True For You (Boys of the South)

by Valentine, Marquita

“Then we’ll be heading to lunch.” I tug on Bliss’ arm, and she follows. “I’d ask you to go, Cam, but I’m sure you have a lot of work to do.”

  As we walk across campus, or rather, as I stride and Bliss jogs to keep up with me, she says, “Why are you changing your plans?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Cameron said you were going to New York at the end of the week.”

  That bastard. I’m going to kill him. “I said I might go.”

  My phone vibrates as I hold open the passenger-side door and wait for Bliss to climb inside. Checking my screen, I’m more than a little surprised when Everett agrees to the change.

  Right as I join Bliss in the car, the wind starts howling. “Shit,” I mutter. The second storm is coming in faster than was predicted. “Would you mind if we ate at home? The weather’s getting worse again.”

  “No,” she says.

  By the time I come to the turn that leads to my bridge, I’m driving at a snail’s pace. It’s raining so hard that I can barely see a couple of feet from the hood. The radio is tuned in to one of the local stations, as it gives a minute-by-minute weather update.

  “Thank goodness,” Bliss whispers.

  I want to take her hand and say it’ll be okay, but with the rain and the wind shoving my Range Rover around like a kid playing with a matchbox car, I can’t. The vehicle is one that I keep at the island just for weather like this, and to go four-wheeling on the beach.

  “Almost home.” I turn down the drive, trying not to let my shock show over how much the tide has risen on the Sound side when we drive over the wooden bridge.

  Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to come back here, I think as the garage door opens, and I park inside. Maybe we should have—there’s a loud crack and I look up into the rearview just in time to see the bridge wash away.

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  I grimace. “There was, but my boat is in the shop to get it ready for summer.”

  “Oh.”

  Bliss gets out of the truck, shutting her door and trudging up the stairs. I do the same, but race after her, catching her arm.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

  She tips up her chin, the lenses of her glasses a little foggy. Her lips are so close that if I dip my head, I could kiss them. I want to kiss them. I want to kiss her, to taste her again, and make sure that what I felt before, what I tasted before, was real and just as sweet.

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I’m not so bad,” I tease, fight to keep my head on straight. The last thing I need to do is get involved with her physically. My brain knows that, but it’s the other parts that are not in agreement. They’re all for exploring Bliss and making her mine.

  She sighs one of her familiar sighs, and then says, “Maybe so, but you make me want to be bad… with you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bliss

  In any other circumstance, trapped on a secluded island with the man who’s dominated your every waking thought and dreams seems like the most perfect thing to ever happen during a spring storm.

  But these aren’t any other circumstance.

  While he was gone, I had time to think, and though I suspect Jackson thinks Cameron influenced my decision to stick around, he didn’t. I want to be here.

  No matter what Violet, what Everett, or what anyone else says about the man I married, I think there’s more to Jackson Morgan, the man, and not Jaxon Hunter, the performer.

  Violet probably glimpsed that part of him, and I think he still loves her, for what she reminds him of—I think he equates her with happier times, without his dad’s interference.

  As for his dad, I know for a fact Everett used Jackson as a shield, but why Jackson went with it…? I have no clue. And as strong willed as Jackson is, I never dreamed he’d be the fall guy for his dad’s affairs with young girls, to let himself be accused of cheating on Violet, the woman that not even last week he was trying to get back.

  What would that be like, to be wanted so fiercely that nothing would stand in the way of us being together? Only Jackson had given her up, and I’m pretty sure he helped Cole.

  The lights go out suddenly, and I jump, reaching for what, I’m not sure.

  One thing for sure: I hate the dark—what I can’t see and not knowing what I’m touching. The dark is when all sorts of things happen to girls on the street. Honest to God, I don’t know how I wasn’t one of those girls.

  Dejar angeles te cuide. My mami would whisper that to me, right before she and my dad would kiss me good night.

  That’s the worst thing about being homeless, the memories of a warm house, a full belly, laughter, love, and the safety of my parents’ embrace.

