Chapter Two
Tyler, Texas
Jesse wiped his palms down the front of his jeans, then rang the doorbell.
Hell, he didn’t even know if Kimber Edgington, now Trenton, was home.
And that scary bastard she’d married—had it really been almost five years ago?
—wouldn’t be thrilled to see his wife’s ex-fiancé, especially this late at night.
If he was lucky, Deke Trenton would slam the door in his face.
More likely, the big operative would try to beat the shit out of him.
After a gut-tightening moment, the porch light flipped on and the door swept open.
Deke towered in the doorway, a beefy forearm braced against the jamb, blue eyes raking him with a scathing glare. Then Kimber’s husband sighed and looked over his shoulder, into their family room. “Kitten, your personal Bieber is at the door.”
“Jesse?” she asked, her familiar voice comforting.
Deke stepped back, and she appeared in the doorway a moment later. Well, her pregnant belly edged into view. The rest of her followed an instant later. He hadn’t talked to her in so long, he hadn’t even known she was pregnant again. Didn’t that make him feel even more like a shit?
Deke wrapped an arm around her—both a reminder and a warning. Jesse was relieved that seeing the man’s hands on her no longer made him twenty kinds of jealous.
“Oh my gosh!” Kimber’s hazel eyes widened as she pulled him in for a hug. “You really are here.”
Jesse held her for something slightly longer than a moment. When Deke growled, he pulled free.
Clearly, he was intruding on their happy domestic scene.
“I really am. Sorry to drop by without calling.”
“Not at all. Come in.” She opened the door wider and stepped back.
Deke glared but let Jesse enter. Now that he’d interrupted their evening, he’d talk fast, thank them, and be gone.
As he cleared the foyer, flashes of light told him the TV was on, but lack of sound told him someone had muted it.
Children’s toys filled baskets and shelves around the room—balls, books, trucks, stuffed animals.
Kimber had given birth to a son almost four years ago and was obviously about to be a mother again.
“Sit.” She waved him over to the couch. “Can I get you something? Water? Coffee?”
Reluctantly, he sank into an armchair, leaving the couch for the two of them. “No thanks. How are you?”
“Pregnant, as you can see.” She smoothed her hand over her distended belly with a serene smile. “It’s a girl this time. I’m due at the end of next month. Otherwise, I’m fine.”
“And you’re on bed rest until then so you don’t go into premature labor again.
Feet up.” Deke hustled her back to the sofa, lifted her calves and placed her swollen ankles on a pillow strategically positioned on the coffee table.
Then the man pinned Jesse with a stare, shaking his head.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call since your buddy Ryan fucked up and bit it last night. ”
Kimber gaped, swatting at her husband. “Deke!”
“Am I wrong?” Deke looked his way.
Jesse raked a hand through his wavy hair. He hated wearing it to his shoulders and filled with “product.” The stylist he paid a small fortune for insisted it looked both cool and hot. Same with the scruff on his face. More and more often, he just wanted it all gone. “Nope. But I wasn’t there.”
“Access Hollywood suggested something similar about an hour ago,” she said.
“Which I don’t watch,” Deke cut in. “You came here for a reason. What do you need?”
Grimacing, Jesse tugged at his ear. These damn earrings annoyed the shit out of him, but his stylist insisted they added to his badass image—something he increasingly resented.
Crap, he shouldn’t have come here. He’d wanted Kimber to save him once upon a time. She couldn’t then, and she couldn’t now. Worse, he risked bringing the press down on them, extra stress Kimber didn’t need if she was having a difficult pregnancy.
“Nothing.” He stood. “You’ve got your hands full. I assume your son is in bed. And I… I’ll figure it out.”
“You need a place to crash?” Deke barked.
Jesse opened his mouth to admit that was half the reason he’d come.
Then he snapped it shut again. Deke’s buddy Jack had some isolated cabin in the Louisiana swamp, and it would come in handy about now.
But Jesse hadn’t done anything for himself since fame had hit—not kept his schedule, answered his calls, or styled his hair.
Hell, he’d barely wiped his own ass. He was a grown man who should be able to take care of the essentials.
And as Candia had suggested, the time had come for him to change everything.
He was too damn unhappy to spend the rest of his life this way.
“No. I’ve got a place in mind,” he lied. “Before I headed that way, I wanted to spend time with someone who…” Knows I’m not the sort of man to corrupt and overdose a teenager.
But the last time he’d seen Kimber before she’d ended their engagement, she’d walked in to find him chugging a fifth of bourbon while balls deep in an intoxicated, barely legal girl he’d been sharing with Ryan.
