RHYSON IS AS RELUCTANT TO LEAVE my body as I am to let him go, but he finally does, stroking one wide palm over my leg, over my knee, my hip, my arm. The leisurely exploration of lovers, tinged with love and possession. With the tip of my finger, I trace an invisible heart over his thigh thrown carelessly over me. I don’t care that it’s heavy. I only care that he’s mine.
The rain has finally come, ting-tinging the tin roof above us. The storm’s breeze breathes through the wind chimes over the door outside, teasing them to tinkle in the quiet country night.
“Let’s stay out here.” I look up from his chest, my fingers tracing the striking angles of his cheekbones and the full lips. “I don’t want to sleep on the couch.”
“You could sleep in your bed and I could sleep on the couch.” His laughing eyes and smirk tell me he knows good and gosh darn well I’m not sleeping without him the night before he goes back to LA. He just wants to hear me say it.
I sit up as if to go.
“Okay.” I swing my legs to the floor and start to rise. “Sounds good to me.”
He grabs my wrist, gentle and firm, one hand splaying across my hip.
“Look at you calling my bluff.” The husky laugh behind me skitters shivers over my spine. “You know you’re not getting out of here before morning.”
I smile at him over my shoulder before settling my back against his chest. Our thoughts meet in the silence. It’s amazing how perfect silence can be with the right person. His fingers trace my spine and over my shoulders.
“I had moonshine today,” he finally says.
I turn over so I can see the smile I hear in his voice.
“Mr. McClausky?”
“Yep.”
“And how was it?”
“It was hot going down and went straight to my head.” One palm cups the side of my face. “Reminded me of you.”
“Ha-ha-ha. Very funny. That stuff’s too strong for you city boys. A few more sips and I would have had to carry you home.”
“Oh, I would have loved seeing you trying to carry me.”
“I’d figure it out.” I drop a kiss on his lips, pulling back to grin when he would deepen the kiss. “So eager.”
I send my fingers exploring the line between his abs.
“What’s all that land for beyond the backyard?” He toys with my hair spilling onto his chest.
“That’s Mr. McClausky’s land.” I sigh. “For now, at least. I’m not sure he’ll be able to keep it. Property taxes. He’ll probably sell a good chunk of it off in the next year or so.”
“Would he sell it to us?”
I look up at him, my fingers stilling over the hard muscles under my hand. He’s looking down at me.
“What do you mean ‘to us’?”
“Us, you and me. We could build a place out there. I mean, we couldn’t live here year round, but we’d have a place close to Aunt Ruthie. We could include a home studio, so if either of us ever need to record, we wouldn’t even have to leave the house. And the kids could—”
“Kids?” The word pops out in a higher octave. My heart hiccups between beats.
“You do wanna bear my children, right?” He frowns a little, but I can tell he’s messing with me.
“Rhyson!” I sit up, twisting around to face him. “Stop acting like we’ve talked about all of this before. It’s . . . it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal.”
“We have talked about it.” He shrugs. “Kind of. We kind of have. Maybe I’ve thought so much about it, it feels like we have.”
I’m blindsided by all of this. That he’s been thinking all of this. I mean, yeah, once or twice he’s alluded to our future, but this is so concrete. This is a plan.
“Can I tell you something without you freaking out?” He waits for me to nod a little dazedly, even though I’m halfway to freak out town already.
“I dream about our little girl.” He laughs and shakes his head. “I mean, I know it’s not actually our little girl, but it’s the same girl every time, and I know she’s ours. She’s so real that I miss her when I wake up.”
I’m almost afraid to ask questions in case this little girl becomes as real to me as she is to him. In case she starts haunting me, too.
“In your dream, what . . . what does she look like?”
He’s slow responding, taking me in, his eyes becoming more tender every second I wait for him to answer.
“Like you. She looks like you.” A self-conscious laugh accompanies the shrug of one shoulder. “And I guess me. She has my eyes, but they tilt like yours do. She has dark hair. I guess she’s whatever my imagination dreamed up a combination of the two of us would look like.”
I don’t know what to say. His words have stolen mine. They’re so sweet. He can be so sweet, his love like a warm blanket that enfolds me completely. Tears fill my eyes. He sits up, too.
“I know we just got back together, that we haven’t been together that long.” He takes my hand between his. “I hear all those excuses you and everyone else will give me. Just because it’s not the right time, doesn’t mean it’s not right. When the time is right, I want to make this permanent, Pep. What we feel now, what we feel every time we’re together, I’m never ever letting it go. You know that, right?”
