And I knew without a doubt, that my mom would have been so happy I’d found someone like him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I didn’t have to think about it. “I’m okay.”
Those gray eyes moved over my face. “Just making sure.” He took my hand. “I saw you looking out the window in the kitchen before we left.”
I had been doing that. I’d caught myself doing it less over the last couple of weeks. My body and brain had gotten some time to cope. The surprise visit from my loved ones had really helped too. It had reminded me again of how much I still had, so much more love than some people would ever know. “No, I’m okay, I promise. I was thinking about how funny things work out sometimes. Like maybe if I had waited to book your garage apartment, someone else might have and we would have never met.”
“And here I grounded Am for six months and it was one of the two best things to ever happen to me.”
The other being Amos, I knew. And I smiled. There was a lot worth smiling for. “You scared the shit out of me that day, by the way.”
His mouth twisted. “You scared the shit out of me too. I thought you were breaking into the house.”
“You still scared me more. You were like two steps away from getting pepper sprayed,” I told him.
Rhodes’s mouth pulled into a beautiful smile. “Not as much as you scared me that day you were screaming your lungs out in the middle of the night all because of a sweet little bat.”
“Sweet? Are you high?”
His laugh sent my heart pumping.
I leaned over and kissed him, and that ridiculous, full mouth opened and he kissed me deeply in return. We pulled apart, and I smiled at him as he looked at me with tenderness, but the moment he could, his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Rhodes’s mouth went tight. “I think someone has been following us.”
I turned in the seat to look out the back window but didn’t see anything. “You think? Why?”
“Yes. It’s a black SUV. I noticed it right when we pulled out of the driveway. They were coming toward us and pulled a U-turn almost immediately. It’s been following us since,” he explained. “It might be a coincidence, but it doesn’t seem like it.”
I touched his hand. “I don’t have any stalkers. Do you?”
That got one corner of his mouth to hitch up at the same time his fingers landed on top of mine. “None that I know of. Keep close, will you?”
I agreed, and we got out. The weather had taken a turn for a couple of warmer days, but I still had my down jacket on—the tangerine one he’d given me for Christmas that he’d said made me look like walking sunshine. Rhodes rounded the hood and came over to where I was waiting for him in the middle of the parking lot. He slipped his arm over my shoulder and kept me right there, next to that long frame that made me think of safety and home and love.
But mostly of the future.
For such a quiet, private man, he wasn’t stingy with his affection. Part of me thought that he knew how much I needed it and that’s why he sprinkled it on everything. I’d even caught Am looking a little funny sometimes when he’d randomly put an arm around his shoulder or tell him he was proud of him for the littlest things.
I loved him so much.
And I was totally on to the fact that he’d been slowly moving my things over to his house. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be sneaky or just giving me room to get used to the idea, but it had made me choke up when I’d noticed little things appearing over there that I hadn’t brought myself. He rarely used the L-word but he didn’t need to. I knew how he felt like I knew my own name.
And that was exactly what I was thinking of when I heard the last thing I ever would have expected in my life.
“Roro!”
My brain instantly recognized the voice, but it took my body and nervous system a second to catch up. To accept.
But I didn’t freeze.
My heart didn’t start pounding.
I didn’t instantly start sweating or get nervous.
Instead, it was Rhodes who slowed down first. Him who, once we were over the curb and onto the sidewalk that ran around the school, came to a stop and slowly turned us around. How he seemed to know that the “Roro” was for me, I had no idea, but he did.
And I was pretty sure we both spotted the figure jogging across the parking lot with a huge man behind him at the same time.
It was my eyes that were the last to process who had called my name.
Kaden. It was Kaden running with his bodyguard, Maurice, behind him. I didn’t know Maurice well, he’d been hired right before I’d been freed, but I still recognized him.
In a bulky parka jacket and jeans, I’d bet he’d spent a thousand dollars on, the man I’d wasted fourteen years of my life with came running over.
How the hell he recognized me now that I’d let my natural hair color totally grow out again, I had no idea. Maybe his mom had told him. Maybe Arthur or Simone had.
He looked the same as he always did. Made up. Dressed nice. Fresh and wealthy.
But the moment he was closer, I noticed the bags under his eyes. They weren’t normal bags like the rest of us humans got, but for him, they were something. Something about his expression was anxious as well.
The black SUV Rhodes had spotted. That had been him. I just knew it.
“I’m sorry, Rhodes,” I whispered, leaning into him just a little, trying to tell him that it was him I wanted, who I was here for.
I knew Rhodes knew who he was.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, angel,” he replied just as Kaden huffed and slowed down as he approached.
He was looking at me with wide, light brown eyes, panting. “Roro,” he said, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.
The arm around my shoulders went nowhere as I asked him like he was a customer we’d banned from the store, “What are you doing here?”
Kaden blinked slowly, surprised, or… you know what? I didn’t give a shit. “I came… I need to talk to you.” He sucked in a breath. His bodyguard stopped short just a couple of feet behind him. “How are you?” he panted. His gaze tried to eat me up, but I wasn’t edible anymore. “Wow. I forgot how beautiful you are with your natural hair color.”
