Devon looked like I’d slapped him in his face. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“You just wanted to write, direct, and star in your own movie,” I said. “Even better that it’s about your life. That’s fine, Devon, congratulations. It’s an achievement. But leave me out of it. Better yet, leave Nana out of it. She can’t speak up for herself.”
“I thought you’d like the movie.”
“You thought wrong. I hate it. I hate everything about it. It’s a huge invasion of privacy. And it’s an even bigger betrayal of trust.”
“I thought you would like it because it would be a tribute to Nana.”
“Don’t say her name!” I shouted. “You can’t call her Nana. You can’t.” I was being unreasonable. I could feel the train that carted my reason around the tracks in my mind careening out of control, in real danger of derailing, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Nana was the one who’d asked Devon to call her Nana instead of something more formal. That had been her choice. I couldn’t speak for her now and revoke that privilege, but I was so angry. Too angry.
“I meant the movie as a love letter, June,” Devon said slowly, holding his hands palm up in his lap. “I thought it would be special to preserve our story. To share it. And I thought you’d want something of Nana’s — your grandmother’s — to remember her by.”
“You think I’d forget about her?” I demanded. “You think that I would need some movie to remember her by? I think about her every single day, Devon. Your movie isn’t about her, and it’s not about me. It’s only about you. You know that. That’s why you hesitated to talk to me about it in the first place. I heard you. You told Trina it was because I had too much going on right now. You knew I’d be upset.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he said. “And Trina shouldn’t have had you on speakerphone.”
“She shouldn’t have been there in the first place, at your house,” I said. “Chaz did that on purpose. He told her to go at a time he knew you weren’t going to be there to make her run into me.”
Devon shook his head. “You had one beer with Trina. Don’t tell me that was all it took for her to poison your mind about Chaz. She just flat doesn’t like him, June. She’ll say anything to turn someone against him. She’s angry because she let him get to her. It ruined our relationship.”
“Well, you don’t need any help from Chaz to ruin this relationship,” I informed him. “You’re doing just fine all by yourself.”
Devon lowered his eyes. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s already said. I … I love you, Devon, but this is just too hard. It got too hard way too fast.” I hesitated, trying to figure out just what it had cost to say those words out loud. They were true, all of them. I loved Devon helplessly. No matter what he did, movie included, I would love him for the gift of Hawaii, for being there for me through everything, for giving Nana a brightness to hold on to before she died. It took an incredibly special person to do that. But everything else about our relationship — the paparazzi, the interview, my parents apparently coming out of the woodwork, Chaz, and even Trina — that was impossible to deal with. There hadn’t been a way to deal with it. It was the reason I fled to Dallas, away from Devon. Because I didn’t know what I could do or say to make anything better or different.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me this isn’t harder than it should be. Tell me our relationship isn’t difficult.”
Devon rubbed his face with his hands. I noticed for the first time how exhausted he looked. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaws prickly with stubble.
“It’s my job to be in the spotlight,” he said. “It wasn’t easy to adjust to, but I did it the best way I knew how. I leaned on people who knew better than I did. If you really want this to work, you’re going to have to trust me. Trust Chaz. Do the things we tell you to do. Let us help you in this. Do you want this, June? Do you want our relationship to work?”
“I don’t know what I want, Devon.” I really didn’t. I felt as tired as he looked, tired of fleeing, tired of fighting. Maybe it would be easier to let him go. I wasn’t cut out for life in the spotlight. I hated the crush of paparazzi. I eschewed spotlights. I hated the necessity to hide, to put on a false front, a mask for the people to believe in while the rest of me roiled in feelings I was supposed to smother. It wasn’t fair for Devon to expect me to embrace that life. It wasn’t fair that he had to do it, himself.
“June …” It was just my name coming from Devon’s lips, but it was raw with so many emotions — frustration, sadness, anger … and longing. That longing made me inhale sharply, made me lean forward, made me forget why I’d been so angry in the first place. I hadn’t been away from Devon for very long, but it felt like it had been whole weeks.
I missed him. That was the crux of it. I’d left his house in anger and shock, unable to face all of my troubles with him, and I missed him, felt his absence acutely.
I took two trembling steps toward him before he launched himself off the bed, grabbing me around my waist, burying his face in my chest.
“Tell me you want this to work,” he said, pulling off my clothes even as I struggled to do the same with his. “Tell me you want us to work.”
“I want it.” I just didn’t know whether it was possible. But that didn’t matter — not right now, anyway. What mattered was his hand on the small of my back, inching upward until he unhooked the clasp on my bra, the other hand, traveling downward, slipping beneath the elastic hem of my panties, lower still until he cupped my pussy, pushing against me, making me sigh and want him even more.
If that was possible. I didn’t think I could want him any more than I already did. How had we drifted apart? How had I allowed people and circumstances to push us apart? I loved this man. I never wanted to be apart from him.
He reclined on the bed and I sank down on him gratefully, the sensation of being filled driving out everything else. I started as slow as I could manage, willing my body to get used to his girth. How long had it been since we’d been together like this, and why? He grabbed my hips and urged me onward, faster, driving me past what I believed I was able to do.