Deke must know that. “Someone who wouldn’t bullshit me. Someone with a solid word of advice.”
“Well…” Kimber’s brow wrinkled in thought. “I’ve always said that you have to decide what you want in life and to make it happen.”
Deke took her hand and squeezed it affectionately. “Kitten, I think he meant me.”
When she glanced his way for confirmation, Jesse sent her a half grin. “Man to man.”
Or something like that.
His answer clearly surprised her. “Oh. Sure.”
While it was no secret that Deke had never liked him, Jesse was thankful Kimber’s hulk of a husband seemed willing to talk. He was the most no-nonsense, straight shooter Jesse knew. And he figured Deke’s unvarnished truths might come in handy about now.
“I get it, man. Good times and fast women are hard to turn down.” Deke took Kimber’s hand. Though the overhead lights cast a glow on his golden hair, no one would ever mistake the big operative for an angel. “But you should fucking stop acting your age in rock star years.”
“Rock star years?” What the hell was he talking about?
Deke cracked a smile. “Cut your age in half and add one.”
Mentally, Jesse did. “I’m not fifteen.”
“Then don’t act like it. Life isn’t about getting high or laid.”
“I’ve been sober for thirteen months.”
“That’s great!” Kimber praised.
“It is, but who knows that?” Deke raised a brow. “Who can corroborate that?” Into Jesse’s telling silence, Kimber’s husband went on. “Obviously, you’ve got an incredible career. It’s your character everyone is questioning. Stop behaving like a douche. Start being a man. It’s not complicated.”
Jesse clenched his jaw. But he’d asked for it, and Deke had never been one to candy coat.
He kept Candia’s plan to change his image to himself. First, the woman would likely change her mind. Second, that said fuck-all about what he intended to do. Paying someone was easy, but it didn’t mean shit. They’d only trot out smoke and mirrors for the world.
“He’s been through a lot,” Kimber argued with her husband. “That’s harsh.”
“Am I wrong?”
Jesse could only shake his head.
“See?” he said to his wife before he turned back to Jesse with a hard glance. “How about women? Still a different one every night?”
Jesse hated to answer with Kimber in the room. His wandering dick had only been one of the reasons she’d ended their engagement. He hated to admit he’d learned almost nothing since their breakup. “I’m no saint.”
“No shit,” Deke tossed back. “Last lay?”
“A couple of cities ago.”
“You remember her name?”
“No.” Jesse grimaced.
“So she didn’t mean anything to you?”
Jesse hesitated. But if he couldn’t be honest, what the hell was he doing? “Nothing.”
“Then why did you do her?”
She’d been eager, pretty, and available. “I guess…I didn’t have a reason not to.”
“If you want your life to have meaning, you have to treat all the parts of your life as if they’re meaningful.”
Deke’s advice surprised Jesse. The dangerous operative almost sounded philosophical. Kimber’s husband had always struck him as being long on intimidation and short on brains. Clearly, Jesse hadn’t seen past the brash and brawn.
His former fiancée scowled. “Deke’s right. I’m sure it feels good in the moment, but giving away parts of yourself to people who don’t value you beyond your fame will leave you feeling hollow.”
Jesse reared back. Jesus, she was one-fucking-hundred percent right. Hollow was exactly how he felt when he woke up next to a body he knew intimately with a face he barely remembered.
“And when was the last time you wrote music?” Kimber went on. “Then recorded it with heart? That used to mean everything to you.”
Another truth bomb.
He winced. “What are you saying?”
“Your new album is great. Catchy and fun. Edgy. Clever. But…it doesn’t sound like you.
” Kimber flushed. “That came out wrong. I know you can be fun and clever and all that. It’s just…
some of your best hits were those soulful ballads about being true to yourself and following your heart.
You wrote those before you hit it big, and I haven’t heard a song like that from you in forever. ”
She was right again. The worst part was, he’d known it. He’d felt it in the studio—the difference between writing something that came from his chest and assembling something designed to chart. At the time, he’d told himself it didn’t matter.
He’d been blowing smoke up his ass.
Between Deke and Kimber, Jesse heard the message loud and clear that he’d lost his way, personally and professionally, maybe in every way that mattered.
Thirteen months ago, he’d thought getting sober would fix what was broken.
End the restlessness he hadn’t been able to name.
And it had helped. The hangovers were gone.
The blackouts. The mornings that had left him feeling both empty and full of regret.
But sobriety had merely cleared the fog. It hadn’t filled the void behind it.