Chapter 2
Josephine
“Decker,” I whisper. The tears I refused to let surface while Nicky was in the room finally well in my eyes.
“Come here,” he urges, opening his arms for me. “You did so well, Josephine. You did so well standing up to Misty, then keeping it together for Nicky.”
I fall against him and hold him tight, but his embrace isn’t enough to calm me. “Kendrick. What’s going to happen now?” As good as it feels to sink into his hold, how I feel is the least of my concerns.
“We’ll get him out. Soon. I meant what I said. I’d be shocked if he wasn’t home by dinnertime.”
“How do you know that?”
He smirks, but when he pulls back and really gets a look at me, his expression softens. Like he’s just now realizing how intensely I’m distressing.
“K played his part knowing that Kyl and I would play ours, too. We’ll get him back to you, Siren. I swear it. I won’t stop until he’s home. But first, I need to know… Who touched you?”
I exhale a swell of trepidation. Decker will go ballistic when he hears the details.
“It happened so fast,” I hedge. “I was running down the stairs toward the beach, which was stupid, really—”
“Josephine.”
I steel my spine and swallow my excuses.
“The guy with the red baseball hat. He sort of two-stepped so he was in my path, then ducked out of the way at the last second. I lost my balance when I tried to dodge him, but he shot his arm out and grabbed me here.” I brush my fingertips along the underside of my upper arm and wince when I find the tender skin where the asshole manhandled me.
“It happened quickly, but I’m almost positive he intended to make me trip so he could grab me. Maybe I’m reading too much into—”
“No,” he cuts me off, definitive and sure. “Don’t make excuses for them. We need to know exactly who we’re dealing with. If you say that’s what happened, then I believe you.”
I swallow past the emotion inspired by the way Decker accepts me at my word, trusts me so implicitly.
“Locke saw it happen, saw him cause me to stumble in the first place. That’s why he hit him. He knew the guy wasn’t helping me get my balance.”
“Do you want him gone?”
My stomach knots as I search Decker’s face. Is he offering to take care of the photographer the same way he and K and Greedy handled the South Chapel football players who took me captive during Shore Week?
“Josephine,” he scolds mildly, like he can read my mind. “Not like that.” Two fingers tip my chin up so I’m forced to meet his gaze. “I can’t get us out of this feature, but I can control who’s allowed in our home.”
I bite down on my bottom lip, considering. “Would it be better to just let him stick around? I highly doubt he’ll come after me again now that he knows the consequences.”
If it were me, I wouldn’t want to even breathe too loudly after being on the receiving end of that kind of reaction from the boys.
Decker blows out a breath and rolls his shoulders. “You’re right. He stays. He’ll be one less person to worry about now that he knows the lengths we’ll go to protect you.”
We’ll is the problem, though.
I throw my arms around him and nuzzle into his chest, hoping like hell my affection is obvious before I speak my truth.
I don’t know if I can do this.
It’s not him. It’s not them. It’s me. It’s everything I’ve survived.
“Decker… I don’t want to be included in the feature. At all. I don’t want to be photographed or have to worry about who’s watching and when.”
“I’m sorry. I wish it wasn’t like this.” His jaw ticks, and a bolt of pain flashes in his eyes, but he leaves it at that.
“That’s it?” I push back. “You have no problem working around the law and paying off local judges, but Misty says jump, and you jump?”
He peers down at me, his cool, detached mask slipping back into place.
“There’s a lot I can control, Siren. But this is out of my hands.
It’s a legally binding contract. It’s a rider for the guys, too.
It’s in the NDA they signed when they moved in with me.
Misty knows she crossed a dozen lines and that I’m fucking furious with her, but she’s not going anywhere, and she knows it, since she represents my dad, too. ”
“Decker,” I plead, not even sure what I want him to do. “You know what the cameras and the scrutiny trigger for me. Allowing this means they’ll have the ability to take my picture and use it however they want.”
“I have final editorial approval on the feature. But that’s the extent of what I can control. We don’t have a choice,” he grumbles.
“You don’t have a choice,” I correct, my heart aching. “I don’t have to be involved.”
When he says nothing, I push harder.
“When were you going to share the magnitude of this feature with me? They’re already here setting up, yet until now, you’ve only given me vague details. Did you think I wouldn’t notice the cameras following you around all week?”
“They have access for ten days,” he corrects.
“Ten days?”
Huffing, he pulls out of my hold and frowns down his nose at me.
“I planned to tell you. But I was still working out the specifics and putting fail safes in place to protect you, Josephine.”
The frustration in his tone when he says my name sends me.
As if he’s scolding me. As if I’m the one who’s being unreasonable.
I plant my hands on my hips and prepare to square off. It’s a position I’ve found myself in often when in Decker’s presence, though not as often lately.
It’s not that I don’t believe him or trust him to take care of us the best he can. I believe he was working on a way to make this as painless as possible for all of us.
But people we both love have already gotten hurt because of it.
“Are there any off hours to the coverage? Timeouts from the monitoring? Safe places where they aren’t allowed to follow us or photograph us?”
“Of course. They’re not allowed to follow us into the bathrooms.”
Now it makes sense why we’re in here.
“And they’re forbidden from photographing us, pursuing us, or using footage of us when we’re out on the lake,” he recites coolly. “My room is off limits unless I’m in here.” He grits his teeth. “Kylian is working out a few other accommodations as well.”
My stomach lurches as reality sets in. The lake exception makes sense, given the details of his mom’s death, but besides that, this guarded man has agreed to give them unprecedented access to his life… to our lives. Why?
“I never thought about it before you,” he offers, answering the question I didn’t ask.
“I cared how intrusive it can all be. I grew up living in the spotlight, and I’ve always been expected to go along with what Misty and my dad suggest. I resigned myself to being the rising star with the golden arm a long time ago.
I didn’t care if they wanted to follow me, photograph me, put pictures of me all over the Internet.
I never cared before. Not like I care now. ”
“How are we supposed to—”
With a shake of his head, he silences me. “We just have to be careful.” He takes a deep breath, his chest rising, then falling. “We’re safe in here.”
I scoff and fight back an eye roll. By “in here,” he means his bathroom.
“It’s only ten days, Siren. Ten days, then they’re gone.”
Silence shrouds us. There’s nothing left to say. We’re at an impasse—one where he’s not in control, and for once, I wish he was.
Relenting, I rest my forehead against his sternum and will myself not to cry.
“I want more of you,” I confess into the fabric of his shirt.
Humming, he bows down and kisses the top of my head. “You have me, Siren. Any minute we’re not together—every hour they keep us apart—you’re where I want to be.”
For a long moment, we stay like that, my face buried in his chest and his arms holding me steady.
“We’ll get through this,” he says into the silence. “Any time you want to go out on the lake, say the word. I’ll drop what I’m doing if it means giving you what you need.”
I glance up into his onyx eyes, desperate to see something real. His gaze is a solemn vow. There’s enough determination there to make me believe that this could all be okay.
“Promise?”
“With everything I am.”