And when that wasn’t enough, he flipped me over, onto my back, his hips driving the piston of his cock into me over and over again. I was already moaning, but when he jerked my leg up and over his shoulder, I began screaming, afraid of how thin the walls were, afraid but apathetic. The only thing that mattered was the way I felt, the way he made me feel, the crash of climax, and the way he fell on top of me, covering my body completely with his, both of us breathing in perfect rhythm.
“I love you, June Clark,” he said hoarsely into my ear. “I will do anything you tell me to do. I will do anything for you.”
I fought to catch my breath. It must have been his grueling workouts that let him speak so soon after such strenuous sex. It was nice, anyway, to just lie there beneath him and struggle to breathe. It drove out every other need, every other thought. Devon withdrew from me at last and settled beside me before cradling my body against his.
“Would you kill the movie, if I asked you to?” I held my breath, even as I desperately needed it, to make sure I heard his response.
“If you asked me to, I would kill the movie.” He pushed my hair, damp with sweat, from my face. “Do you want me to kill the movie?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted to know if you would, if I wanted you to.”
“That’s good enough for me,” he said, kissing me breathless again. “Don’t leave me again, June. I was frantic.
I hated the image that statement put in my mind, of Devon getting home and not finding me anywhere. I didn’t even leave him a note. I hadn’t answered his calls or texts. I had no idea what he might’ve thought, what horrors might’ve crawled through his mind.
“I thought Trina would’ve told me where I was going,” I said sheepishly. “I figured you’d know.”
“Trina told me you went to the bus station,” he said. “That was the extent of her kn
owledge. I had to figure out that you went to Dallas all by myself, and then I had to find you in this huge motherfucking city with the paparazzi on my heels.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my cheek against his rough stubble. “I am. I overreacted.”
“You didn’t overreact,” he sighed. “I should’ve told you about the movie. It was a hell of a thing to discover, and even worse that you had to deal with Trina.”
“Trina wasn’t so bad,” I allowed.
“I forget sometimes how insane my reality is,” Devon said after a beat. “I need to be more patient with you. I made too many mistakes with getting you to Los Angeles. And I shouldn’t have pushed you about the interview with Kelly Kane.”
Even the woman’s name made my skin crawl. “None of that matters now,” I said, trying to convince myself most of all of that tenuous fact. “We’re together.”
“We’re together,” he agreed. “That’s all we need.”
There was no other feeling on this planet better than falling asleep with the weight of his arms around me, his chest pressed against my back. It almost made everything else worth it.
Chapter 4
The moment I woke up, I could feel that something was wrong. I reached out and felt the long-cold depression of mattress Devon had gone to bed in. When had he gotten up? Why hadn’t I felt it? Where had he gone?
I slit my eyes open and realized I didn’t know where I was. It was a few more long moments of confusion that everything came rushing back — the movie, my evacuation to Dallas, Devon showing up in my room. Everything had been okay again when we’d fallen asleep last night. Why was I filled with dread this morning?
I inhaled and stretched as I sat up, intent on shaking this funk off of myself. Devon loved me, and I loved him. In the end, that was the most important thing. Everything else was superfluous. I’d learn to deal with the paparazzi and all the invasions of privacy. And if I really put my mind to it, maybe I could be open about the movie. It was important to him. I understood that. And if it was important to him, I would need to support him in it.
I scooted myself around in the bed, expecting a note or a text message on my phone as to Devon’s whereabouts. All I could really think about was taking a long, hot shower to try and pull myself together.
What I didn’t expect to see was Devon seated on the other bed, his face in his hands.
I gasped. “What are you doing? You scared me.”
“You lied to me,” he said, his voice flat, not bothering to raise his face from his hands.
“What?” I racked my brain trying to figure out what he was talking about. “I don’t understand, Devon.”
“You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me this entire time.”
My blood roared in my ears, and I was afraid of something I didn’t fully grasp.
“You’re going to have to let me know what’s going on so I can try to get this figured out for you,” I said, my voice shaking. How had the sublime comfort I’d felt last night transform so swiftly into this panicked horror?
He grabbed for his phone blindly, facedown on the bed beside him, unlocked it, and handed it to me wordlessly. I didn’t even have any guesses as to what it was that had made Devon react like this. There wasn’t an assumption in my mind until I saw it.
And then it all made sense.
It was a photo — not “a” photo, “the” photo. The one that had started everything between Devon and me. The one I’d snapped of him in his hotel room in Dallas to get him to back away from me. The one in which he looked like a monster, awful and drunk and angry.
The one I’d deleted.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, confused and sickened.
“You tell me.” His voice was emotionless, but I knew just how upset he was. He’d begged me to delete that photo. It was what made him figure out where I lived after the encounter. It was how he’d met Nana, how he’d gotten to know her and like her well enough to buy her a Blu-Ray player and invite the both of us to Hawaii. He’d begged me to delete that photo because it showed him at one of his lowest moments.
