Page 95 of Between Never and Forever

“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—”