I knew that statement was truer than ever when I went to my dressing room that night and it was filled with lilacs. Like he thought we’d still make it through, like he wanted to make it through. If I broke his heart again with those contracts, I’d never forgive myself, especially when I read his note.
For my dream and my nightmare. I’ll be watching.
“This is fucking obsessive,” Dimitri grumbled as he shoved one of the vases out of the way to place his flowers down and give me a hug. “My brother is fucking obsessed with you.”
Just then his phone beeped, and he looked down at it before his head whipped up and I saw him glare at the small red light in the corner of the room.
“What?” I asked and then my best friend turned his phone to me.
Dex: Get the fuck out of my fiancée’s dressing room and stop talking shit.
I couldn’t hide the small smile.
“That’s deranged, Keelani.” Dimitri tried to look super pissed, but then he saw me smiling. “You’re just as bad as him. You two have problems, you know that?”
“I’m starting to realize that.” I shrugged, and he pulled me in for a hug.
“I only love you. My brother can get fucked.” He said it to the camera, and I heard his phone ping again, but this time he didn’t answer it. “Olive and Pink coming by soon?”
“Yeah. On their way now.”
Dimitri nodded and then he sat back down. “I’ll wait until they’re here so fucking Frankie doesn’t come bother you.”
I chuckled as I brushed through my hair. “He hasn’t bothered me since…”
“What?”
“Your brother may or may not have said something to him.”
“Finally doing his job, I see.” Dimitri leaned back in his seat and stared at me with eyes a lot like his brother’s.
“What job is that?”
“Taking care of my future sister-in-law.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed at him, but I couldn’t meet his eyes.
And like the best friend he was, he caught it. “Just so we’re clear, I’m your man of honor, not that fucker’s best man. And I get to make a long-ass speech if I want to. You guys have put me through hell.”
“Okay, are you seriously calling dibs on your place in a wedding that’s not actually happening?”
Olive and Pink walked in right then, and he stood. “It’s happening. So, yeah. I’m calling it. I’m the baby brother. I know how it works. If I don’t call dibs, my ass gets left out.”
“You’re the baby, which means by definition you were spoiled and got included in everything,” Olive said.
Dimitri narrowed his eyes at her like he wanted to argue, but then he was hurrying out of the room as another call came in on his phone. He kissed my cheek and said, “Call if you need me.”
Olive and Pink said it with me—“Never if, always when”—like they were a part of our little goodbye phrase to one another now.
Maybe they were. We’d all been getting together so much lately, it had started to feel like something close to a routine, or comfort, or a team. A family I could count on.
And then Jimmy tapped on my door as Olive and Pink started to get me ready for the night. “Ms. Keelani, let me know when you’d like to be escorted to the stage.”
“I will. Oh, and Jimmy”—I needed him to know I appreciated him handling what Dex and I had left in that room—“thank you, and also sorry, for last night. Ezekiel is—”
“Not allowed on the premises. Had I known—”
“You couldn’t have. I was adamant that you let him through. So thank you for listening to me and then cleaning up the aftermath.”
He nodded and backed out of the room quietly.
“Ezekiel Ballister came to your room after the concert?” Olive stopped curling my hair to point the iron at me. Her face turned green.
I shook my head fast to reassure her. “Nothing happened, Olive.”
“What’s Jimmy talking about then? Are you okay?” Then, it was like some realization dawned on her. “Oh, God. Has he come to your room before?”
“Stop,” I told her because I could see her thoughts going fast. “I’m fine. He’d come by, but it’s never been more than that. He never tried anything like this before.”
“But he tried last night, didn’t he?”
Pink set down her makeup bag and asked, “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
I sighed. “Dex walked in on him in my dressing room getting handsy.”
“Oh shit,” Olive grumbled. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about him.”
“Damn.” Pink whistled, but then she started laughing. “Did he try to kill him? I hope so because honestly I know of him. I used to do makeup for another girl. He’s… There’s something wrong with him, and he has enough money that he gets away with being a creep. Serves him right if Dex threw him around a bit. Someone should write a story on his gross ass. I bet they’d find a lot of terrible shit. He’s from old money.”
“How do you know?” Olive had always been a gossip, and I knew she was majoring in journalism. It’s why she was always so good at finding the news about me.
