next to each other. My back faces him and he wraps his arm around me as he lays face up on the bed. I cuddle my way into his arm trying to keep my body a fair distance from his because I still felt unsure but I wanted to feel his warmth and the strength of his body. I lay there in bed for what seems like forever and I think about what happened tonight and the way it felt to kiss him again. That kiss felt so right but so wrong at the same time, all these feelings I feel are confusing me. I didn't want to feel confused anymore. I feel Ashton shuffle around a bit and I wondered if he was awake or not.
"Ash? Are you asleep?" I whisper as I turn around and face him. I see his eyes open and he only looks at me.
"I'm having trouble sleeping remember" Ashton says expressionless.
"I can't sleep either." I say. He takes his hand and pushes the hair from my face and moves his arm from underneath me and props himself up against the headboard.
"Maybe we can go do something." Ashton says. I sit up as well.
"Where would we possibly go Ash? It's 1 A.M." I say looking down at my hands.
"I don't know I'm just tired of being stuck in one place after the other." Ashton says softly. I take a deep breath in and I get up off the bed. I go into the closet and put on a pair of jeans and I leave the shirt I am wearing on.
"What are you doing?" Ashton asks. I peak my head out of the closet and I see him standing there.
"I'm getting ready to go." I say. Ashton comes into the closest and stands beside you.
"Where do you wanna go?" he asks reaching for a pair of skinny jeans and a band shirt.
"Let's get something to eat." I say and he turns around and stares at me.
"It's 1 A.M. and you want to eat?" he asks confused.
"I'm starving. I haven't eaten much in a few days. You lack sleep, I lack eating." I say walking out of the closet to let him get changed on his own. After a few minutes he comes out and his hair is still messy from laying in bed, the good kind of messy though, the kind that seems to be tousled just right. His wounds have started to fade but I still imagined them. I looked into his hazel eyes, the eyes that were once always filled with joy and shine, and I see emptiness and longing. I wondered what he saw when he looked into my eyes. Did he see the way I imagined being close to him again? Did he see the same emptiness I saw in his? Did he see the words I love you, the words I've been longing to say, scattering across my mind?
"Are you ready ba-" he stops. "Are you ready to go?" he says rubbing his shoulders with his neck. I give him a half hearted smile and he sticks out his hand but I don't take it.
"Yeah let's go". I say walking towards the door.
"Well then." I hear him say behind me. We both step quietly through the hall trying not to wake up the other guys. I click the elevator button and it is taking quite a while since there were a lot of fans staying at the hotel for the concert, staying up all night probably due to excitement, and people were staying in town for Mardi Gras, and they were up late partying most likely.
"Where are you guys going?" I hear someone say behind us. I turn around and see Luke rubbing his eyes.
"We're getting something to eat. Where are you going?" Ashton asks.
"Getting something to eat at 1 A.M.? I was going to get some ice from the ice machine, I have a headache." Luke explains.
"I need to get out of an enclosed area, and Ashton couldn't sleep." I say back. Luke looks both of us up and down and gives Ashton an icy look.
"Be careful out there Dani. I don't want you to get hurt." Luke says as he turns around and starts walking toward the ice machine. The elevator door opens and we step inside and go down to the lobby. There is a small hallway before we get to the lobby and as I step outside I start walking toward it but before I get to far Ashton throws his arm in front of me stopping me from moving.
"What?" I ask a bit annoyed.
"There might be fans out in the lobby, just let me go check real quick." Ashton says as he walks towards the lobby. I always forget that that is something they have to go through, of course they love seeing their fans but sometimes I can imagine it gets frustrating. After a few minutes he comes back.
"Where there any fans out there?" I ask.
"Just a few but they were surprisingly calm. Ready?" he asks. We both walk into the lobby and the fans he was talking about wave at me and greet me. I smile at them and their kindness and I exit the building. The streets are crowded with Mardi Gras people and the loudness is starting to frighten me. I clutch my hands in fists as I keep them to my sides. Then I feel Ashton's hand force open my fist, as he interlocks his fingers with mine. I look up at him and then I lean in close to him and I grip his arm tightly so that I don't lose him in the crowd.