I definitely wasn’t going to pick at that hypocritical comment with a ten-foot pole. He’d never stuck up for me once when my roots would start to grow back in and his mom would nag me about making an appointment at the salon. If I’d given enough of a shit to go back through my memories, I would have picked up on the fact that he never had stood up for me with her period.
I didn’t have it in my heart to be bitter or angry or even be a bitch. I just didn’t care anymore. “I’m great.”
Seeing him was… just weird. Déjà vu like, I guess. Like I’d lived another lifetime and knew I should have felt something for him but didn’t. There was nothing in my heart as I took in his clean-cut face and styled hair. And I sure as hell felt nothing as he did the same back to me.
But I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to have this conversation. Not even a little bit. And I needed to nip this in the bud ASAP. “Why are you here, Kaden? I made it really clear to your mom what would happen if I ever saw any of you again.” I tried to keep it simple, even though I couldn’t believe he was really here.
But he took a step forward, his gaze finally flicking to Rhodes. His throat bobbed. Then it bobbed again as he took in the arm resting over my shoulders. Noticing the way I was facing the man at my side, leaning against him. Kaden’s inhale was quick and sharp. “She doesn’t know I’m here. Can we talk?” he asked, deciding to ignore my comment.
I blinked.
And that blink must have said exactly what I was thinking—no, I don’t want to talk to you—because he rushed out, breathlessly, “I came to see you.”
It only took him nearly two years, I thought and just about laughed.
Two year
s later and he was here. Here! God bless America! I should be so lucky!
I knew better now than I had even six months ago that life was way too short for this shit.
I tried my best not to make a face; I wanted this over. “So did your mom, and I told her I have absolutely no interest in seeing or talking to either of you ever again. I meant it. I meant it then, I mean it now, and I’m going to mean it years from now. We aren’t friends. I don’t owe you anything. The only thing I want to do is go inside,” I explained about as calmly as I possibly could.
Kaden’s head jerked back, looking genuinely wounded. I had to fight not to roll my eyes. “We aren’t friends?”
I didn’t know what it said about me that I almost laughed at how ridiculous this conversation was. I’d been through so much and this… this was so stupid. “I’m going to say this without the intention of wanting to hurt your feelings, because I just don’t care enough to even bother doing that, but yes, we aren’t friends. We stopped being friends a long time ago. We’re never going to be friends again, and honestly, I don’t know why you’re here after this long. Like I told your mom, there is nothing I want to hear from either of you.”
“But I—”
I cut him off. “Don’t.”
“But—”
“No,” I said. “Listen. Let me live my life in peace. I’m happy. Go be happy or don’t be happy. It’s none of my business anymore. I don’t care. Leave. Me. Alone.”
Kaden Jones, Country Music Star of the Year twice in a row a decade ago, frowned in a way that reminded me of a little boy as his features formed into a stunned expression. “What?”
How could he manage to still act surprised? What did he expect? Just when I didn’t think anything could shock me anymore, it happened.
Today had been a pretty good day after a string of pretty shitty ones, and I wasn’t going to let it go to hell.
“You heard me, Kaden. Go home. Go back on tour. Go do whatever it was you were doing before you came here. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t care to see you. There’s nothing you can say or do that will get me to change my mind. I meant it, all of you need to leave me alone. I’ll take you, your mom, and everyone you know to court if you don’t let me live my life in peace.”
It was like he remembered his bodyguard was watching, or maybe he cared that Rhodes was seeing this happen, but Kaden’s pale face flushed in anger and embarrassment. He took a step closer, gaze wide, looking damn near desperate for the first time ever. “Roro, you can’t mean that. I’ve been trying to reach you for months.”
For months. It had been months since he had last messaged me. Months since they found out where I was, and he was just barely getting around to come and see me? Didn’t that just say more than any of his words ever could?
Rhodes’s hand rubbed at my upper arm, and I glanced up to see him looking at me with an extremely blank face.
“I’ve been trying and trying.” Kaden kept talking as Rhodes’s mouth twisted down at me a little. “I fucked up. I know I did. It’s the biggest mistake of my life. Biggest mistake of anybody’s life.”
One corner of Rhodes’s mouth went up just a little.
Hadn’t those been his exact words?
“I miss you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” Kaden pleaded, genuinely sounding heartfelt.
But his words were going in one of my ears and out the other, especially when Rhodes was looking at me the way he was looking at me.
“Please. Please, talk to me. You can’t throw away fourteen years. You can’t. I’ll forgive you. None of this has to matter. We can put it all behind us and forget about it. I can forget you being with somebody else.”
Only then did Rhodes’s little smile disappear at the same time his head lifted and his gaze landed on my ex.
Rhodes was in his old Levi’s, this crazy cute zip-up wool sweater that Amos’s aunt had given him for Christmas that was maroon, and dark gray boots. He hadn’t even bothered with a jacket, but there was one in the car. And he was the best-looking man I’d ever seen as he reared up to his full height, holding onto me just as tight as ever, and said in that voice of his, “She’s going to be forgetting someone, and it’s not going to be me.”