“Because I’m from old money too.” Pink shrugged. “And we’re a fucked-up bunch.”
I studied her after her confession, and it seemed she’d accepted it. “I’m from no money, and I’m trying to come to terms with what I’ve done for the money. I was always nice to Ezekiel, probably too nice.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.” Olive jumped to my defense only because she knew I signed deals with the label for my mother time and time again.
“Most people make hard decisions because they’re faced with hard problems,” Pink grumbled. “What are you doing now that you’ve made the mess of your decision? Are you cleaning it up? Are you stopping the cycle? Because that’s what is most important.”
“I don’t know if he’ll forgive me even if I do.”
We got ready in silence after that because I think both Olive and Pink knew I was too deep in my thoughts to talk about it further. When I went on stage that night, he sat in the same seat in the back. He didn’t take his eyes off me, and it was apparent that I sang to that back row most of the night too.
Ezekiel wasn’t there, and Frankie didn’t bother me at all.
It was Dex and what he’d created for me. A safe place to be myself, to feel him, to realize we’d shared something intimate the night before on that stage and I could sing about it now. I sang every song that night to him; the crowd was merely a witness to it. I stared at him in the very back row, and every song was threaded with sorrow, love, and apology. He’d deserved more from me early on. Yet, he’d shown up in a way no one else in my life really had.
I’d become myself on that stage with him the night before, and I sang about it now. I was angry for what I’d lost, sad for what I could have had, but thankful for what I was getting now. Life was full of hard decisions, but it was how we cleaned up the messy ones we made—just like Pink had said.
There was a moment of silence after I finished the last note before the roar through the audience sounded and everyone stood to clap. The standing ovation went on and on as they chanted my name, a sea of love crashing like a wave onto the stage and into me as if I’d earned it.
I hadn’t yet. But I was going to.
When I went back to my dressing room, Dex stood from the couch he was sitting on, and the lilacs I loved surrounded him. “You did it, heartbreaker. Tonight just changed your career.”
“Did I? Or did you?”
That man’s ego loved a boost because a smile so big whipped across his face, and the dimples I rarely got to see were there before he said, “Want to tell me how you think I accomplished all this?”
“You know.” I shook my head and then touched a small petal of the lilacs sitting on my vanity. “Thank you for the flowers…and for everything.”
“You’re my fiancée. Couldn’t really do less.”
“I’m your fiancée under a contract. It’s a bit different.”
He hummed and stepped close to look at us both in the mirror. “Nope. Same thing. It’s why I’d still fuck you like you were going to be my real wife any day.”
I bit my lip but stepped away from him quickly, because if I didn’t, I’d end up letting him fuck me in my dressing room. “Dex, we should talk about the Trinity—”
“We did. I told you to tell me when.”
I took a deep breath. “I guess sooner is better than later at this point. So, we can go back to the penthouse tonight and—”
“You have off on Sunday. We’ll do it then.”
“Why not now?”
“Because you need sleep, and I still want to fuck you like I like you tonight.”
“As opposed to Sunday?” I lifted a brow.
“I don’t know, Kee. You tell me.” He folded his arms over his chest.
“You probably won’t want to have sex with me at all after,” I whispered out.
“Not possible. Even when I thought I hated you, I still wanted to be with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t forget a love like ours and move on. You just survive without it, right?”
So easily he said it, like we had nothing to be ashamed of. He didn’t, but I did. “Right.” I nodded, and my eyes filled with tears as I stepped into his outstretched arms and then let him guide me back up to the suite.
When we walked in, candles were lit around the lilacs now and I turned to him, confused.
“I’m showing you what it is to be with someone who likes you tonight.” With that, he pulled me past the kitchen and to my room.
I stopped before I even walked in. He’d had it transformed into a literal cloud of lilacs blooming everywhere and tiny little petals were spread over my comforter. “Dex, this is breathtaking.”
Those dimples made their appearance again, and he murmured against my neck, “How about I show you how I can really take your breath away?”
I nodded and understood why he wanted to wait on the contracts. We’d have this memory, this moment, a perfect night after a perfect show. “Unzip my dress, please.”
His fingers danced over my spine before he slowly pushed the metal down and let my dress drop. This time, though, I wanted him as naked as me, so I turned to take off his suit jacket, pull his tie from his collar, and unbutton his shirt.