"There's a small place down the street we can go to. I promise it'll be nice and quiet there okay." Ashton says squeezing my hand tighter. I nod my head as he guides me to a small cafe. We squeeze our way through a crowd of people in front of the entrance but once we get inside it is quiet and empty. I guess no one wants to be seen eating a muffin and drinking coffee on Mardi Gras. The waitress tells us that we can pick any table and we pick a table far away from the entrance. Ashton pulls out a chair and I sit down.
"Thank you." I say and he smiles at me.
"Of course." he says sitting down. We are both silent until we get our food.
"Aren't you going to eat anything Ash?" I ask him.
"No I'm fine." he says as he looks down to his hands and he rubs them together. I grab his hands and squeeze them tightly. He looks up at me.
"Please don't be sad Ashton. You can still talk to me." I say trying to reassure him. He pulls his hands out from underneath mine.
"This silence is killing me but I don't want to make you more sad than you already are with the sadness I'm feeling. " Ashton says softly.
"Ashton. Stop. You haven't lost me I'm still here. Ash look at me." I say lifting his head up with my hand. He flutters his eyes. "I feel like we got distant because we never opened up about things like this. So let's start now. It's quiet, private, none of the guys are here to interrupt us, neither of us can sleep anyway. I miss you more than anything Ash. I miss being with you. I miss telling you I lo... I just really want to make this right and it's not fair to put all the fixing on your shoulders. So let's be one hundred percent honest with each other right now. Okay?" I say and he looks at me, his hazel eyes have softened. He grabs my hands and squeezes them. He hesitates to say anything and he looks down squeezing my hands so tight that it almost hurts me. I can see him take a deep breath in. He takes a swallow. "Okay." he says nervously and softly.
He's silent for a moment and I think that he had already forgotten what he was about to say.
"So-"
"I trust you." He says, as if it were a fact. He looks up at me through his eyelashes and licks his lips. "You know that, right?" He asks. I nod and give his hand a reassuring squeeze. His hands were getting sweaty and he was starting to worry me. I knew he was hiding something all along but I didn't want to push him, I thought he would tell me when he was ready. "I know you've noticed that I've been hiding something from you." He looks at me and then glances down to my hands in his before looking back up. "And I know you've been patient, which is something I never could have done." he says. I tilts my head to the side, where was this going? "I think you kind of caught on a little at the beach." He stops and looks at me again nervously. I nod my head as if to say 'go on' and he continues. "I've never been 100% sure of myself. I've never felt like I could be me before I met the other guys. And I know they've helped me so much in my confidence but the one thing they could never really help me with was to feel sure of myself." He looks down at his shoes. I feel horrible having completely ignored this problem. I should have seen it. "Until I met you." He finishes, looking back at me.
"What?" I ask quietly, confused. He scootches closer to me and slouches in his seat, still looking up at me. "You've helped me more than you could ever know. You're sweet and humble and confident about who you are."
"I think you've got that wrong. I'm still learning who I am. And I will keep doing so for years to come. I'm not perfect." He shakes his head while smiling.
"You don't understand. To me, you're exactly that. Every little thing about you, I love. Every little thing you've done and every little thing that you will do, I will love. You've taught me to look at myself and learn. I've never been sure of myself but when I'm with you, I know I'm in the right place. I know I'm with the right person. I feel like I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. With you, I'm sure. With you," he pauses, blinking once, "I'm home." Your mind goes blank. How do I reply to that. Of course I felt the same, he was my rock, my anchor, it was just difficult at the moment to express those feelings.
"I-"
"Don't feel like you need to say anything. I know how I feel. Thanks to you I'm sure of how I feel." He smiles a little but then the smile fades. It's replaced by worry and sadness.
"But…" I say, now getting extremely worried. That wasn't it. That wasn't what he was hiding. "Ashton, what else is there? There's something else, what is it?" I ask placing my hand on his leg and shaking it a little to get his attention. He was still looking down as he spoke, "Before our date at the beach, I got a call." He looks up at me and I freeze.
"And. Who was it.?"
"I don't know, they didn't say."
"Well, what did they say?
Ashton moves his hands down on top his legs and he rubs them up and down as if he is trying to wipe the sweat away from them. He fidgets his legs bouncing them up and down. I wanted to grab his hands and hold them in mine but I couldn't.
"It's in the past it doesn't matter." Ashton says quietly.
"No Ashton stop. It's not in the past if it still bothering you. Stop pushing this stuff away. We are being honest with each other." I say agitated.
