"I'm going off-script," she says, looking into the camera. "I was supposed to sing something from my most upcoming album, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to sing something I wrote. It's not flashy, and the band isn't prepared for this, so it's just going to be me and a guitar. I hope you like it. And Hendrix, if you're watching, it's all for you. It always has been."
My heart in my throat, I watch while Addy picks up the guitar and puts the strap around her neck. A few people standing behind me titter, and I turn around and shut them up with a look. Addy standing there in her shimmery white evening gown with a guitar around her neck is going to be one of those shots plastered all over every magazine and gossip website around.
I stand there, holding my breath, while she plays the first few chords of a song I've never heard, her eyes closed. And then she starts to sing, and it's hypnotic, watching her. She sings about heartbreak and loss. And love.
I'd forgotten how to breathe
I'd forgotten how to live
I'd forgotten how to love...until you.
And, just like that, the night makes a hundred eighty degree turn. Just like that, it's Addy's image in my mind, instead of the horror from the past. I know it doesn't replace it permanently, but it does now. And that's enough.
When Addy comes backstage, she's practically accosted by people – other celebrities, a few reporters – but the bodies part, and she stands there, a few feet away, looking at me. "And?" she asks.
"Oh, did you perform already?" I ask. "I was taking a leak, so I think I missed it."
Addy grins, walking up to me and putting her hand on my chest. I'm aware of eyes on us, the fact that this moment, what's happening between us, is the center of attention in this room, but I don't care. "Don't be a dick," she says.
"You sure about this?" I ask, reminding her of all of the potential consequences for her, the possibility of her losing her contract. Being sued by the label.
Addy shrugs. "Fuck it."
"You know I love you," I tell her. I realize I've thought it a thousand times, and it feels so much like I've already said it. The words leave my mouth, sounding so familiar when I speak them to her, but I haven’t said it. Not yet. Not until now.
"Oh, do I?" she asks. Her head is tilted up toward me, her lips parted, and I want to kiss her, but I wait, because there are things that need to be said.
"I love you," I say. "Absolutely and completely. I've loved you since day one, Addy-girl. For seven years I've loved you."
"Okay," she says.
"Okay?" I ask. "That's it? I tell you I love you and you say okay?"
A broad grin spreads across her face. "I love you, too, but you already heard me say that on stage," she says. "Now, stop giving me grief and kiss me already. You know the tabloids are going to need a good image to go with their scandal. So let's give them one."
So I kiss her – one of those slow-motion, hands-in-the-hair, straight-out-of-the-movies kisses where everything in the world stops.
And then I bend down, and pick her up in my arms, and I carry her the fuck out of there, grinning like the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet, because I am. Right in front of the reporters and everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ADDY
My phone buzzes over and over, until I finally shut it off. That doesn't seem good enough, though, so I take out the SIM card and break it in half before turning to Hendrix, who looks at me with amusement. "I don't want to talk to anyone right now," I explain. "And there's going to be too much talking to do."
We're in the limo, driving back to my place, until Hendrix taps on the tinted glass and asks the driver to detour, driving around for a while to lose any paparazzi, until he finally ends up a small apartment complex. "It's nothing fancy," he explains, leading me through the front door. "Okay, it's kind of a dump, so brace yourself. I just want to show you something."
The apartment isn't a dump as much as it is bare of anything resembling Hendrix's personality. It's stark, empty except for a few pieces of furniture, some clothes, and a few boxes. "Did you live here?" I ask.
"It worked," Hendrix says simply.
He takes my hand and sits down on a bed, and opens a box. "I want you to know who I am, the years when I was gone. And what my father said…"
"Hendrix," I say, holding my hand up. "You don't need to explain." But I close my mouth when he starts talking, words that seem to pour out of him, a floodgate that doesn't want to close. He tells me about the guys he was with, the rest of his squad that was killed in an IED blast in the mountains in Afghanistan. He tells me about the guilt he has for surviving, how he runs for miles at night instead of sleeping, how he couldn't think about the future because he couldn't see one for himself. He talks and talks and talks, almost without taking a breath, and I hold his hand, not saying anything until he's finished. Then he looks up at me, and says, "I've been a coward. It's the reason I never said I loved you before."
My heart feels like it's bursting, and I'm not sure if it's more because it's broken for him, or because I finally know I love him. Then he reaches into the box and hands me a stack of letters. "This is the other reason I've been a coward, Addy-girl," he says.
"What are…" I open the one on top, my eyes scanning over the first few lines, and if I thought my heart were going to burst with love for this man before…
Addy-girl,
Twenty-two days. I have twenty-two days left in this shithole. Two hundred and eighteen days of this deployment down and I'm alive. My squad's alive. Twenty-two days and we're going home, and I swear that I'm going to say the things I've wanted to say to you since I left. I'm sure you've written me off by now. But if I get home, I'll tell you that there hasn't been a day since I left that I've not thought about you, that you haven't been at the forefront of my mind.