  Foster care certainly hadn’t helped. Being shuffled from home to home every couple of months because I wasn’t … enough has shot my self-worth all to pieces. But I’m not naïve enough to think that I’ll find my worth in Jackson or any other man.

  Still, to be wanted like that…

  “Generators will kick on after ten minutes,” he says as he strums a song on his guitar. My eyes adjust to the firelight in the room.

  I nod. “That’s good.”

  Jackson starts singing one of his songs, a slow one talking about love lost and then found in the person he never expected. I love listening to him sing, especially this one. In the most secret part of my heart, I wish it were me he was singing to, but I know it’ll never happen.

  Because I’ll never be enough for him.

  *** *** ***

  Jackson

  The generators finally kick on, and with it, the few lamps I’d turned on when we’d settled in the living room.

  Bliss jumps—again—then settles back down in the large club chair in the corner.

  I’ve never seen her so anxious. Well, except for the time Violet caught us on lying on the sofa with my hand down Bliss’ pants. Another minute or two longer, and I’m pretty sure that beautiful girl would have exploded in my arms.

  But we didn’t get that, and Bliss thought for sure she would be fired. That hadn’t happened, and not only because of me taking responsibility for my actions. Violet refused to let Bliss leave.

  “Any requests?” I ask Bliss.

  She licks her lips, and then shakes her head, curly hair falling out of her loose bun. “No.”

  “Do you want me to stop?” I hadn’t thought to ask her if she minded if I played. Having a guitar in my hand settles me, gives strength to my soul, and grounds me in ways that I can’t get from any other thing… or person. “There are a ton of books to read in the cabinet under the television.”

  “I’m not a g—big reader.”

  “Too bad. My housekeeper and her daughters love to read romance, so I usually order a bunch and have them delivered before they stay here in August.” Yeah, the quieter Bliss becomes, the chattier I get. Maybe I should start emulating her.

  “Your housekeeper lives here?” She glances around, like Donna will appear at any moment with a mop and bucket.

  “For two weeks in August she does, before school starts for her youngest. He’s five. I buy him new toys for the beach each year. David is hell on buckets and shovels.”

  Her gaze fixes on me. “You buy books for her and her daughters? And toys for her son?”

  Jealousy doesn’t exist in her tone or even on her pretty face. There’s awe and wonderment. I duck my head, unable to hold her gaze, because I don’t want her assigning qualities me to that I don’t deserve.

  Shrugging, I pick out a new melody on my guitar. “Her husband died two years ago, in Afghanistan, and they moved to Sweetland looking for work. She cleans a bunch of houses year round, including mine, but I thought it would be nice for her to actually stay in one of them.”

  “You hire someone else to clean up after her, don’t you? And you pay her while she stays here,” she says, and I feel my cheeks grow hot. I don’t want this to matter to her, and I don’t want her digging deeper. She won’t find a bur
ied treasure—all she’ll find is me.

  “Maybe.” Cute feet, without toenail polish, appear in my vision. I look up.

  Bliss is looking down, a serious expression on her face. She kneels beside me, sitting on her calves. Her hand covers mine where it rests on the neck of my guitar. Her touch is soft, yet firm.

  “I never got to say thank you,” she says, and my brows crease together.

  “Why would you say thank you?”

  A small smile graces her lips. “For saving me.”

  I saved her? “From what?” Or is it a who? Then I remember her words, the morning after we married. You made a promise to me, but I guess holding you to something that you don’t remember isn’t fair.

  “Everything.”

  Then she leans in, pressing her lips to mine. I stop playing, my hand going to her face and cupping the side. She doesn’t owe me anything, and I sure as hell don’t want a pity kiss or screw. But I can’t help but asking, “Are you sure?”

  “It’s just a kiss.”

  With a groan, I deepen the kiss, my hand sliding to the back of her neck. Her hair tickles the back of my hand. When I feel the first touch of her tongue against mine, I completely lose it, practically throwing my guitar to the side.