The flush on Kaden’s face went even deeper, and to give him credit, he looked pretty determined. “Do you know how long we were together?”
This shallow chuckle bubbled out of Rhodes’s chest, and the hand he had been rubbing over my upper arm halted as he turned his arm to let his wrist dangle over my shoulder. But I knew that expression, and there was nothing casual about it. “Does it matter?” he asked, stone-cold and serious. “Because, to my thinking, it already doesn’t. You’re the past. And I’ve got no problem with making sure you end up being some guy that broke her heart before I took over and put hers in mine for safekeeping.”
For someone who wasn’t used to being so loving, he really did say the sweetest things. And if I had ever doubted that I loved him, which I hadn’t, I knew then that I’d chosen right. Chosen best. There were going to be no mistakes here.
Not ever.
By the time I focused back on him, Rhodes’s facial features had morphed even more into one of his most serious expressions. “I love her. And I will gladly give her all the things you were too stupid not to give her. You wouldn’t even hold her hand in public, right? Or kiss her?” he basically taunted him. “I’m fine not being the first man she’s ever loved because I know I’m going to be the last.”
Kaden’s gaze flicked to mine like he was stunned. He’d asked for it. And honestly, I was getting turned on by what Rhodes was saying, big-time.
“That’s the difference between guys like you and me. If she needed something, you’d give her a hundred dollars from your wallet even if you had more and think that was good enough. I’d give her everything that was in mine.” His voice went hard. “The only person you can blame is yourself, dumbass.”
My heart soared. It might have even got straight to the moon. Because Rhodes was right.
Kaden would have a roll of bills in his wallet and part with a hundred, easily. And Rhodes would give me five dollars if that was all he had. He would give me everything at any cost. And Kaden…. It didn’t matter. And it never would again. He had killed anything and everything I’d ever felt for him, and there was nothing there. Not a speck. There never would be again.
And now it was my turn to tell him the same so there was no miscommunication.
Love could be about money. It made things easier, that was for sure. But the best kind of love was about so much more than that. It was about giving the person you loved everything. The easy, effortless things, but also the hardest intangible stuff, the uncomfortable. It was about telling someone that you loved them by giving them everything you had and everything you didn’t because they mattered more to you than anything material ever would or could.
I caught his gaze and told him as seriously as possible, “I told your mom, and now I’m going to tell you too. There is no amount of money in the world that you could ever give me to get me to go back. Even if we could be friends, which isn’t going to happen”—Rhodes grunted beside me—“I wouldn’t work for you or help you again. You need to understand that. I will never change my mind.”
Hurt, clear and bright hurt, flashed across the good-looking face staring at me. “This isn’t about you writing for me, Roro. I love you.”
The arm over my shoulders stiffened, and Rhodes’s voice dropped as he grumbled, “Not enough.”
I focused on this man that I had known so well for so long and made a face so he would know I wasn’t exaggerating, that I meant every word out of my mouth. “Bye, Kaden. I don’t want to see any of you again. I mean it. I’ll make you regret the day you met me.”
I was done.
Rhodes glanced down, and I focused on him, and without looking at my past, we turned and walked away, leaving him behind. To stand there, to stare, to walk away; I did
n’t know and I didn’t give a single shit. Not a fraction of one.
And what had to be about a minute of walking later, I suddenly stopped. Rhodes stopped too, and I threw my arms around his neck. He bent down and put his arms around my lower back, pulling me into that body, cuddling me close.
“You’re the best,” I told him seriously.
His hand snuck beneath my jacket and shirt and palmed my lower back as he whispered, “I love you, you know that.”
Pulling him down so that he was ear level with my mouth, with goose bumps on my skin and a warmth that could have started a wildfire, I whispered back, “I know.”
Rhodes’s breath was a puff against my throat, and I felt him let out a deep sigh a moment later. He shifted and his cheek nuzzled mine. After a moment, with my face tingling from the rub of his stubble, he pulled back and aimed that purple-gray gaze at me. “Ready?” he asked.
I grabbed his hand and nodded. “Let’s go save some front row seats to see our star-in-the-making win.”
The man I loved squeezed my hand, and we went inside to do just that.
Epilogue
“You look like a princess, Yuki.”
Yuki bounced her shoulders from her spot in front of the mirror that had been set up in her room by the designer who had loaned her the dress she was wearing tonight, ignoring the squawk of disapproval from the stylist who had arranged everything. My dress. Her dress. The makeup and hair people that had been hired to take her from a “seven to eleven.”
She was ridiculous, but she really did look like an eleven.
The woman the world knew as a pop star, but I knew as my great friend preened as she turned around. “I’ve got eight layers of makeup on, I’m not going to be able to breathe for the next six hours, and I’m going to need help peeing, but thank you very much, my love.”
I laughed. “You’re very welcome, and it would be my honor to hold up your dress while you go pee. If you have to take a poopy, I’m out of there though.”
It was her turn to laugh. “No poo, but we have peed in front of each other a lot over the years, haven’t we?” she asked with an almost dreamy expression on her face.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 49