Page 101 of Between Never and Forever

“There’re too many people, and my watch keeps sending alerts on sightings of us. It means people are going to keep coming.”

She sighed and leaned back to stare up at the sky. “Sometimes I just want to be us. Us before what we are now.”

“And instead, you’re becoming something even bigger.”

“Or maybe I’m paving a way out.” She turned to stare at me. “What if I only wrote songs? Had other singers come in to sing them for my show?”

“Is that what you want?”

She breathed in and out and then she said her next words with finality. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. And I know you won’t believe that later. But believe me now. It’s all I ever wanted.”

I threaded my hand in hers and kissed her over and over. We lost ourselves up in the sky, and when we came back to reality, I pulled her close. “Smile for the cameras.”

Our security pushed through the crowd but coming off the wheel proved to be difficult. They were too close to me and definitely too close to her.

“Keelani, can I get your autograph?”

“Keelani, you traded up from Ethan Phillipe to a Hardy. What’s it like?”

“Keelani—”

Her name was being screamed from every direction, but she kept her head down, like she knew the drill. Like she’d done this a million times before. She looked up at me in resignation. “If we don’t talk, they’ll get worse.”

“You’re not going to talk to them when they’re like this. It’s out of control.” I’d miscalculated. I’d thought I would be able to handle them all.

I’d put her in danger.

They screamed at us as we hurried down the road, not giving them an answer to anything. My fear of her being hurt grew and grew. Security pushed us through, but it wasn’t happening fast enough, especially when the questions were getting meaner and meaner because we wouldn’t look at them. “Why are you with him? Why aren’t you coming out of the Black Diamond?”

“Did Ethan do something wrong?” another screamed.

“Were you together years ago?” one guy shouted.

The questions came so fast from everywhere. “He saved you from a car crash, didn’t he? You were drinking that night together.”

I saw her visibly flinch with that statement and tried to pull her close.

“Why are you with him when he caused an accident that killed your friend?”

That was the one, the question that snapped something inside of her.

She turned with a fury I hadn’t seen in her until now. Gone was the Keelani they knew, and in her place was the woman they’d hurt. Kee always felt everything too much, a lot like me, but I’d built up walls in the media on this topic. And she’d been able to get on a stage and sing away her pain. Here, she couldn’t. Here, she took the assault on her character until it was too much.

“What did you just say?” I let her respond to them because everyone needed an outlet, but I didn’t expect her to grab the camera and shove it in their face. “I was with him then and he saved us. He saved us when it was my fault. You can write that everywhere. And now you can get the hell away from me.”

The cameraman stumbled but he got right back in her space, and his face was bright red with anger. “You little bitch.”

When he lunged for her, there was no question about what was going to happen. The man’s eyes widened as he saw me step forward. I heard Kee yell, “Don’t, Dex.”

I punched him hard in the nose anyway.

I never acted out with the press; they didn’t bother me anymore. Yet, I’d seen how they bothered her, saw her starting to panic, and I was being fucking alerted that her heart rate was up even while she was with me.

She was mine, and I protected what was mine. Always. To every and any extent.

I probably shouldn’t have taken the camera strap around his neck to then constrict his airway and tell him to back the fuck up the next time he came near my fiancée, but I did that too before my security escorted us away and held the crowd back. They kept their distance now anyway.

They would learn. Whether we were inside a HEAT property or not, we would not be fucked with. I would not allow it.