He stared at me the whole time as my hands shook with nerves. For some reason, this felt like the first time all over again, more intimate, more intense, and maybe more vulnerable. So, I let the words slip from my lips. “You won’t like me after tonight, Dex. I’m sure of it.” He bit the side of his mouth, not responding one way or the other as I pushed his suit jacket and then his shirt over his shoulders. “What will we do, then? Avoid each other until the end of this?”
He leaned close, not answering my question, and murmured in my ear instead, “Go lie in my bed of lilacs, heartbreaker.”
I took a shaky breath and stepped out of my heels this time. Tonight, it would just be me and him. “This is like a fantasy, Dex.”
“Is that so?” He unbuckled his belt as he watched me. I sat down on the bed and stared right back at him. “You have fantasies? Like what? Describe them to me.”
My eyes flicked to his drawer. I knew what I’d seen in there the first night we were together. I also knew I’d thrown them all away.
“Regretting your initial decision?” He pulled the belt from his pants and walked forward.
“No.” I lifted my chin. “If you want to use a toy with me, you can get a new one.”
He dragged a finger over the bare skin at my neck and watched how I shivered. “I don’t need a toy with you tonight. Tell me about this fantasy of yours.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just, you know, you read a book where he sleeps with her on a bed of roses or something?”
“A book?” He caught my eye. “What books are you reading?”
I glanced away, not sure how to describe them. “You know what books. Romance books and—”
“Why read them when you have me?” he asked as he unbuttoned his pants and stepped out of them. He stood naked in front of me, and I drank in how perfect the man was. His skin was tan, his toned muscles so large the veins danced over them as he walked forward to lean over me as I bit my lip. “I’m romantic enough for you.”
“You think you’re romantic?” That had me chuckling. I rolled my eyes and shoved him. He laughed at my question and fell on top of me, caging me under him. “You’re nowhere near as romantic as any of them.”
“Really?” He leaned over the side of the bed to grab his phone from his trousers and then handed it to me. “Show me.”
“Show you?”
“Yeah, I have a reading app. Pull up one of your favorite scenes in these romance books.”
He was so confident that I suddenly had something to prove. “You know every man could be better if they learned a bit of something from my book boyfriends.”
“He’s your boyfriend now?” Dex raised himself up on his forearm to glower over me, but he maneuvered his hips in a way that encouraged me to spread my thighs to let him settle where he wanted to be. His length, hard and big, rested against my sex. “You know you have a fiancé right here between your legs? A book boyfriend can’t do that.”
“A vibrator and a scene from this book can.” I waved the book on the app in front of his face.
“Okay, read me your favorite part.”
“What?” I asked.
Dex rolled to lie beside me and let one of his hands slide over my breast to knead it as he prompted me again. “Read me your favorite part, Kee. Let’s learn what you like. I’m not the teacher tonight. Read me my instructions.”
“Dex, come on.”
“Does he start by sliding his hand up her thigh?” His voice was full of gravel as his eyes focused with hunger on my body, like he was ready to ravage me and give me anything I asked for.
Dex had given me too much already, and I knew tomorrow everything would change. So, I scrolled fast through the book, suddenly wanting to read to him the part where the hero slept with the heroine on roses one night and then they sixty-nined. When I started skimming the section, though, I forgot how graphic the words were, how they pulled a reader in and made them escape so quickly.
“You’re blushing, heartbreaker.”
I gulped as my eyes flew to his, and I turned his phone off. “I’m not doing this tonight. Tonight, you get me in lilacs. You want it or not?”
He snatched the phone from my hands and threw it over his shoulder. Then he took a handful of the lilacs and sprinkled them over my chest and stomach. “I’ve been waiting for this for years.”
“You have not.” I laughed sadly. “I hurt you and you moved on with your ex and other women. Rightfully so.”
He stared at me for a second before he took my hand and dragged it over his ribs. It took me a second to see what he was doing, letting my fingers feather over his tattoo there. It was lilacs and a key, but on the key, etched in the side of it was Kee.
“Dex?” I whispered out his name. “What is this?”
“You were always a part of me, even when I didn’t want you to be.”
“But you… We… You left and moved on.”
