“I can’t…” Rob muttered, clutching his head. “I can’t think straight, J.” 

The difficulty of staying lucid in his current state was weighing heavily on Rob. The finer details of his vision faded…ebbing and flowing in waves of detail and haze. His hearing suffered strongly, and each passing moment, he wanted to be a sleep, more and more. 

His face was hot and wet with tears. The bags under his eyes grew an ugly dark grey, and the veins near his eyes look more alike a fifty year old than someone half that age.

Flash images of the past flipped by him as he tried desperately to listen to what Jane was saying. Words she said, the feelings she emoted, were all reminding him of the past. The time they were together. The years they had spent in each others company. 

He remembered the times he had awoken in her room—their bodies intertwined across the messy clothes that seemed to never find drawers. The way they’d playfully recoil from each other as they awoke. The soft feel of her skin never quite making it’s way away from Rob’s memory.

He remembered the long night drives during their tour in California years ago—their first inkling of success and of fame. The way she’d rest her head on his shoulder as Austin took them and Sam up to the far reaches of Northern California, and all the way back down to Long Beach. To home. 

And seeing her tear-stricken face now reminded him of a night spent in silence and sorrow. The nights following the loss of Jane’s mother. The empty, hollow rage Rob felt for being so helpless to protect Jane from the tidal wave of her own grief. 

All of these images flashed through his mind with those of the tour. His genuine smile before their first gig. The thought that they were finally in a rock band. Finally working together to make something great from their own individual skills. Being free from the mundane, the normal, and mediocre entirely. The rhapsody of his and Jane’s first few days as a couple. All of it. 

Then the bad flowed in as well. The suffering he had caused her. The guilt that ate at him each day for doing so. The remorse for his relationship with Zoe, and all of the pain that had caused him as well. Each and every action he had committed when he realized the extent of them benefited him none. All of them taken for Jane’s sake. To be with Jane. And even the now-recent pain of separating from Zoe was nothing in comparison to loosing Jane. The one he took for granted. 

If he had to suffer that moment with Zoe on the park bench over again to fix this shit with Jane, he would do it in a heartbeat. In a moment. If he had to relive his night in the hotel room with Anna again, he would. The one-night stand with Adrianna. The cocaine-fueled night with Mia. Even the relationship with Hayden that had catalyzed his own mental enigmatic attitude…he would do it again. 

Because he loved her. 

He fucking loved her. How had it even taken him this long to realize? How could he had waited until it all seemed so pointless to finally come to terms with the fact that he loved her? 

His vision seemed to be fading fast. The morning—even the start of their conversation was beginning to blur. He had to find a way to tell her. Even if he risked never remembering this moment. 

His eyes closed and opened, locking onto hers.

“[i]I love you[/i],” he whispered out. “Why the fuck did I take this long to say it?”

His head slowly rested back down, and he was out cold.