I look at the other letters in my hand, all addressed to me. The full impact of what I'm holding hits me and I start to cry.
Hendrix reaches up and wipes a tear from my cheek. "I couldn't say what I wanted to say. And then after…what happened with my squad…I stopped."
"And then you came home," I say.
Hendrix slides his arms around me. "And then I came home." He pauses. "It's kind of lame, I know, writing you."
I laugh, and he pulls back and looks at me. "Are you laughing at me?"
"I'll show you later," I say. "I have a notebook full of songs, Hendrix. They're all about you. You wrote letters, I wrote songs."
"I guess we're both lame," he says.
"I guess we are."
Hendrix kisses me then, and I know that regardless of what happens, the fallout from the awards show, that everything will be okay.
EPILOGUE
HENDRIX
Addy snores in her sleep – not lightly, either. She's in her third trimester and she sounds like a damn freight train. She's propped up on pillows, several behind her back and one under her knees, like she's sleeping in a recliner, and I reach over and slide my hand over her rapidly-growing belly, trying not to wake her.
I don't sleep any more now than I did before, but it's not because I'm running anymore. In fact, I've stopped running away from everything. When I told Addy I loved her, I meant it. I didn't want to let her go.
We holed up for a week after everything happened. The day after, I thought Addy would be screwed. But her fans loved the song, and the clip of her speech and the song was replayed everywhere. Addy went out swinging, too. She hired a pit-bull of an attorney and a public relations team and she fought like hell when the record label tried to claim that our relationship was a breach of her morality clause. We did the press circuit, interviewing on talk shows, and surprisingly, the public was largely supportive.
It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. Addy settled with the studio and her contract was terminated. But she didn't wind up owing them anything, and she was free of all of it.
Addy snorts a little, and moves gently, her hand covering mine, and I snuggle in next to her, breathing her in, and
closing my eyes. I might not sleep, but I'll lie here contentedly with my future wife and child. I know I have a future with them. And that's enough.
* * *
ADDY
I walk across the white sand, blindingly bright in the sunlight, my hands smoothing the fabric of the white sundress over my increasingly large belly. Hendrix takes my hand, and he has the biggest smile I think I've ever seen.
"You sure you want to do this, sweet cheeks?" he asks.
"Are you sure you want to do this with me?" I ask. "My feet are swollen, and I'm not even walking anymore, I'm waddling everywhere. Like a duck. A big fat giant duck."
Hendrix turns me around, slides his arms around me, across my belly, his face in my neck. "I'm definitely sure," he says. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life. This is what I want. With you, and with our son."
We're having a boy. I'm going to be a mother. And, as of today, here on the beach, a wife. Everything is as it should be. Really, it's better than I could have ever imagined. I was prepared for it to all go badly, the fallout after the awards show.
It wasn't easy, that's for sure. I lost my cushy contract with the record label. And some friends. My mother and Hendrix's father haven't spoken to us. His father never said anything else about the fight they had, though, not to any media outlet. My mother, on the other hand, is supposedly writing a tell-all book. But my sister Grace has been one of my biggest supporters, and we're closer than ever. And I know that our son and Brady will grow up together.
I'm writing songs like crazy now. I started my own label, an indie one, and I'm going to put out a folk album in a couple of weeks. I'm also marrying Hendrix – in approximately five minutes. And we're having a baby.
When the minister says, "You may kiss the bride," Hendrix smiles.
"Hell, yeah," he whispers in my ear. And when he kisses me, it's just like the first time, under the grove. We're sixteen years old again, teenagers with our whole lives ahead of us, and the world stops spinning, and just like that, everything is as it should be.
My life might not be a total fairy-tale, the way everyone – including me – thought it would be when I was first discovered. But even if it's not perfect, and Hendrix and I are nowhere close to being fictional royalty, it's our story. We'll live our version of happily ever after.
And that's enough.
BONUS EPILOGUE
Addy
FIVE YEARS LATER
"They're finally asleep. Can you believe it?" I collapse into an armchair in the living room, and put my feet up on the ottoman, closing my eyes. "It's only nine p.m. Remember when we weren't totally exhausted at nine in the evening?"
"It seems like a lifetime ago," Hendrix says. "I don't know how Watson has so much energy. After running around like crazy at the park all afternoon and swimming lessons after dinner, you'd think he'd be at least a little bit tired."
Our five-year-old Watson, named after a friend of Hendrix in the Marines who was killed in service, is rambunctious and adorable.
And full of endless amounts of energy.
"I know," I say. "Hailey is the same way. That kid is still talking a mile a minute even after she's tucked into bed. I swear she can have a conversation with a wall."
Hailey just turned three years old and already a character. She knows exactly what she wants and isn't afraid to say it.
Hendrix says she takes after me.
Hendrix's hands on my feet surprise me, and my eyelids fly open. I watch the man I married five years ago start massaging my feet and think about how lucky I am.
How lucky we both are.