“I deleted this photo, Devon,” I said. “You saw me delete it. I did it right in front of you.” It was true. Nana had made me go walk the man to his car that first night he’d shown up at her house, and I’d done it right then and there. I wasn’t the kind of person who was intent on ruining other people’s lives, and that included not selling crappy photos no matter how high the bidding got.
It was an awful photo. I’d used the flash on purpose to blind Devon after he’d come on to me. He’d been drunk, miserable after his breakup with Trina Henry, holed up in that hotel room, and not the person he usually was. I’d been starstruck by him, blinded by his charm, unaware of just what he was looking to lose himself in until I was inside of his room, alone with him, rebuffing his advances.
He’d been ugly, as ugly as the photo was, vodka and piles of clothes in the background, along with the pizza I’d delivered to him. He was scowling and recoiling at the same time, giving him a weird double chin and an awful expression on his face.
It was a photo neither of us had been eager to see published.
“I saw you delete it,” he said. “But how is it everywhere now?”
I handed the phone back to him, or tried to. He didn’t take it. He didn’t even look at me.
“Devon, I have no idea how this happened,” I said. “I deleted the photo. You witnessed it. I deleted it from my phone. I didn’t send it to anyone else. There weren’t any other copies. That was the only one.”
“You deleted a photo,” he said. “But you obviously didn’t delete everything.”
I had no idea how to convince him that I was innocent of what he was accusing me of. All I knew was my truth — that I didn’t do it. Even as angry as I was at Devon at the time I took that photo and immediately afterward, when he was busily trying to ingratiate himself with me, I would never do that to him — or to anyone. It was cruel, and I wasn’t cruel.
“I didn’t do this,” I said finally. “I deleted the photo, and I never spoke to anyone about it. Nana was the only other person who ever saw it.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Devon said, pushing himself up off the bed, pulling his clothes on despondently as if even that was too much effort in his moment of despair. “The fact remains, June, that the photo is everywhere.”
I couldn’t argue that fact with him. The photo was out. But I wasn’t the one who was responsible for it.
“It’s not my fault,” I said. “I have no idea why this is happening. Where are you going?”
He slipped on his sneakers and looked at me for the first time. “I’m going home,” he said. “I can’t be here right now.”
How could things be so upside down? We’d only just reconciled over the whole mess about his movie about Nana. Why couldn’t everyone give us a break?
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, hating myself as I did so. I didn’t have anywhere to go. He had to know that.
“You’re already in Dallas,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “You're the one who came here in the first place. You had a plan. Why don’t you stick to that?” He turned his back to me and began shuffling toward the door.
“Devon.” He stopped. “I did not do this to you.”
“Look where you’re staying, June,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “You’re in the hotel where it happened. What, did you feel guilty about it? Or do you just want more publicity?”
“This looks bad,” I said. “I know it does. I don’t know why I decided to stay here. I was upset when I left your house. You know that. But you have to believe me. I would never do something like this to you. I wouldn’t do it to my worst enemy.”
“Am I your enemy?” He looked at me. “Is that it? Did you only entertain the idea of being with me so you could break my heart and tear it out of my chest and stomp on it?”
“What?” It sounded like the plot of some crazy soap opera. “Who woul
d have the time and energy for that?”
He sighed. “Never mind. You should read all the stories the gossip sites are coming up with to go with the photo. They’re pretty imaginative.”
“I’m not going to read that trash, and neither should you.” I made a move to approach him, but he held his hands up and I stopped. He didn’t want me anywhere near him, and that hurt me most of all. He didn’t even want me to touch him.
“I have a lot of damage control to go do,” he said. “I don’t … I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, June. I don’t know what to tell you to do.”
I didn’t know what to do, or what else I could say to Devon to make any of this any better. Somehow, that photo was out in public now. I didn’t understand how it had happened, but I wasn’t behind it.
“Devon, I love you,” I tried. “Why would I do this?”
He flinched at the word “love,” and I wondered if it had been the wrong thing to say.
“I need to be somewhere else,” he said. “Somewhere away from you.”
And he left. I was powerless to stop him, rooted in the spot by shock and horror. He couldn’t even stand to stay in the same room as me. I was too sick to even cry, even though my stomach ached like I wanted to. It struck me to move to the window, to see him walk out, and I was just in time to see him charge through the swarm of paparazzi that had doubled in size overnight like a man possessed. He hadn’t bothered with a baseball cap. And he wasn’t bothering with being polite, shouldering past anyone foolhardy enough to stand in his direct path.
He pulled out of the parking lot so aggressively that smoke rose from his tires, twin black streaks on the pavement the only thing left of him as he rounded the corner and drove out of sight.
It was only then that the tears fell — tears of anger and frustration at both myself and Devon, at gossip websites and people who wished us ill, at the idea that the universe would keep shoving obstacles at us to keep us apart. How had this happened? I’d deleted the photo. Why hadn’t Devon believed me? Why had he thought I was behind this terrible thing?
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