Chapter 29 #2
“I don’t know if you’re talking about your height or your dick, but I bet you spent your teenage years on your knees praying for more inches on both,” I say, sliding my mask off. “How’s this for balls?”
“Good god,” he says, drawing back like a snake is about to strike him, his face twisting with disgust.
“That’s right,” I say, calmly laying my mask on the bar. “Welcome to the uncanny valley, bitch.”
“I’m outta here,” the guy says, pocketing his wallet. “You coming or not, sweetheart?”
“She’s not,” I say, sliding an arm around her waist this time.
“I’m not?” she asks.
“You kids figure it out,” Nash says with a disgusted wave of his hand. “The car’s waiting.” He pivots on his heel and stomps out.
Dolly shoves me away and climbs off the stool, swaying slightly on her feet. “What are you doing here?” she demands for the second time.
“Saving you from that predator.”
“That’s my manager!” she hisses.
“Even worse,” I say. “As someone studying law, I can tell you that’s one hundred percent unethical if not illegal.”
She glares, her jaw tight. “I never asked you to save me, Preston.”
I pick up my mask and slide it back on. “You’re welcome anyway.”
“What are you doing in California? How did you get here? Shit, I didn’t even ask. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I say, holding up a hand. “I was just in the area, and I wanted to see you. It’s been three fucking years, Dolly. Can’t a friend stop by to say hello?”
“Yeah, but… Now’s not a good time for me,” she says. “I have to go, Preston. Nash won’t wait.”
“He’s already gone,” I say. “Now sit down and have a drink with me.”
She glares for a second, but when I pull her back, she relents and slides onto her stool. That means she knows the guy is scum, the kind of man who would leave a woman alone in a bar.
“That’s a good girl,” I say. “Now, tell me why your manager is trying to get in your pants when apparently he has a wife at home.”
She sighs. “You won’t understand, Preston. LA’s not like Faulkner. That’s how things work here. And you’ve got a lot of nerve showing up after all these years and acting all territorial, like I’m yours.”
“You are mine,” I say, because it really is that simple.
She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “I haven’t seen you in two and a half years,” she points out. “And you’re the one who didn’t want to see me when I came home for the holidays. I thought you hated me.”
Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “Why would I hate you?”
“Because I left,” she says, staring down at the edge of the bar. “And you wouldn’t see me when I came home.”
“Because you spend all your holidays with the Dolces,” I growl. “You want me to come to the fucking Fourth of July picnic and have them put out my other eye with a firework?”
She flinches, her hand going to her chest. I see the little daisy necklace hanging on her neck, and hope unfurls like a seedling in my chest.
She still wears it.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean Fourth of July… I asked to see you last Christmas.”
“So you could walk away after a week?” I ask. “I’ve had enough of you leaving, Doll.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she says, slumping against the bar. “I guess… Thanks for visiting me here?”
For a minute, we sit in silence, but I can’t hold back my anger about her fucking manager for long. “So, is what he said true? About the casting couches?”
“Of course not,” she says, her cheeks going pink.
My blood pulses hot in my temples, and I’m glad the bartender chooses that moment to take our order so I have a minute to calm down. I order a frozen margarita and a whiskey on the rocks and turn back to Dolly. She’s watching me, some unreadable expression on her face.
“What?” I ask. “That’s your favorite.”
“I haven’t had one of those since I left home.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a little laugh. “Too many calories.”
“You don’t need to lose weight.”
“You don’t know what the girls here look like,” she says, her voice cracking. “They don’t look like me, I’ll tell you that.”
“I don’t care what the girls here look like,” I retort. “I’ve only seen one girl since I got to California, and she’s fucking perfect.”
“How would you know? You probably don’t know my size any better than Nash.”
“I don’t,” I admit. “And I don’t care. That’s a number. I know what you look like, and that’s so goddamn beautiful it makes me crazy. Why are you trying to lose weight?”
“I could eat most of the other girls at my last audition,” she says. “Nash is right. How am I going to make it out here when I weigh twice what they do? And his first guess wasn’t too high—it was way low. If he knew what I really weigh, he’d fire me on the spot.”
“That’s insane,” I say. “Look at you, Dolly. You’re fucking stunning. You don’t need to lose a single pound to be the most gorgeous girl in the state.”
“You’re the one who’s insane.”
Our drinks arrive, and she busies herself with stirring hers with a straw, keeping her face down.
It kills me to see her like this, to see what this place has done to her.
Dolly never cared if jealous bitches called her fake or shallow behind her back because she loved makeup and big hair and fake nails.
