SWNOVELS Between Never and Forever: Part 2 – Chapter 26
I knew the moment I saw him step close to Keelani on the cameras that I was going to kill him. I’d avoided her for days trying to work out if I could figure out where she belonged. Next to me. Or away from me. With me or without me.
Real or fake.
My wife or my heartbreak.
It only took one second of seeing her in danger, of her heart rate picking up to decide it all for me. Monitoring her heart rate and other stats from her ring showed me there was fear there too. I’d made sure the high tech tracking we’d made for HEAT watches was implanted on that ring before she ever slid it on. I wasn’t sure if I was going to use it but after hearing from Dimitri about his concerns, I couldn’t stop myself at least for the night of her concert.
Now, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop at all. It was a complete invasion of her privacy and still, I stood there, ready to commit every crime with no remorse for her.
And she wanted to witness it. I could see it in her eyes.
“Jimmy, close the door,” I said quietly. Jimmy knew. He swung it shut fast, and I heard in my earpiece that no one was to enter the room. Right after, a notification sounded that the cameras in Kee’s dressing room went down.
Good.
He got the message.
“No need to keep you both, actually.” Ezekiel chuckled like we might all move past what he’d just done, but I saw how his eyes jumped to the door. “If you two need some time, I can come see Keelani later and—”
“Kee, did you ask this man to leave your dressing room before he put his hands on you?” I didn’t even feel the need to apologize that I’d had security cameras installed in here. Only I could access them and I would if it meant keeping her safe.
She hesitated. I saw it, and I fucking hated that she felt she needed to. Yet, her strength was there when she nodded and murmured, “Yes.”
“You’re acting a little off, honey. You need some water? She had a great show, but you know how the lights and the adrenaline can get to an artist, right? I’ve dealt with many over the—”
“I’m talking to my fiancée.” My tone made his mouth snap shut.
I cracked my neck, trying my best to hold on to the monster that rattled to get out now. I grew up with three brothers who could all fight. We beat each other up for sport until I went to college. Then, I graduated to dispelling my anger pointedly in my work or via a boxing match. Hitting this man would feel good. It’d feel even better to ruin him and kill him, but I wanted the lesson to be delivered first.
Restraint and patience were key.
“Heartbreaker, is there anything you want to say to him?”
Her eyes widened, and I saw how they shimmered, how the tears still hung there as evidence this man should have never been in her presence. “I… He shouldn’t visit me anymore. Not while we’re together.”
“Not ever,” I corrected her and nodded as she looked at me in fear. “You can say it, Kee. I got you. You know that, right? Even when you think I don’t, I’ll always have you. Forever.”
She bit her full bottom lip before murmuring, “Dex, this won’t end well. You and Dimitri have done a lot for me, but Ezekiel has been involved in the music business for a long time and he knows so many people in so many circles…”
She shook her head, and that’s when I realized she truly feared for not herself, but us. She was honestly protecting me over her own well-being.
I took a breath and looked at Ezekiel. “Did you know she was engaged to me when you sent flowers to her suite this morning?”
“Oh, I…Well, we’re friends, Dex. I always send Keelani roses. She loves them. Tell him, Keelani.”
She didn’t respond this time. Her face actually looked pained. But she didn’t answer, which meant I wasn’t doing a good enough job of showing her she’d always be safe with me. I hadn’t shown her that at all yet really.
“She doesn’t love anything from you. And if you send her flowers again, I’ll personally deliver every one of them to your door and shove them down your throat. Thorns and all.” I cracked my knuckles before I commanded the man in front of me, “Now, move two steps to the left.”
“Huh?” He narrowed his eyes at me like he didn’t get the command, but his body was already moving. “What for?” He glanced around like maybe he was on camera.
“When I hit you, Ezekiel, I don’t want the blood from your fucking mouth to get on my fiancée.” I moved slow enough. If he’d have read the room even just a little, he would have seen it coming.
My first and only punch to the right side of his jaw was measured. He tried to duck at the last millisecond, but he was much too slow. He crumpled to the floor, his face completely calm, even as blood and teeth flew from him. He looked asleep, knocked out from just the right amount of force I’d inflicted.