“I left, but I didn’t move on. I got you tattooed on me because you were already permanently with me. Might as well have had the tattoo of your memory there too.”
He said it simply, but it impacted me catastrophically. He’d been broken without me too. I wrote songs because I couldn’t forget him. He tattooed me on himself because he couldn’t forget me.
It solidified something in my heart right then: our love was real, even if we’d tried to avoid it, even if we were kids, even if it was surrounded by trauma and wreckage. Our love was there and it survived. Love always somehow survived.
I leaned down to kiss his ribs and then looked up at him to kiss him tenderly. He took my lips in his gently, so gently that it felt just as soft as the petals over my skin. He leaned back after he’d tasted me to take more of the lilacs and sprinkle them one by one on top of me.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful like this.” I saw how he took his cock in his hand and squeezed as he stared at me. My mouth watered at how the head of his dick swelled just for me.
“Let me try,” I blurted out, and before I could stop myself, my hand drifted down to wrap around his hand and cock.
“Heartbreaker, not tonight.” He grunted but he didn’t completely stop me. “I won’t be able to last.”
“So what?” I shrugged and felt some of the petals fall from my body, all of me so sensitive to any touch. “Maybe we could—”
“We could what?”
“I could taste you while you taste me?” I said quietly, so embarrassed that I was actually bringing up sixty-nining after just reading it.
“That’s your fantasy?” He lifted my chin so I had to make eye contact with him.
“Yes,” I answered, because there wasn’t much to lose at this point. He already had the book on his phone if he wanted to look.
“You can sit on my face while you swallow my cock anytime you want, heartbreaker.” He gripped my hips to pull me over him and then maneuvered me around so I was hovering above his face. “You realize that, right? All you had to do was tell me. Any fantasy of yours, you get with me.”
I kneeled over him, staring at his pierced, throbbing cock already dripping with pre-cum from the tip. I wrapped my fingers around him and pumped him once. “I read a lot of books, Dex.”
“Then you know what to do next.” He murmured, “Sit that pretty pussy on my face, heartbreaker. Let me taste how much you want me to lick you.”
I shivered at his command, my body immediately listening as I lowered myself down on him and took his cock in my mouth at the same time. The feeling of him tensing at my touch while I quivered from his was electrifying. My mouth watered around him, as I tasted the salt of his arousal and almost gagged with how fast I took him to the back of my throat.
His tongue lapped at me as his hands kneaded my ass. He pressed me further into his face, devoured me with such relish that I heard how his spit mixed with my slickness, faster and faster.
I couldn’t control how I bucked on him or how I squeezed the base of his cock, because I was as ravenous for his orgasm as I was for mine. I wanted him to lose his mind with me. I explored grabbing his balls like I’d read in my novel and hummed low on his cock. He thrust his tongue into me as he pinched my clit, his muscles tensing.
His thighs shook like mine, his cock swelled just as my clit did from his attention. Then, he let his other hand’s thumb drift to my ass, and he pressed down just as I deep throated him as best I could.
I lost control right as he came in my mouth, his release filling it. I swallowed every drop as I rocked my pussy on his face, orgasming harder than I thought I ever had. I tried to roll away to take on the sensitive aftershocks on my own but Dex rolled with me, lapping at my sex over and over. “You taste like mine, Kee. Like you were always mine and like you’ll be mine forever.”
I couldn’t even comprehend what he was saying. I writhed against him and said okay over and over. I think I fell asleep to it, but when I woke the next morning, I was cleaned up, and he whispered he was going to work but would be back for breakfast.
Going back to sleep felt irresponsible, so I got up to shower. When I got out, there was a text from Penelope letting me know that she’d set up an itinerary for Dex and me to be seen out in public later in the day.
So, we were continuing with his schedule.
At dinnertime, he’d had her write Contract discussion. So to the point and so full of foreboding, I clicked it off and tried not to focus on it.
Thankfully, the doorbell rang, and when I opened it, men rolled in racks of shirts in all shades of purples and one for every other color of the rainbow in worn cotton. Each one had a different text on it. Property of the HEAT; University of HEAT; Hardy University EST. 1995. Property of Dex Hardy had me rolling my eyes, but I also giggled the whole time.
Maybe we could make it through this. Maybe he wanted this just as much as I did.