  I lower Bliss to the floor, settling between her thighs and resting my arms on either side of her. Our lips fuse, and my brain screams at me to stop. But then she rocks against me, where my cock is hard, and my eyes water. Brain function ceases.

  “Damn, you taste good,” I murmur with my next breath.

  “So do you.”

  “Kiss me,” I beg, unable to comprehend how much I want Bliss. How much I want this one simple kiss.

  Her fingers tangle in my hair and the kiss goes from simple to burning need. Suddenly, I’m kissing her like my life depended on it, like I’ll never kiss her again.

  Tongue gliding over tongue, small kisses to the corners of my mouth and my chin. I turn my head to the side, biting on my own damn lip when she licks me behind my ear. “Oh hell.”

  “Should I stop? Should we stop?” She asks each question after each kiss. “Oh God, I don’t want to stop.”

  When the hell did she get so chatty? “Then don’t.”

  Nodding, she kisses me again, rubbing her body against mine and making me harder than ever. I can’t stop my hands from touching her, gliding over the side of her face and lower still to the most perfect breasts ever created.

  I cup one, feeling the nipple harden under my palm, and then run my hand down the side of her body, gripping a curvy thigh and pulling it around my waist.

  “I like that,” she says in that shy but straightforward way of hers.

  “Wrap the other one around me, and you’ll love it.”

  She whimpers and purrs, and I’m dying, dying to get inside of her. But I can’t, not like I want. She’s a virgin.

  “If we do this, I’ll go real slow, baby doll.”

  “If we do this, then we’ll be married and have to get a divorce,” she gasps, blinking up at me. Her green eyes are focused on me, though I don’t remember removing her glasses. Maybe she did.

  “Divorce would be the only outcome?” My body goes rigid and not from wanting her. Hadn’t Violet said the same damn thing to me, about us, about why she was glad that we’d never gone through with our plans?

  Yet here I was with a different woman, wearing the same fucking ring I’d bought my ex, and saying practically the same fucking thing. God, how could I have been so wrong about Bliss?

  “I would think so, because you—”

  “Don’t worry, baby doll. I don’t want you for the long term.” She blinks up at me, desire giving way to hurt. “I thought we could mutually satisfy each other to pass the time.” I trace the outline of her lush lips. “This mouth of yours has to be good for something other than kissing mine.”

  A dull flush creeps up her face. “Please let me up.”

  I roll away, keeping my painful smirk in place. “Don’t be in such a hurry to go. We can sixty-nine, if you don’t think I’d return the favor.”

  She stares at me blankly. “Sixty-nine?”

  “You’d put your mouth on my cock while I’d put mine…” My gaze travels down her body, stopping at her—

  “Oh.” Her lips, swollen from my kisses, smash together before she frowns. Scrambling to her feet, she smooths down her pink shirt. “Once the storm is over, I’d like for you to find a way to take me into town, to the bus station. I’ll be happy to sign whatever you need to make this unofficial.”

  “Fine. The storm shouldn’t last much longer, and once the cell phone towers are working again, I’ll text Cameron to come pick us up in his boat.”

  She reaches out her left hand, her right hand trembling as she works off the wedding ring I’d given her. “Here. It’s not right for me to wear it anymore.”

  “Keep it,” I say flatly, but my gaze is firmly fixed on that small band of platinum and diamonds. “It means nothing to me.”

  “It could have meant something,” she says softly.

  Rising to my feet, I fight the urge to touch her again, to pull her in my arms and take her to bed with me. “I’m not that man, the one you deserve to be with for the rest of your life.”

  Hurt gives way to sadness. Her pretty eyes are shiny, but she doesn’t cry. I’ve never seen her cry. “But you could have been that man.”

  Curling her fingers over the ring in the palm of her hand, she backs away, then turns around and leaves the room.

  Chapter Nine

  Jackson

  Over the past five hours, I’ve gone through three different playlists and managed to write six new songs. The last one I wrote, though, is different from the rest.

  I can’t get it out of my head. The melody and the words are embedded in my brain, right along with the image of Bliss. But what I did, along with the words I wrote, aren’t right.

