Chapter 11
ELEVEN
June
Upon hearing my uncle Sandy’s voice so laced with horror and disappointment, my face turns red hot.
Without thinking, I struggle out of Deke’s hold and attempt to fix my clothing, snatching the torn lace panties up from the floor and shoving them into the pocket of a blazer that hangs on one of the garment racks.
With trembling fingers, I fix my twisted and sweaty tank top, pushing my hiked-up skirt back into place.
“Fuck,” Deke swears, hanging his head briefly, before zipping up his pants. “Did you know he was coming back early?”
“No.” I shake my head. “What are we going to tell him?”
Deke runs five fingers through his unruly black hair. “There’s no use in lying, June Bug. They probably heard us in the next county.”
I press the palms of my hands to my hot face. “Oh my gosh.”
Another loud knock at the door has Deke sighing, planting his hands on his hips for several beats, before he moves to the entrance “Might as well face the music.” He opens the door to reveal my uncle Sandy, his once blond hair faded into gray, his thin frame dressed in an old Brooks & Dunn T-shirt and ripped jeans.
He takes one look at me and Deke, our bodies still in the final stages of exertion, and his face pales.
“Jesus Christ, Deke. I thought even you had a little more honor than this. She’s less than half your age. ”
“I need you to take a deep breath and listen, Sandy. This isn’t some sordid affair, despite how it looks.” He holds his hand out to me, winking, and I take it, weaving our fingers together. “This thing between me and June Bug—”
“Oh, there is no ‘thing.’ Not on my watch.” He points a skinny finger at Deke. “She has a bright future ahead of her. The last thing she needs is to get mixed up with some down-and-out drunk whose best days are behind him.”
I can feel those words hit Deke like a physical blow. His wince breaks my heart, because it’s followed by a dimming of his eyes. It’s followed by shame.
“My God, I heard you both from the parking lot. What am I going to tell her mother?”
“You’re not going to tell her anything,” I say, attempting to squeeze life back into Deke’s suddenly bloodless hand. “I’m an adult and I’ll tell her when I’m ready.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” frets Sandy. “After all, you’re going to go back to school and put all of this behind you.”
“No, I’m not,” I say, firmly. “Well, yes, I am going to go back to school, but I’m not putting Deke behind me. He’s…we’re…”
“You’re what?” Sandy prompts, impatiently. “Are you going to marry her, Deke?”
Deke’s chin snaps up, but it’s impossible to read what’s happening behind his darkened eyes. “Marry her? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
That outburst is a slap in the face. A cold bucket of water being dumped over my head. Marriage is a long way off, but I wouldn’t have expected him to react quite so opposed to the idea of marrying me. Not when he just told me I’m his addiction. That he couldn’t go five minutes without me.
“I’m not even sure about being her boyfriend yet,” he continues, looking down at our joined hands, then up at me. Conflicted.
Oh my God.
I’m such an idiot.
I’ve fallen in love with someone who just wanted to have sex with me.
I’ve made this relationship into something much more romantic than he did.
Feeling stunned and hollow, I drop Deke’s hand, ignoring him when he tries to take it back. “Hold on, June Bug. That didn’t come out right.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I’m…God, I feel so stupid.
” I evade Deke’s attempt to grab me, quickly sidling past Deke and Sandy, out of the dressing room.
Everyone backstage is standing there looking at me with abject sympathy.
Am I just one in a long line of girls who fancied themselves in love with Deke Decker and started hearing wedding bells, only to realize their heads are in the clouds?
“June!”
Once again, I ignore Deke’s alarmed shout of my name and jog through the backstage area, ordering an Uber on my phone at the same time.
Not an easy thing to do when my eyes are flooding with unshed tears.
I don’t know where I’m going to go once I’m inside the Uber, because I’m in a strange city.
What do I even enter as the destination?
With a sound of frustration, I drop the phone to my side and settle on walking. Walking until I’m somewhere I can cry alone—
“June, goddammit,” growls a voice behind me, a split second before I’m hoisted off the ground.
Into Deke’s arms. My feet are suspended in mid-air, my back confirmed to his powerful chest and I just go limp.
I go limp and give in to the tears. “No, baby, no. Oh Jesus, I should be shot for making you shed a single tear. I’m sorry.
” He squeezes me tight, laying kisses all over my head, neck and shoulders. “You’re going to listen to me now.”
“You said all the important stuff back there.”
“No, I did not.”
“I don’t want you to think I…I wasn’t thinking about getting married already, I swear.”
“Well, I was,” he roars. “I am.”
I’m stunned into silence, mid-sniffle. “To who?”
“To you, June. Are you really asking me that?” Deke, the picture of frustration, settles my feet onto the ground and turns me around in his arms. He makes a pitiful sound, using his thumbs to wipe away the moisture from my cheeks.
“Baby, I will be marrying you. Nobody on this earth could stop me, you hear? I’m in love with you, June Bug.
I’m lost for you.” He swallows hard and continues, without giving me a second to absorb his declaration.
“But what Sandy said was right. I’m a washed-up drunk—and what I realized on stage tonight is, I don’t want to be that anymore.
I don’t want to bring that part of me around you. ”
“You won’t,” I whisper, shaken. Trapped between elated and nervous. What is he saying? “You are not a washed-up drunk.”
“Yes, I am, baby. And the cracks would start to show. Unless I take care of it.” He takes my face in his hands, his gaze running lap after lap around my face.
“I’m canceling the rest of the tour to get sober.