I can’t look away from those gorgeous grey eyes. Now that he’s said it, I can’t shake the image of a beautiful little girl, running around, this perfect meshing of him and me.
“Pep, you know that, right?” His fingers weave into the hair at my neck.
I nod, still a little dumbfounded. There are no words for the sense of rightness burgeoning inside me. If we felt right before, his declaration, his plans, his dream of our future solidifies my absolute devotion to him and commitment to us. I can’t speak, so I lean into him, taking his lips between mine.
“Can I ask you another question?” he asks against my lips.
He’s melted me into a pile of gooey submission. I’d give him just about anything right now, so I nod.
“What’s your deal with Malcolm?”
I pull back to stare at him.
“Seriously, Rhys? That’s what you want to talk about now?”
“We have to.” He catches my chin and won’t let my eyes go. “We can’t talk about our future without talking about this deal. You collapsing, that can’t ever happen again. And I’m telling you Malcolm won’t change. He’ll keep pressing you and pushing you past your limits. He’ll disregard your health and well-being for his ends, and I can’t have it.”
He shakes his head.
“I won’t have it, Pep. He told me at the hospital that you’re locked into a bad deal with him. That for the next two years he owns you and there’s no way to get out of it.” The concern in his eyes unravels my defenses. “Is that true?”
I want to keep fighting on my own. To keep figuring things out for myself. It’s what I’ve always done, but it all feels so heavy right now. I can’t bring myself to tell him about the sex tape yet, but this I’ll hand over to him, if only to feel a few ounces lighter.
“I didn’t pay close enough attention.” I lower my eyes from his intense stare, embarrassed that I was so naïve when he could have prevented this with half a glance at that contract. “There’s not even a buy-out option. If I refuse to work for him, I can’t work for anyone else for the next two years in anything related to entertainment. I can’t even record a jingle for a radio spot. If I do, he’ll literally get an injunction to shut it down. So I work for him or for no one.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He sucks his teeth, exasperated. “He was so smug thinking it’s all airtight.”
“It is airtight, Rhys.” I push the thick hair falling into his face back so I can see his eyes. “It’s my fault, and it’s okay. It’s just two years, and I—”
“I can get you out of it,” he cuts in, eyes alert on my face. “I don’t want to lie to you again. When you forgave me, we hit the reset button. Nothing but honesty between us going forward, right?”
The nasty memory of that tape intrudes between us, and he doesn’t even know it.
“Right,” I whisper, dropping my eyes. “Reset.”
“So I want to be up front and above board about this. I have a way to get you out of this contract. It isn’t conventional. It’s pretty ruthless, but it’s legal. I was so tempted to just do it, but I wanted you to know. I wanted you to have the choice this time.”
He lifts my chin, palm warm against my face.
“I’ll never go behind your back again.”
The memory of Malcolm’s condescending smugness sliming me onstage, his presumption of ownership, little girl-ing me stokes my anger.
“Do it.”
Rhyson blinks a few times, obviously surprised by my instant agreement.
“Do you even want to know what it is?” he asks.
“I trust you.” I shake my head. “Just get me out of it.”
“And then you’ll come home to Prodigy where you belong?” He scoops me into him, our naked bodies flush and warm, relief and happiness in his expression. “With me, where you belong?”
The intimate contact has me wanting him again, so I just nod numbly, ready to give him whatever he wants. A text alert from my phone shatters the intimate agreement building between us.
“Ignore it,” I say, leaning in to kiss hm.
The persistent alert sounds again.
“We should make sure it’s not Aunt Ruthie looking for us,” he says against my lips as the alert pings against my ears a third time.
“It’s gonna keep doing that,” Rhyson says between kisses. “I’ll silence it. Where’s your phone?”
“In the pocket of my jeans, I guess.” I turn onto my back, throwing my arm over my closed eyes. Whoever it is, they can forget about it.
“Be right back.”
I peek out from under my arm when he rolls off the mattress, striding naked over to the work table, reaching down to retrieve my phone from the puddle of denim our jeans make. He talks about my ass, but what about his? God, he’s gorgeous to me. Lean and tan and firm. The flex of muscles as he walks hypnotizes me. Every part of him hard and beautiful and mine as he walks back, frowning at the phone.
“Text from an unknown number.” Curiosity flecks his voice as he studies the screen. “We probably shouldn’t open it. Maybe a virus or something weird.”
