Page 18
Chapter 18
The Compound
Delilah
I step out of the studio, carrying mine and Rae’s overnight bags, all packed with dirty clothes since we stayed last night, too.
“Let me get those,” Damien jogs toward me, looking all … mine.
“I can’t believe you came.”
“Time’s the most precious commodity.” He winks. “Not gonna miss things if I don’t have to.”
Sally .
“It sure is.”
Mom.
I laugh softly.
“What?” he smiles.
I shake my head. “Too heavy.”
“I can carry it.”
“Not gonna make you pick up what you just put down.” I smile sadly.
“Sally,” he acknowledges.
“Her, and then it spiraled to Mom, and then a wow, Dad doesn’t factor and how unfair is that? He was a veteran. That’s one of the most noble?—”
“Too young to remember that hurt,” he says, opening the door, revealing Rae already curled up in the back seat with a hoodie bundled under her cheek, using it as a pillow, and Dolly tucked in snug, sleeping.
He sets the bags in then quietly closes it before pulling me into a hug and kissing the top of my head. “Missed the hell out of you.” Then he opens my door, and I breathe him in—soap, jet lag, the faint scent of leather and laundry. It makes my knees weak in a way I’m too tired to pretend not to notice. “We all need sleep. Hit my place immediately?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
Inside the truck, I stretch my legs and kick off my shoes, curling my feet up beneath me.
Once he’s behind the wheel again, he glances over. “Tired?”
“Exhausted. You?”
“Got an hour on the plane. I’m good. You should close your eyes before the sun rises—it’ll trick your brain into thinking you slept some.”
“Oh yeah?” I tease. “And where’d you pick up that little gem?”
“Learned that in the minors,” he says. Then he pauses, eyes darting to me like he just remembered he’s not supposed to bring that up.
I catch it instantly and smirk. “Relax. I know you have a past. We all do.”
He opens his mouth—maybe to explain, maybe to apologize—but I cut him off with a raised brow and a drawl that’s all southern sass. “Just make sure you never bring it to my doorstep, or my vagina.”
He chokes. “Jesus.”
I grin. “If you think I’m messin’, tune in to some good old Miranda Lambert. Or Carrie. Maybe a little Kelsea Ballerini.”
He’s shaking his head, laughing under his breath as he shifts gears. “I’ll play along ’cause you’re cute as hell. Noted: country girls don’t play.”
“Damn right,” I say, settling into the seat with a yawn. “We go wild.”
“But understand the thought of you hurting, even that scar from falling off the porch, catching fireflies, I feel that. If I hurt you, it would flay me open, and I’d bleed out for you.”
“Jesus, Damien.” I take his hand and kiss it. “I was playin’. But you understand, we’d still be fake if I didn’t already see that in you.”
“I thought it was my dick.”
“You give your mouth too little credit.”
“Not sure how or when this is appropriate, but you should know I’m falling so damn hard and fast for you. If you’re the kind that needs a heads-up—heads-up. One day soon, three little words are gonna come out of my mouth, and it don’t matter that some may think it’s too soon—they don’t know my heart. I do.”
“I … I …”
“Close your eyes, Songbird, before that sun peeks up.”
So I do, with a smile bigger than Tennessee spread across my face.
***
I wake when I feel cold air creeping in, brushing over my face and down the front of my sweatshirt. My eyes flutter open just in time to see Damien’s arm stretching out the driver’s side window, fingers tapping at a keypad mounted on a black iron post.
The gate creaks open ahead of us—smooth, silent, automatic.
Holy. Freaking. Shit.
Beyond the gate is a winding drive, long and tree-lined, disappearing into the kind of quiet that feels intentional. Like money built this kind of stillness. ’Cause it did.
I hear a small gasp and twist in my seat to see Rae stirring, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she peers out the window.
She blinks. “He said his house like this isn’t a whole ass?—”
“Mansion?” I offer.
“Estate,” she counters, voice still hoarse from sleep. “This is an estate. ”
Damien chuckles.
“She’s not wrong.”
“You know how many times I had to smile at a camera for this?” he jokes.
“We learned that night one,” Rae states but in awe as she continues taking it in.