Will you wait for me?” His chest pitches up and down.
“Please, I want to do this right. I want to do right by you. I want to make you my world with nothing to hold me back.”
Pride in him swells in my breast.
This was and is the man of my dreams. Still. Always.
I don’t have to think.
I know the answer. I’d stick by Deke Decker through anything.
“I know…I know I’m not the hero you thought I was,” Deke says, obviously mistaking my silence for indecision. “But I—”
“Of course I’ll wait for you,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I’ve waited my whole life to feel your love. And give you mine. I love you. Not because of some dream I built up in my head, but because of the reality of you. This Deke is the one I love.”
His Adam’s apple shifts up and down in his throat. “You mean that, June Bug?”
“You’re more than worth my wild,” I whisper, going up on my toes to kiss him. “And you always will be.”
Seven days later
Deke
Rehab was supposed to be twenty-one days.
Too bad I’m going out of my fucking mind.
I went through alcohol detox when I arrived at the facility, but that strain on my nervous system is nothing compared to being away from June.
I would have broken out a hundred times by now if the orderlies hadn’t physically restrained me and handcuffed me to a metal radiator several times.
I’m losing my mind without my June Bug, and I only miss her more as I grow more clear-headed.
In seven days, I’ve easily spent a million dollars sending her gifts and I have no plan to stop spoiling her any time soon, but I need to hold her in my arms now. I can’t wait another goddamn minute.
My heart is pounding out of my chest on the way out of the front door of the facility, my eyes scanning the horizon for June.
She promised she would be here to pick me up, but what if she changed her mind?
Maybe she’s had seven days to consider how drastically her life is going to change with me in it.
In the last week, I’ve rehired Whit as my manager—and I’ve been keeping him busy as hell.
He put a downpayment on a house for me in Nashville near June’s college campus and started construction on a recording studio in the basement.
I’m inspired to write new music. Because of her.
Half of the songs are duets, with June singing opposite me, because I selfishly want her on stage with me as much as possible. Just want her near me, period.
Canceling my tour meant rescheduling ten shows and I’ve organized them all around June Bug’s classes next semester.
I’m not going on the road without her. I’m not going anywhere without her, ever again.
But I had to make damn sure she was getting the best version of me before I asked her to commit the rest of her life to me.
She deserves that and more. She deserves the world.
I’m starting to panic as my stride eats up the walkway leading to the parking lot, because I don’t see her. Fuck. Fuck. She didn’t come. She changed her mind.
Right as I’m about to spiral, a car door opens in the closest row and out steps my stunning redhead in an old Deke Decker tour T-shirt and high heels. The shirt reaches the tops of her thighs and…yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing pants. Or shorts. Not unless they’re extra short.
Good God. My dick is already the size of a bowling pin.
“I couldn’t figure out how to open the door of this new car you sent me,” she laughs, her cheeks flushing at my approach. “By the way, you must stop sending me gifts. I live in an apartment, Deke. I can’t fit—”
“You live with me,” I rasp, hoisting her off the ground, her sexy legs winding around my waist. Her back hits the side of the brand new Lamborghini, she’s pinned between the vehicle and my body—and oh sweet Christ, I get my hips between her thighs for the first time in a week and I’m already on the verge of coming in my fucking pants.
Nothing in this world can keep me from humping her so roughly, the Lamborghini rocks on its wheels behind her.
“Son of a bitch, I’m going to bust,” I say, my voice guttural, my hips pumping my stiff cock against her cunt.
Just ramming myself up against her, my balls hardening ominously with every thrust. “Are you even wearing panties under that T-shirt?”
“Why d-don’t you feel for yourself, Daddy?” she hiccups, biting her lip and squealing over my next aggressive drive, her tight ass mashed up against the passenger side window, squeaking up, down, up, down.
Somehow, I manage to gather the motor skills to yank up the T-shirt and feel along her hip for a panty strap, but there’s nothing.
She came to pick me up bare-assed and beautiful.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m going to explode,” I grunt, slipping a hand around to her ass and digging my fingers into that succulent flesh, holding her steady for my quickening pace.
Rutting her through my jeans like a dog in heat, my cock throbbing like the beat of a drum.
“I’ll never go a fucking day without you ever again, baby. ”
She lifts her face to the sunlight, and the smooth, gorgeous texture of her skin makes me frantic.
Frantic. Obsession with June has sewn its way into every part of me.
Changed the man I am for the better. Ballads about June write themselves in my head while she looks me in the eye and squirms on my dick, helping me come in my pants right there in the parking lot, because she knows what I need.
And I intend to spend the rest of my life giving her the same. Everything she desires.
I stiffen, warmth geysering from my cock into the denim trap of my fly, and I watch in disbelief as she moans and shudders, her pleasure seeping through my jeans.
“You came,” I breathe, still straining and shaking through my climax, the force of it weakening my knees.
“Of course I did.” She leans in and twines her tongue around mine, her body still convulsing with little jerks of pleasure, her gasps bathing my lips.
“I’ve been coming just looking at you for a long time, Deke Decker.
Now? I can taste and smell and feel you.
” She throws her head back, still in the throes of ecstasy.
“My body doesn’t know what to do with itself. It loves you the way I love you.”
“God, June Bug. I love you back so much it scares me. And don’t worry, your body might not know what to do with itself, but I know exactly what to do with it.
” I yank open the car door and settle her tight ass down on the passenger seat.
Then I get down on my knees, prop her ankles on my shoulders and show her exactly what I mean.