We're both a little older, not quite the same people we were five years ago. We're running a record label. The indie-folk albums I've made haven't been wild successes the way my mainstream country albums were, but that's quite all right with me. I'm doing what makes me happy.
And Hendrix – and our two kids – make me wildly happy.
"What are you thinking about?" Hendrix asks, his hands working their magic on my feet.
"I'm thinking about how much I love you," I say.
"Liar." He grins up at me.
"Truth," I say. "I'm thinking about how much has changed and how lucky I am."
"Thinking about all the grey hairs I have now, after two kids?" Hendrix asks.
I laugh, surveying him. He's actually right. He does already have a few errant grey hairs, but that definitely doesn't make him any less hot than he was when he was younger. "They make you look distinguished."
Hendrix laughs, the sound low in his throat. "That's like saying 'it's okay, size doesn't matter'."
I pick up the throw pillow behind my back and toss it at him. "Not true," I say. "I have a very hot husband."
"And I have a sexy famous wife," he says, laughing.
"Used to be famous," I correct him.
"I want to take my used-to-be-famous wife into the bedroom so I can screw her brains out," Hendrix says, giving me that crooked grin he does so well.
He knows I can't resist that grin.
"Oh, really?" I ask, as he doesn't wait for my response. He pulls me up to a standing position and then bends down and slips an arm behind my knees and one on my back, carrying me to the bedroom. "For a guy who's exhausted, you're surprisingly energetic."
"I can't help it," he says. "The thought of screwing my incredibly sexy wife gives me crazy energy."
I laugh. "You're just trying to butter me up so you can get in my pants."
"Oh, I know I can get in your pants, Addy-girl," he says, tossing me onto the bed and unbuttoning my pants before yanking them roughly off my legs. He trails his fingers up the inside of my leg before reaching my panties, chuckling under his breath when he finds them already damp.
"I know," I say softly. "What can I say? It's like an automatic reaction now."
"I like this automatic reaction." He puts his face between my legs, his mouth over my panties, hot breath warming me. His heat sends a tingle directly to the place he touches, and I arch my hips up, wanting him to remove my panties.
But he doesn't. He gets up and strips naked beside the bed, tossing his clothes in a pile on the floor and reaching into the bedside table for a vibrator. "Take everything off," he says. "Except the panties."
When I'm undressed, he slips the vibrator between my legs and over my panties, teasing me with it. "Your panties were already so wet," he says gruffly. "What were you thinking about?"
"You," I whisper. "I was thinking about how much I wanted you inside me."
He presses the vibrator against me until I'm practically writhing. It's the hottest thing in the world, watching him between my legs. But he leaves me wanting, breathless.
"Don't stop," I beg, but he just smiles and pulls my panties to the side, flicking my clit with his tongue. He doesn't give me what I want. Instead, he reaches up and rips the side of my panties, literally tearing them from my body. "That's another set of panties gone."
"Too bad," he says. "I liked those. But I like what's underneath them better."
He sucks my clit into his mouth, but I want more. "No," I whisper softly. "I want your cock."
"I'm glad that after five years, you're still begging for it," he says.
"Kneel over me," I ask. "I want your cock in my mouth."
"I'm glad I married such a filthy woman," he jokes, kneeling low over my face. He covers my clit with his mouth, while entering me with the vibrator.
His balls dangle in my face, and I lick them slowly, taking each in my mouth as I softly stroke his cock. He's dripping pre-cum, and the anticipation of having his cock in my mouth while he's licking me is so overwhelming that I have to tell myself not to come.
I can't wait. I take him in my mouth, my tongue swirling around the head of his cock, teasing him. Reaching up, I pull him closer to me so I can take more of his length in, and he groans when I gently massage his balls.
"God, I love fucking your mouth," he says, pushing the vibrator deeper inside me.
His
pre-cum mixes with my saliva as I suck him, and I moan at the taste. It's manly and erotic and tastes like…him. He hovers over me, careful not to move, letting me direct him deeper inside my mouth, even though I know by his groans he wants to take control.
I'm on the edge, nearly past the point of no return when he pulls the vibrator abruptly from my pussy and says, "I have to be inside you."
He doesn't wait for me to say anything. He pulls away from my mouth and turns around, his hands on my knees pushing them up to my chest.
When he enters me, he pushes so deep inside me it almost takes my breath away. "God, I love you," he says.
I whisper that I love him as he thrusts inside me harder.
"And I love that you went off the pill," he says. "Thinking of getting you pregnant makes me want to fuck you all the time."
"I want you to knock me up again," I whisper, unable to think of anything except the exquisite sensation of him inside me. "I want you to make me pregnant."
"Shit, Addy," he says, and he lets go at the same time that I come. He drops my legs, and I wrap my ankles around him, pulling him tighter against me as he thrusts into me again and again.
I'm panting, my chest heaving, even minutes later. He kisses me softly on the lips. "I love knocking you up."
I laugh. "You're such a Neanderthal, you know."
"I know," he says. "But I'm your Neanderthal."
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A Very Dirty Christmas Page 66