“Jesus, Dex,” Kee whispered while I stared down at him, not sure if I should keep hitting him. I wanted to, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
“How many times has he dragged his lips across your neck the way he did tonight?” I wanted the question to be pointed. I’d been watching them both, and I wasn’t just a bit unhinged. I’d gone all the way down the rabbit hole. Her eyes narrowed on me before she glanced to the corner of the room. “You won’t see the cameras, heartbreaker. Our technology is better than that. But your ring will alert me anytime you’re scared. The temperature your body gives off showcases your fear too.”
“You were watching?” she whispered out in disbelief. “Have you been watching me since I’ve been here?”
“What if I was?”
She didn’t answer at first, just chewed her lip. “Like I said before, I’d rather it be you than someone else.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kee. You know when you say that, I actually consider doing it?”
“I don’t care.” Her eyes blazed with defiance now. “I mean it.”
“Well, it was only tonight that I watched for your security. And even if you wanted me to, I wouldn’t apologize for it.”
She pulled the gloves she’d been wearing off one finger at a time. Underneath them was the ring that helped alert me to her distress. “I don’t expect you to. The fact that you considered it when the rest of the world doesn’t is nice of you.” She smiled as if it was okay to make a joke about this.
“Kee, people have been watching you,” I said quietly even though I wanted to shake her. “What the fuck have you been allowing to happen?”
“It’s not just black and white, Dex. Plus, it’s easier not to make a fuss and—”
“Go with the flow?” I knew this wasn’t the time to argue. She’d been practically assaulted. Yet, she was acting as if it weren’t a problem, and I knew my ass would argue that it was until my dying day.
“Just… I have to consider all angles, okay? It’s not as bad as it seems, and I’ve learned to get through it.”
Even now, her mind worked fast. I saw how she had a far-off look for a second, like she needed to contemplate her next move. She’d looked that same way on the stage at the end of the show. The crowd had leaned in, wanting more of her, and she’d suddenly closed them off to everything. Now I knew why. “Learned to get through it? That’s fucked-up and you know it. You changed the end of your concert for him, didn’t you? You didn’t sing our song.”
“I… It wasn’t the right time.”
“No. But it would have been.” And suddenly I was fucking pissed that she hadn’t sung it. “He stole that from you. From us.”
“You don’t care if I sing that song anyway, Dex.” She turned away from me, but I saw the hurt in her eyes. So I softly grabbed her chin and brought her gaze back to mine.
“I do care,” I ground out. “I’d rather you be up there as yourself than up there as a caricature of yourself.”
“Okay,” she scoffed. “Well, I’m working on it.”
That wasn’t good enough. “If you can’t be yourself here because you don’t feel safe, I’ve fucking failed at making this resort—”
“If you’re concerned about the resort, you can rest assured, the security here is—”
“It’s not about the fucking resort.” The words flew out before I could stop them. Jesus, it wasn’t about anything but her. I’d avoided her for days trying to figure it out and classify what I was feeling so I could handle it correctly, but there was no way to do so other than to say it was love.
I still fucking loved this girl, and I wasn’t going to let her go. I knew that now. I had to come to terms with it too because my brother would have killed me otherwise.
“What’s it about then?” she asked. It came out delicately, and I finally saw a crack in her armor as she gulped, waiting for the answer.
Kee was strong. She was strong because she had to be, and I knew that was why she didn’t want to let me in. We’d broken each other down too many times. I was the same way with her. Yet, here, I had to be honest. She deserved that.
“It’s about you showing them who you really are without holding back. You were fucking magical tonight, heartbreaker. People cried for you.”
“People cried for us, because every song is about you.”
My emotions were all mixed up, and I didn’t know which would win—the love I had for her or the heartbreak I was scared to endure from her again. “That may be—”
“May be? Who else would they be for? Ethan loves someone else, Dex. I’m not talented enough to just write—”
“That’s the thing, heartbreaker. You are that talented. I don’t know what to believe and what to write off as fantasy when it comes to you on that stage.”
“Well, I guess I should take that as a compliment even if it feels like a freaking bullet to my heart. The record label will love knowing that I’m believable enough for my amazing fiancé, and maybe Ezekiel will let me stay for—””
“Are you seriously contemplating what the fuck that man is going to do?”
