Page 47 of Between Never and Forever

“I do. I sound deranged.” At least I was admitting it out loud.

“Exactly.” She turned and smiled at me. “You sound like a man who cares.”

“And I shouldn’t.” I took in a deep breath, and she nodded. We were aiming for the same goal.

“It’s okay. I was jealous of your girlfriend last night too.” She chewed her cheek. “We need to work through that.”

“Want to work through some of it now?” I asked, looking down at the strings. I unthreaded them with purpose, and the scrap of clothing finally loosened enough that she could get it off.

She glanced over her smooth shoulder and licked her lips. She knew exactly what I meant by that statement, and my cock hardened just staring at her. Keelani wasn’t only beautiful. She stood in my room half naked, and it made my damn knees weak with how fast and hard her appearance in the light of day struck me. She was fuller in the hips and breasts than I remembered, but her skin had stayed perfectly sun-kissed. Every curve of hers was mouthwatering, every facial expression distracting, and every movement mesmerizing. Whatever God was up there had blessed her and cursed and condemned me with the sight of her.

“I don’t think screwing around is going to help us, Dex,” she murmured.

“It’s the one thing that helps me always.”

“Right.” She gulped, and her eyes seemed so innocent as she asked me, “How?”

“How what?”

“How does it help you?” I saw the blush rising to her cheeks. And then she cleared her throat. “I haven’t… Well, I haven’t experienced any of this before.”

Jesus, I wanted to corrupt the fuck out of her. I wanted to be the one to stain the blank canvas that she was, make her my own and only mine. It wasn’t healthy though. “I’m aware you haven’t,” I ground out.

“So, well, maybe you could help me.” She offered up the idea like it was a good one.

“Help you how?” I asked even though I shouldn’t have. I should have left the room right then, backed away from her and saved my sanity.

“Well, I don’t know. I’m trying to… I want to change. I’ve been this person who hasn’t done a thing, Dex. I’ve been doing what the record label wants me to for years. I was a freaking virgin. And what if I can find out who I am and experience all this while I rebrand. Become who I want to be with you helping me. You could…teach me.”

“Teach you?”

She sighed and shrugged her tiny shoulders before walking over to her rolling wardrobe rack and pulled at some of the fabric with one hand while the other held up her bralette. “I’m inexperienced, Dex. If I could figure out who I am—”

She might not have been saying it outright, but I was going to end the idea right then and there. “We’re definitely not maturing you so you can sell fucking sex with a rebrand and the type of voice you have,” I ground out. She could have done that for sure with the rasp in her voice. She always had a rawness underneath all the bubbly music she sang. “You have more to give the world than that.”

“You think? I seem to recall you saying I am what I’ve been faking to be.”

“You couldn’t hide the gift of your voice under anything pretend, Kee. When you sang down in that garden to me, you came alive. I fell in love with…”

“With what?” she whispered.

The words clogged in my throat. The heartbreak and pain of losing her, seeing her here, remembering what we’d been and what we’d lost all stopped me from speaking the words.

I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter. The past between us can’t matter. Justkeep the damn room,” I said, stepping back and away from her, away from the honesty between us.

“But Dex—”

“And if you want me to teach you something, learn something about me first. I’m not here to help you any more than I already have. I don’t want to help you at all.” My voice held finality, and I walked away like I didn’t care.

I wanted to not care. I needed to try. I’d try everything to rid myself of her.

ChapterEighteen

KEELANI

He wasn’t givingme a compliment, but it felt like one. Dex was being honest.

I went to bed that night in a new place with Dex’s smell all around me even though he wasn’t there.