She was who she was, and she owned it, and that made her ten times hotter than her looks alone.
“Dolly,” I say.
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
She glances at me and then back to her drink. “What?”
I scoot toward her, taking her chin between my fingers and turning her face toward me. She meets my eyes and swallows. “You’re fucking perfect.”
Her lashes flutter as she looks down, but I keep her chin in a firm grip. “Look at me. You’re beautiful, Dolly. You don’t need to change to fit what anyone else wants.”
She pulls away, pushing my hand off her. “Maybe it’s what I want.”
“Is it?”
“I want to make my parents proud,” she says. “To make her proud. I want to be someone. That’s what I’ve always wanted. You know that.”
“No, I don’t,” I say. “I remember that being someone else’s dream. I think you’ve made her proud, Dolly. You can come home now.”
The last time I saw her, she admitted it. That she was honoring Destiny’s memory. I told her I’d wait for her. I thought she’d be back. That’s what she said. If someone loved you, they came back. So, I watched her walk away without looking back.
I did wait, but not forever.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, sipping my whiskey.
“Is that why you’re here?” she asks. “In California?”
“I’m here for you.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not coming home, Preston.”
“You don’t belong here, Dolly.”
She sighs. “What did you have to tell me that was so important you came all the way to California to tell me? Are you getting married or something?”
“Would that bother you?”
She stares into her drink. “I don’t have any right to be bothered by what you do. I told you, this is my dream, my career. That’s what I have to focus on right now.”
“I’m not getting married until you say yes.”
“Preston…” she says, shaking her head. Her gaze drops to the tattoo of her name across my knuckles, and she gapes in disbelief.
For a second, silent tension crackles in the air between us.
“Dolly.”
“When did you get this?” she asks, reaching out and running her thumb over my knuckles, where the letters of her name are etched in ink.
Her big blue eyes lift to mine, her lash set fluttering.
I can see the emotion in her eyes, that it flatters her but also causes her pain to see that I’ve permanently marked myself as hers.
“After you left,” I admit.
I haven’t wanted to see her since she climbed on that bus, but I’ve always been hers. I knew I’d never regret it, that I’ll never belong to anyone else.
“Why your knuckles?” she asks. “Were you wanting to punch me when you got it? This way you can picture me while you’re working out at the boxing gym.”
I know she’s kidding, but there’s an edge of real hurt in her voice. She only comes home twice a year—Christmas and the Fourth. Until now, it seemed too cruel to see her if I had to watch her leave every time. This time, she won’t leave.
“We had to sell the gym,” I say. “Dad’s legal fees. And I put your name on my knuckles because… It’s like a ring, until you let me put a real one on you.”
“Preston…”
“Dolly…”
“You were supposed to move on,” she says. “I thought you had when you wouldn’t see me when I came home.”
“Never.”
She sips her drink and squares her shoulders. “I know you were still on some medication when I left town, but you must have realized it by now. I’m not coming home. This is my life now. And this thing between us, whatever it was or could have been, it’s never going to happen now.”
“So you’d rather fuck your way to the top than have something real with me?” I demand.
“You’re an asshole, Preston,” she says, slipping off her barstool. “Thanks for the reminder. I’m going to head out now.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, grabbing her hand. “Stay. That was shitty. I didn’t mean it. I tried moving on, like you said. For a while I was… Seeing someone. But I only ever wanted you. It’s always been you, Doll. Only you. Even when I was with her, I never stopped wanting you.”
“I don’t want to know,” she says, holding up a hand. “You can fuck whoever you want. You always have.”
“It was only one girl,” I say. “For a few months. And we were careful. I even made her take a round of antibiotics before we stopped using condoms.”
“Stop telling me this,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut. “You can do whatever you want. It doesn’t concern me.”
“But it does,” I say, thinking of what my cousin told me, that a baby made all the difference. When she’s pregnant, she’ll care.
I’ll keep pursuing her to the ends of the earth if that’s what it takes to make her mine at last. I don’t care about what she’s done.
I don’t care how many guys she’s fucked out here.
I only care that I’m the only one she’ll be fucking from now on.
I don’t care if she hasn’t used protection, even if she caught something off one of those sleazeballs.
If she has something, I’ll get it, too. I’ll share everything with her, even that.
It doesn’t matter because she’s the only woman I’ll ever fuck again.
She may have other dreams, but I don’t. She’s always been my dream. No matter where she goes, I’ve grown in her direction, a plant twisting to follow the sun. She followed her dream here, and I followed mine. I’m not leaving until I get what I came for—her.