The drive curves again, and then flattens out to reveal a house that looks like it was built to be in a country music video—white and black timber and a wide wraparound porch, lit up just enough to look golden and warm, not flashy. There’s a barn in the distance, and another structure tucked farther back that might be a guest house, or maybe just his version of a tool shed.
He pulls into a garage that is bigger than any home I ever dreamed of. Inside, it’s pristine and feels oddly empty, even with a Harley, an ATV, a small tractor, and an old farm truck I’m immediately in love with.
“Is there a pool?” Rae asks, sitting up straighter, pressing her face to the glass.
“I don’t open it until May, but yeah.”
“I’m never leaving here,” she sighs.
I catch him grinning.
“Let’s get inside, get some sleep.”
“Uh-huh,” Rae says as she opens the door.
“Gym is in here. It’s sacred. You wanna use it, you get trained in how it all works,” he says, pointing to a barn. Then he points in another direction. “Beyond that building is a batting cage—same rules apply.”
I stall, and he takes my hand. “Sleep then tour?”
“Yeah … okay.”
Closer to the house, a shimmering pool cuts into the landscape—sleek, modern, the water bluer than the sky. Loungers line one side, and I can already imagine Rae and Harlan there in the summer, laughing with drinks in hand. There’s even a little firepit tucked nearby, half-surrounded by Adirondack chairs that practically beg for flannel blankets and late-night confessions.
And just past that, framed by scaffolding and sawhorses, is a smaller house taking shape. “A guest house?”
“Yeah. Almost done.”
“Loretta is going to love it.”
“I hope it can convince them to move this way,” he says as we head up the porch stairs.
I look back at Rae, who’s waiting patiently for Dolly to finish peeing, and she mouths, “ Oh my gooooddddd .”
Inside is stunning until I hear growling, hissing, snuffling, snorting, thumping, and scratching.
“What the hell is that?” I cry as Dolly starts yapping and Rae is running back out the door.
“Yeah, about that …” Damien laughs. “I have a kind of pet.”
“What the fuck is a kind of pet, Damien freaking Donovan!” Rae yells from the porch.
He disappears for half a second, and when he comes back out, he’s holding what looks like a bundle of striped fluff with a face.
A tiny. Freaking. Raccoon.
Its paws are curled around the collar of Damien’s hoodie like it owns him. Its little nose is twitching. Its ears are flicked back, but it doesn’t look scared—more like it’s judging us.
Rae gasps like she just saw Jesus and a clearance sale at Sephora at the same time. “Shut. Up. Is that?—”
“It’s a raccoon,” I deadpan.
“A baby raccoon!” she shrieks, already stepping back inside, completely forgetting she just ran screaming out the same door.
Damien shrugs as he squats down like this is completely normal. “Found him after the Trenton series. He, uh, got separated from his mom. She, uh, didn’t make it. I couldn’t just leave him.”
I stare. “You’re telling me this house has a home gym, an in-progress guest house, a professional kitchen, a porch big enough for a wedding, and now a rescued raccoon?”
“Technically, he’s a squatter,” Damien says, like that makes it more reasonable. “But I call him TT.”
“TT?” Rae echoes, reaching out and petting the little thing like he’s a kitten in a rom-com. “Tiny Terror?”
“That’s the one.”
Dolly, to her credit, doesn’t bark again. Instead, she wobbles up on her puppy legs, sniffs TT’s foot, and pushes her whole face right in his belly like they’re long-lost cousins. TT just … lets it happen, like he expected it.
“They’re friends,” Rae whispers.
Dolly yips once, tail wagging.
TT grabs her tail like it’s a tug toy.
And just like that, the two of them are a blur of fuzz, and squeaks, and zoomies across the hardwood floor, knocking into furniture and sending Rae into fits of high-pitched squeals.
“Okay,” I breathe out, looking around the room—the guest house taking shape outside, the baby raccoon currently being chased by my dog, Rae standing, starry-eyed, in the center of a house that smells like cedar and cinnamon.
I glance back at Damien, who just smiles like he’s seeing this all the way I am now— the beginning of something big.
“I like it. It’s amazing.”
He pulls me into a hug. “Glad to hear it. Now, I need to feed the trash bandit, and we all need sleep.” He nods toward the stairway. “Four rooms up there. Pick whatever you want.”
