Between Never and Forever: Part 2 – Chapter 22

I went to rehearsals, trying to place my focus somewhere else.

Another week went by. No press release was dropped about us.

We were only weeks away now from my show, and Pink insisted she bring by some other dresses she’d found. She waltzed into the penthouse and belted out, “Dex Hardy!”

“He’s not here.” I shook my head at her while Olive walked in behind her.

Two men pushed a clothing rack much less colorful than the last one they’d brought up through the room, and Olive pointed them to my bedroom. “Why are you looking for him?”

“Because the man knows how to make a statement, and I need to tell him.”

“Huh?” I wrinkled my nose at her, not knowing what she was talking about.

“I bet that’s why your follower count is up,” Olive murmured, tapping away at her phone as she stepped in after Pink. “Be happy that I silenced all your social notifications, Kee. You’re blowing up online.”

“What are you talking about?” I waved them in and looked up and down the resort hallway. No one was around, but my habit of worrying about it wouldn’t die off so easily.

Olive wagged her phone at me the second she made it into my bedroom. “This is brilliant, Kee.”

“What?”

“Dex’s post with you!”

“What post?”

Not waiting for her to hand me her phone, I pulled up my social media and saw my follower count had nearly doubled. Hundreds of thousands of followers were pouring in. “What’s happening?” I whispered, but I was already going to his page, where I saw he’d posted our picture.

And he’d tagged me.

She was too shocked to eat the breakfast I made for her, but doesn’t my fiancée look good in the morning, even in a college sweatshirt that isn’t mine? We’re taking time now to enjoy each other before her performances begin at my resort. Don’t expect us to be on here until then.

He’d controlled the narrative without mentioning Ethan or the label. He’d let fans know we wouldn’t be posting on social media, and he’d been unapologetic about it.

“Why?” I whispered.

“Why what?”

“He said to not worry about it. That he’d have his team handle it.” No one could handle it this way though. He’d known I could hardly eat breakfast. He known about the sweatshirt. He’d written that post. And he’d controlled the story. For me.

My friends had moved on to my wardrobe and threw some cocktail dresses at me to try on. Each was beautiful, long, tailor-made for my body and classic rather than pop star. They were sexy in a sort of timeless way.

Yet, my mind was elsewhere.

“Why do you keep looking at that dresser instead of the pictures I’m showing you?” Olive nudged me where I sat on my bed. She was going over how my dresses would be complemented by the lighting, that my Vegas show would be remembered as the time everyone truly heard my voice.

“Because your pictures are boring. We already have her wardrobe lined up,” Pink answered for me as she wiggled in her schoolgirl checkered skirt. Pink’s taste in clothing was punk rock mixed with rock star, and somehow she pulled it off.

She’d pulled off getting me classic dresses I wanted for the second half of my show too. “Do you think I’m going to get away with telling everyone I want to just sing in the second half?”

“Get away with what?” Pink put her hands on her hips. “It’s your show. You get to do what you want. Plus, you’ve got a couple weeks for them to get accustomed to it during rehearsals. It’ll be fine.”

“Well…” Of course Olive was the voice of reason. “She has to cater to her base fans a little.”

“That’s what the first half is for. If they don’t like the second half, they can leave.”

“That’s not the way it works, Pink. Sometimes you can’t—” Olive started.

“You can leave whenever you want.” She stared at Olive with a fierceness we all knew brewed under the surface, but she was letting it boil over. “Unless someone is holding you hostage, you should be willing to do whatever you want. It’s your feeling, your body, and your choice.” Her words echoed through my room as her voice grew louder.

“Right,” Olive whispered, and then she reached for Pink, who jumped when Olive’s hand touched hers, but my friend was always overly compassionate and didn’t back away. She threaded her fingers through Pink’s hand and said, “I know that, Pink. You know I know that.”

Pink was a new friend of ours, but Olive had taken her in fast. She seemed to know more than I did about the situation, because she widened her eyes at me like I should say something.

“Um, yeah.” I jumped off the bed. “And I am going to show everyone that.” Pink squinted at me like she wasn’t at all convinced. My gaze flicked toward the stupid dresser. I whispered out, “I’m really going to do it this time. With this concert, with this contract…” I hesitated but I said the next words like I was getting rid my own demons. “With Dex. With everyone.”

“Huh?” Olive’s face contorted now like she was confused, but I was on a roll.

“I’m going to show him I can handle every single thing he throws at me, and I’m going to do it well.”

That seemed to spark life back into Pink and pulled her from whatever nightmares were weighing her down. She punched at the ceiling. “Absolutely. Fuck that man up.”

“Now, wait a minute. Slow down.” Olive had to put a damper on our newfound goals. “You and Dex could probably use a time out so we can think about what happened last time and—”

“What happened last time?” Pink looked between us. “Oh my God. What? Tell me right now.”

And of course Olive blurted out that I’d been a virgin, that now I wasn’t, and that she thought Dex still had feelings for me. She ended with: “So, they’re going to fall in love all over again, and we’re either going to be attending a real wedding or scraping her off the bathroom floor.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to cry over him. Honestly. We haven’t even done anything really since, and now I’m just stuck staring at that dresser.”

“What’s with the dresser?” Olive frowned.

That prompted me telling them about the Ben Wa ball too. “It’s taunting me!”

Pink stomped over to the dresser and whipped open the drawer. She looked between me and it. “You’re putting that thing in tonight. You got this.”

“Do I, though?” I tilted my head.

“Yes, because you can do this, right?”

I nodded and gulped while Olive looked on at both of us with doubt in her eyes. “I know I shouldn’t, but I’m still going to say be careful. The Hardy brothers are—”

“We can handle any man. We’re women,” Pink cut her off with a glare. “Women handle men. Not the other way around.”

They left me with that thought bouncing around in my head. I ate alone and stared at the drawer. I stared at my bedroom door, too, wondering if Dex would come home.

But of course Penelope texted me his schedule and he had a dinner meeting. I liked his assistant from the little interaction I’d had with her, but I still thought her texting me was ridiculous.

Late that night, I heard him come home, and I could have gone to talk to him or ask if he wanted a snack, but after a week of no real communication, it felt too awkward. We had nothing to discuss. He obviously didn’t find me capable of experiencing things with him or good enough company to talk to. He’d probably shaken the idea of me from his system already and was just following through with the contract.

Plus, my mind wasn’t in the right place after I’d lain down that night and received a text that had me feeling sick anyway.

The problem with social media was it spread like wildfire, sometimes into the hands of people you didn’t want anywhere near your life.

I deleted the text without responding. Tonight, I acted like Dex and filed away my problems in a box I would ignore.