I jump off the mattress and stumble across the few feet separating us, diving for the phone he holds just out of my reach. His eyes flick from me to the phone for precious seconds while my heart melts down in my chest. I snatch it from his hand, the breath stuttering over my lips.
His frown, his eyes ask what’s wrong with me, but I can’t come up with anything. The panic swallows me up. I can’t think straight. I’m a mass of self-preservation and fear. I clutch the phone and stumble naked over to the work table, turning away from him. His eyes sear the bare skin of my back, burning questions there I can’t possibly answer.
I open the message, and my fears blossom into the worst reality. It’s two messages from my blackmailer. The first is a link to a Spotted post.
Are they or aren’t they?
The elusive Rhyson Gray and his ex-girlfriend, rising star Kai Pearson, have been mostly silent regarding the public spat that almost broke the internet a few months ago. Our sources suspect the romance may have quietly rekindled. Gray was spotted in Berlin with DJ Kaos just weeks ago, coincidentally (?) on the same night Pearson’s tour passed through. And when Pearson collapsed last week during a performance, he rushed to her side at Cedars Sanai. Since her collapse, Pearson is nowhere to be found, and our sources confirm Gray hasn’t been in LA since Pearson was released from the hospital a few days ago.
And then this picture really got us thinking.
It’s a shot of Rhyson and me leaving the hospital. It was through the underground parking lot, what we were told was a private exit. Even still, we’d taken the precaution of pulling our hoods up. Just one tall hooded figure and a petite girl, barely clearing his shoulder approaching a black SUV, hand in hand.
What do YOU think Spotters?
The second text message is direct and cutting.
Unknown: I know he came to the hospital. If I find out these rumors are true, the tape goes live. How would your rock star ex-boyfriend feel seeing you doggy style with the man he hates? Think about that before you start “rekindling.”
How could I have forgotten this feeling of helpless dread? I allowed the hectic pace of the tour, the drama of my collapse, and this idyllic time with Rhyson to lull me into denial. To forget that a madman is out to destroy the thing I hold most dear. Rhyson held that vile thing right in his grasp. My hands tremble at the thought of him opening that message and asking all the questions that would come with it. Even now his curiosity reaches me across the shed. He may as well be standing right over my shoulder his attention is so focused on me.
“Pep?” He asks from the mattress, back propped against the wall. “Everything okay?”
No. Actually I’m being blackmailed by some monster who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want us together.
“I . . . it’s fine.”
“Who is it?”
“Um . . . San.” I bite my lip as soon as the lie crosses it. “It’s San.”
“Hmmm.” He sounds distracted, so I glance over my shoulder to see him studying his own phone. “He sent you the story?”
“The story?”
“Bristol just sent me a link to some Spotted post about us.” He glances up, wearing a small frown. “Why’s San’s number unknown?”
“Huh?” That word oughta buy me a few seconds.
“You said it was San, but it was an unknown number.”
“Yeah.” I bend to slip on my panties and jeans, shoving the phone in my back pocket. “He’s . . . on assignment. Sometimes he uses . . . yeah.”
I look around the shed.
“Have you seen my bra?”
“I thought you wanted to stay here tonight?” He walks over, putting his hand over mine. “What’s going on with you? Is it the story? We were going public anyway now that the tour is over.”
“It’s not that.” I drop my forehead to his chest, at a loss. “I’m just so tired.”
Tired of hiding. Tired of lying. Tired of keeping this from him, but desperate for him to never know. God, so desperate.
“Tired, we can fix.” He bends, arms folding around my legs, under my knees, and lifting me up until I’m looking down on him, hands on his shoulders. He walks us over to the mattress, laying me down gently. He unsnaps my jeans again, sliding them down my legs. His eyes plumb mine, his hand pushing my hair back.
“Whatever’s waiting for us in LA isn’t here tonight.” He lies down behind me, pulling Aunt Ruthie’s quilt over us. “The whole world is out there. We’re in here.”
I wish I could tell him the outside world invaded our solace, that the ugliness of that sex tape sullied an almost spotless night. I’m so burdened. The truth rests on the tip of my tongue, a much-needed confession I can’t manage to make. He leans over to give me one last kiss before we succumb to sleep, and it’s that look he gives me that holds my tongue.
He loves me.
Do I make him feel this way when I look at him? Like I would die for him? Like I can’t believe my good fortune to have him? Like I’ll do anything to keep him as mine for always? Because his eyes tell me all those things.
And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that.