"I'm sorry I'm just good at pushing things away. I've pushed everything away my whole life. And I accidentally ended up pushing you away." Ashton says sadly.
"Then pull me back in." I say grabbing his hands underneath the table and locking them in mine. They were hot and sweaty and I could feel them shaking. I feel his leg start to shake even more than it was before and I see him squint his eyes shut.
"I didn't recognize the number or the person talking on the other end." he begins. "I asked who it was but they said nothing. I heard someone talking to them almost like someone was whispering to them and then they spoke." his voice was starting to shake. My heart is pounding fast, what could this person possibly of said to him. "They said things in short sentences. After every pause they made I heard the other person whisper. The person on the phone said that sooner or later the band won't need me anymore, sooner or later my contribution won't matter." I felt tears welling up in my eyes. "I didn't say anything back. I wasn't in the mood for fighting. The person continued and said that I was selfish for being happy and that they liked me better when I was sad and lost. But then-" he pauses and he looks up at me and his eyes are red. His body has become still. To still.
"But then what Ashton?" I say holding back tears.
"But then they listed a bunch of my insecurities, things I had only told a few people, and then they said that I was going to lose you, that you were going to slip away because I always push people away. They told me they were hoping for that" He stops and pauses. "I thought maybe protecting you from the other boys and keeping you by my side would stop me from pushing you away but I guess it didn't work." Ashton gets up from the table taking his wallet out of his back pocket and throwing a twenty dollar bill on the table. "That should cover it." Ashton says. I wasn't quite finished but I had the feeling he wanted to go back to the hotel. I get up and I reach out for his hand, at first he hesitates, but then he takes it and he holds it tight. As Ashton opens the door to the cafe the loudness of the streets has gone down a bit but there were still alot of people around, drunk people. Ashton grips my hand tighter and tighter and I look up to his face and he looks angry.
"Ashton?" I ask.
"Sorry it's just talking about that phone call just gets me agitated." he says firmly. We both reach the hotel and the lobby is thankfully empty. We walk down the long corridor and we both hop into the elevator. I haven't said a word to Ashton about what he said about the phone call. I didn't want to reply back in some cafe in New Orleans, I needed to talk to him somewhere more intimate. The elevator door opens and wee both walk down the corridor and then once we walk past the other three guys' room I can hear them talking.
"What are they up to?" Ashton says as he knocks on the door. "Guys?" he asks. Calum opens the door smiling and laughing.
"Hey you two how was eating?" Calum asks happily.
"It was fine. Nothing special." I say looking up at Ashton who looks down at me.
"Oh. Okay then do you guys want to come in?" Calum asks.
"No we're fine Calum I think we're just going to head to bed." Ashton replies back.
Then I see Luke come up from behind Calum.
"Nice to see you guys didn't get lost in the crowd." Luke says and Calum walks back into the room to talk to Michael. Ashton squeezes my hand tighter and tighter almost hurting me again. I look at Ashton's face and it is that same face he was making in the street on the way home. That face of anger.
"How was-"
"I told her about the phone call Luke." Ashton cuts Luke off. Luke's eyes become wide and he looks to me and back to Ashton.
"I umm-"
"You think we're ever gonna find that guy who called me, Luke?" Ashton says once again cutting Luke off. Luke's face becomes more relieved but it is still tense and red. Luke looks to me and then back to Ashton.
"I don't know. I hope so." Luke says quietly. Ashton tugs me away from the door leading me back to the hotel room. I glance over my shoulder and I see Luke running his hands through his hair in frustration.
"You told Luke about the phone call before you told me?" I say pulling my hand away from Ashton's grasp.
"It's complicated." Ashton says opening the hotel door. He goes and lays down on the bed hanging his legs over the edge. I take a deep breath and I was going to let that comment slide for now. I go over and sit criss cross on the bed above his head and I put my hands on his shoulders and I rub them gently. He looks up and gives me a small smile.
"Now that you were honest with me about one thing. I have to be honest with you about something." I say running my hands down his torso so that I an leaning in close to his face and I kiss him on the forehead. He sits up and rubs my cheek with his hand. It felt good feeling his light, gentle touch again.
"What is it Dan?" Ashton asks softly grabbing onto the hand on my lap and rubbing my palm softly with his thumb.