Page 74 of Between Never and Forever

I stared at those closed doors for much too long and whispered out later, “Everything I wanted was you.”

ChapterTwenty-Four

DEX

My control was slipping.I’d left my meeting to see her sing. Her text that she was proving herself that day had taunted me into it. I couldn’t resist her even though she was the one thing I should be resisting.

And I’d sat there so confident in myself that I could handle it. Yet, that rasp, that voice, her words… I knew she’d written them.

No one thought of a field of flowers like Kee did. No one could talk about the stars in the skies being fireflies when we’d stared at them together. And that’s when I’d lost full control of my emotions.

How could I shake a love that was a part of me, my trauma, my damn soul? She’d woven herself in, and I wasn’t getting her out. Of course I’d loved her back then, but I fell in love with her now, too, with her heart breaking for me on that stage.

And I wasn’t even sure it was real.

She was a performer. She made millions of people feel what I was feeling. Shattered their hearts and let the tears seep out of them. I was even convinced she was feeling that same emotion on the stage because how else could she eviscerate me?

The residency at Black Diamond was going to change who she was. I could see it already, and I couldn’t risk losing myself in the process. Escaping her and putting distance between us was the only way this would work. That and me disconnecting emotionally. I left her on that stage, running from the feelings that had gotten me in trouble before.

Emotions blurred logic. Love made you weak. Love made you do stupid shit. It’s how I’d almost lost her once. How we’d lost friends. How I hadn’t seen the signs before we got in the car that night.

“You’re not paying attention.” Bane elbowed me during our Zoom call with Cade. To anyone else, his low warning would probably have scared their attention back to the screen.

But Cade was my brother-in-law. And Bane was my business partner, not my boss. And a questionable partner, at that. I’d started to think he was more involved with my brother-in-law than he should have been.

Cade headed up cybersecurity within the government but was also a member of the Armanelli family, infamous for being a part of the mafia. Rumors upon rumors flew of murder, greed, and power. Most of the rumors were true, except my brother-in-law had cleaned up the family name over the course of about a decade now. He was married to my sister Izzy, who I knew he’d kill for, and I’d come to terms with it.

I’d practically let others die to save my little heartbreaker’s life too. And I’d do it again.

Even still, Cade was pissing me off, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him or Bane. My fake fiancée was most likely in my hotel suite removing a sex toy I’d instructed her to endure for hours.

I knew she’d done it too. There was no mistaking the blush on her cheeks during the songs she sang.

“I already know all this, Cade,” I ground out as I stared at him on the screen.

The fucker bounced one of his kids on his knee as he threw back, “Then what am I on this call for?”

Bane raised an eyebrow, glancing over at me with blue eyes that were so clear, they almost looked translucent.

“You’re summarizing the problem when I simply need an answer to it.”

“Do I look like your employee?” Cade’s face showed disgust.

Bane’s eyes jumped back to me.

“You look like the guy who has saved the country once or twice from cyber attacks.” And he was. He had a direct line to the president.

“More than once or twice. But I have the next generation here now. That’s what I’m worried about now. Anyway, your casino’s security is fine. No one is trying to screw with the HEAT empire…or the Armanelli empire for that matter.”

“Right. But something’s off,” I explained. “That small glitch in the system could be—”

“We’re talking about seconds of the day, Dex. If someone wanted to rob the casino, they’d have to literally plan a heist better than—”

“It shouldn’t be plannable. It should be impossible.”

“What he said,” Bane interjected. “It’s not just the HEAT empire, Cade. It’s my name too. The Blacks will not be open to weakness.”

“Don’t you have a team to work on this?”