  I’m a damn fool for rejecting her. It’s too easy to fall back on the cocky asshole attitude that’s served me well over the last few years. Until now, I had rationalized it by saying that it was only Jaxon Hunter who was the asshole, not me, Jackson Morgan. But now I know I’ve let the performer merge with the regular guy, the guy who Violet claimed I used to be.

  The guy who Cameron become friends with, fifteen years ago, when we’d met at Vacation Bible School. My grandmother had taken me, after my dad had dropped me off at her house for the summer.

  I’d said hell a lot, in a completely churchy way, of course, and he’d snickered every time. Then he picked me to make a craft with him and almost cut off my hand with a buzz saw. Whoever thought woodworking was an appropriate activity for nine year olds had to have been sipping too much of the communal wine—though the wine at Cameron’s church was actually grape juice.

  Suffice to say, I had the best week ever.

  Suffice to say, I’ve had the worst two years ever. Violet and I broke up, I’m pretty damn sure Cameron and I just broke up—I roll my eyes—and now Bliss.

  Bliss, Bliss, Bliss.

  Picking up our marriage certificate, I take a pull of my beer and then choke on it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I blink at her name. June Bliss Davenport.

  June… Bliss was my June, and I’d let her go?

  I mean, I was named for the song Johnny Cash and June Carter had performed together. Hell, my middle name is Cash. If my birth mother had anything to do with my name, I’d eat my guitar, but I’m pretty sure it was all my dad, trying to stack the odds in my favor.

  All my life, I’d heard from him: “Son, once you find your June, then you’ll be set. The writing will flow and so will the music. You ain’t good for anything else, without the music.”

  Everett’s right. I’m not good for anything else. What will I do, if I can’t perform on stage? Making movies was only a temporary solution and a convenient way to piss off Everett. Not where I wanted to be at this point in my career.

  I’m still singing the same damn songs, t
o the same damn tunes, only the band and my singing partner have changed.

  As in, I don’t have one, because my faux-fiancée went nuts on my dad for cheating on her. While Violet… I shake my head.

  Obviously, Violet wasn’t my June, no matter how much I wanted her to be, or how good we were together on stage.

  However, Bliss could be molded. She could be taught simple chords and Auto-Tune can make anyone a super star, if we needed it.

  I crack each side of my neck, relieving the tension there, ready to figure out which bedroom Bliss is sleeping in and tell her my plan.

  Then I frown.

  I have to convince her to stay, first.

  *** *** ***

  Bliss

  A gentle shake and the sound of my name wake me up from a dead sleep. “What’s wrong… Is it the baby? I’ll go feed him.”

  I’m back at the Richards, all of eight years old. They’d agreed to foster me, but after two months of homeschooling without the actually schooling, I know I’m their new nanny. One that they not only don’t have to pay while they get paid by the state for letting me stay there.

  “What baby?”

  “Huh?” I rub my eyes, Jackson’s image sort of coming into focus. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. “Oh. I thought you were Mr. Richards.” My gaze travels over his sexy body. He’s leaner than when we first started the tour, nothing but muscle over bone, under skin that smells good enough to lick.

  I want to touch him so badly that I make my hands clutch the covers instead.

  “Who’s he?”

  I swear I should keep my mouth shut, but the lack of sleep I’ve had over worrying about everything has caught up with me. I’m punch drunk. “My foster parent when I was eight.”

  A sharp intake of breath, and then Jackson carefully places my glasses on my nose. His face becomes clear, worry and disbelief evident. “You had a baby at eight?”

  “No. I was in charge of the Richards’ baby when I was eight. He was such a sweet baby.” I yawn, curling into a ball and taking off my glasses. I set them back on the table and close my eyes. “Sometimes I wonder what he looks like now. I miss that little guy. He was always happy to see me and loved hugs and kisses.” For a long time, I’d thought the Richards would keep me. Lyle helped me through the pain and confusion of my parents’ death. He loved me as much as I loved him.