“Where’s yours?” Rae asks.
“Down here.”
“Walls thicker than they are in the hallway at ours?” She asks.
“Oh my God, Rae, really?”
***
“I don’t know how you could ever leave that place,” I say … again, as we pull away from the curve after dropping Rae off at our place to head to our surprise date.
“It’s lonely when you’re out there all alone, since I met you.” He brushes his lips across my knuckle.
I laugh. “There’s no way that place is lonely with TT keeping you entertained.”
He shakes his head. “Would have told you about the damn thing, but Doc mentioned the survival rate wasn’t good. Now it seems we come as a pair.”
“Single raccoon daddy Damien. I like it.” I wag my brows.
He chuckles, and I notice we’re driving toward Music Park.
“Are we …?”
“Going to a concert for our first big date?” He nods. “Yeah.”
“You don’t like—” I pause.
“I don’t dislike it. I don’t like how one song made me feel guilty for not being the man I was raised to be. But now I get it was because I hadn’t met the girl I was supposed to be that man for.”
My head is spinning from the onslaught of the Damien swoon I’ve been floating on since he showed up at the studio … for me when we pull up to the gate.
“Evening, George, my spot free?” he asks the security officer.
“Sure is.”
He leans back. “Want you to meet my girl. Delilah, this is George. George?—”
“Delilah Monroe.” He smiles. “My daughter is your biggest fan.”
“Aw … Tell her thank you. Hope to one day meet her.”
“When she has her first show, I’ll slide you tickets.”
“Appreciate that.” George smiles.
He pulls forward after George waves us through, and the moment the gate swings closed behind us, something settles in my chest..
“You okay?” he asks, hand resting on the gear shift, thumb brushing against mine like he’s checking if I’m still breathing.
“I’m fine,” I say, but it comes out too soft to sound casual. “Just … surprised.”
“By?”
“You.”
He glances over, one corner of his mouth lifting. “In a good way?”
“In a dangerously good way.”
He laughs, low and warm, and the sound threads through me like a song I never wanna forget.
We park in a private lot tucked behind the stadium, his name on the pass, a security team already sweeping the area with radios clipped to their shoulders. Someone nods toward us, and Damien nods back like he’s done this a hundred times. Only, this time, his hand finds mine, steady and easy, and doesn’t let go.
“C’mon,” he murmurs, voice brushing the shell of my ear. “Let’s go see what music feels like now.
***
Inside, the crowd is a pulsing wave—swaying, clapping, boots stomping against metal risers and concrete, all of it vibrating in my bones. The lights flash warm and golden across the stage, catching the dust in the air like glitter.
Damien’s hand hasn’t left mine since we stepped out of the truck. Not during check-in, not through the crowd, not even when a group of teenage girls whispered, “ Oh my God, that’s him ,” and then, “ Oh my God, that’s her ,” like we were some kind of local legend couple born in the glow of stadium lights and breakup songs.
We settle into our seats, tucked just far enough off the side of the VIP section to feel private but close enough to see the sweat on the lead singer’s brow. Rae would be screaming next to me if she were here. I tuck that in my chest and save it for later.
I glance at Damien. He’s not watching the stage. He’s watching me. Eyes tracking every move—the way I mouth the lyrics of Luke’s “When It Rains It Pours,” the way I shift with the rhythm, the way my hand rests on my thigh, beating time against the denim. His gaze is soft, open in a way that’s deeper than before.
He pulls me closer without a word, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling my legs across his lap. I sink into him like it’s where I belong—his hoodie zipped halfway up, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek.
The crowd fades for a second. It’s just us.
He presses his lips to the top of my head and doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
***
We wait for the crowd to thin—his suggestion—I don’t mind sitting here like this with him one bit.
When it’s apparently thin enough, he sets me on my feet and takes my hand. I don’t question that he’s leading me—he knows this place like it’s home.
When he stops between dugouts and turns to me, I don’t know what to expect, but it’s not him taking my face, and it’s not him saying, “I love you. I know it, I mean it, and I won’t stop saying it, because being anywhere with you feels better than home.”
The kiss is the slow kind, one, and then another, and another, and finally, I get enough of a break to tell him, “I love you, too.”
Because I do, and I do it unafraid.