“He’s a major shareholder, Dex, and—”
“There’s no justification for what he was doing. He was forcing himself on you.” I said the words with emphasis so they would sink in. They sank into my bones too, rattled me much more than I wanted them to. “Has this been happening since—”
“Dex.” She shook her head at me and then set her gloves down before she walked over and nudged my shoulder with hers. “It hasn’t been that bad, okay? But you realize this is the way the industry works sometimes? Do you have any idea what the corporate world looks like for a woman? How many loose hands we have to avoid? How easy it is for a man to grab at something he shouldn’t and then laugh it off because he’s in a position of power?”
I watched our reflections in the mirror, her face completely relaxed while mine turned green. “It shouldn’t be that way.”
“And yet you have two sisters. You know it is.”
“No. They were never celebrities that—’
“All women go through something. But, sure, Cade and Dante Armanelli are married to them. People might not respect those men, but they fear them enough to keep their distance.”
I suddenly had more respect for those men protecting my sisters right then and there. “Yeah, well, tonight marks the night people will start to keep their distance from you.” I vowed it, etched it in my brain, and could see it as my only goal now. “I’m going to make sure of it, Kee.”
I saw the way her eyebrows dipped low, and she chewed her cheek before leaving my side and sitting down at her vanity mirror to start wiping away the makeup over her lips. She sighed. “Do you know I used to want to make waves? Approach the issue of Ezekiel just based on principle. I did one time with Mitchell, and you know what he said to me?”
“I don’t know if I want to know.”
She smiled sadly. “He said it could be worse, that Ezekiel thinks I’m such a sweet girl he doesn’t even want to take me to bed like he does the other women.”
Was there a way I could slowly kill him and get away with it? I was already racking my brain for ideas.
She continued, “You look sick, and the first time I heard that, I was too. I vomited in the bathroom before I went out on stage that night.”
“You should have left.”
“Exactly. It’s never easy to leave.” She said it with such conviction. “Not when they’ve threaded their life into yours. I don’t even know how to operate without them. Like, what would I have gone on and done?” She threw the makeup in the small tin can at the wall. “I’m under contract and—”
“No contract should hold you to that.” The words rumbled out of me, mean and full of frustration.
“Your contract allows you to pretty much own me, Dex.” She smiled softly and her words filled my stomach with bile.
“I’d never—”
“I know.” She cut me off. “It’s just easy to exert power. They’re, unfortunately, exerting it for their own benefit in a way you never would. Although, I’m sure you wanted to hurt me in some sense.”
“I wanted to get over you,” I threw back.
“Wanted or want?”
“I’m not sure.” Fuck if I knew what I wanted anymore. “I want closure one way or another.”
“And we both deserve that.” She shrugged. “Look. We’ve handled it for now and maybe he won’t come—”
“He’s being banned from every HEAT property as we speak, heartbreaker.”
“Dex, you can’t—”
“I can do anything I want when it comes to my business, Kee. Don’t you get that? I have him on camera assaulting you.” Did she not understand the gravity of the situation?
“He didn’t agree to being recorded, and he’d probably sue you and Dimitri for—”
“Everyone that steps into a HEAT property or Black-owned building gives us that right,” I informed her. “You signed that when you looked over our handbook.”
“That handbook is a million pages long.” She curled her lip at me.
“Exactly.” I shrugged. Our lawyers knew what they were doing. “Plus, people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the protection of our resorts. I came to your aid tonight, didn’t I?”
“Because you were monitoring my heart rate via a ring. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“Want me to apologize for it?” I asked her without an ounce of remorse in my tone. “I’m going to watch your every fucking move, Kee, and I’m not going to feel guilty at all. I’m here to protect you. Fake fiancée or not, you’re mine and everything that’s mine stays safe, heartbreaker. Even if I can’t decide whether watching you will break me or put me back together.”
“That’s borderline obsessive, Dex.”
“I didn’t claim to be sane, Kee.” I took a deep breath and leaned against the doorframe to try to quell the need running through me now. I wanted to bottle her up or wrap her in bubble wrap and lock her in a damn room so no one could hurt her after this.
“I guess I’m not exactly sane, either, because I want you watching me. Just you. Only you.”