Chapter 9
NINE
June
Is this really happening?
I’m having a hard time telling the difference between reality and dreams, because I have dreamed of Deke Decker holding my hand since I was a young girl.
When we walk out of the back bedroom of the tour bus after five long hours of driving, I don’t expect him to reach down and twine our fingers together. But he does.
Deke Decker holds my hand. Tightly. In a grip that reminds me of his restless, shaking hands in my hair when I gave him my very first blow job. It must have been good, right? Not only are our fingers braided together, but he’s staring down every man who looks in my direction.
“This doesn’t mean I’m your boyfriend,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, even as he’s silently promising death to every man in the vicinity. And rubbing the back of my hand with the pad of his thumb. “You understand?”
A giddy feeling rises up in my chest.
He’s going to cave.
He is actively caving.
Deke Decker wants to be my boyfriend. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Or he’s not willing to accept it.
“Yes,” I say, tilting my head back and giving him a solemn look. “I understand. You’re not my boyfriend.”
He frowns, making a gravelly sound in his throat. “You don’t have to sound so chipper about it.”
“Oh. Well…” Don’t make it so obvious that you see right through him. “I’m just excited about the show.”
Deke hums, clearly distracted as he looks me over. “You sore anywhere, June Bug?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling broadly.
My smile only widens when his stress deepens. “Where?” He reaches under the back of my skirt, massaging my right butt cheek. “Here?”
“Uh-huh.”
He gives a regretful exhale. “If I didn’t have this goddamn sound check, I’d bring you to the hotel for a soak.” He rubs a knuckle against my sore opening, his mouth coming down to collect a slow kiss of my lips. “God knows you earned it.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I can give myself a bath.”
“Yeah, I know that. But…” His chest expands and contracts, three small grooves forming between his dark eyebrows.
“I don’t know, it’s like I’ve got this responsibility to do it for you.
I want to do it for you. Soap you up and wash your hair and everything.
Snuggle you up in a towel afterward…and just watch you be cute. What the hell is wrong with me?”
My heart is singing. “Sounds like Daddy behavior.” I rush to add, “Totally different from boyfriend behavior.”
“Right…” He draws the word out, sounding suspicious. “I don’t want you going anywhere without me, June Bug. Stay right where I can see you during sound check.”
“Okay,” I laugh. “I was going to do that anyway. I’m your assistant, remember?”
We’ve reached the stairs that lead off the bus. Before I can release his hand and descend them in front of Deke, he pulls me to a stop, a muscle flexing in his cheek. “You didn’t let me do those things to your body because I’m your boss, did you? Or because you felt pressure to—”
I interrupt him by pressing onto my tiptoes and kissing his mouth. “Deke,” I say, blushing. “You’ve seen the notebook. You know I wanted every single thing you did to me.”
His big shoulders relax. “And you haven’t been disappointed yet. With me.”
It sounds like a statement, but his eyes are searching.
“No,” I say, sobering. Crossing my wrists behind his neck and bringing my body up against his.
“The way you touch me is better than any of my fantasies,” I whisper against his mouth.
“The way you fuck me,” I say, rubbing my breasts against his chest. “The way you lick me. The way you pulse in my mouth—”
“Stop,” he groans, pillaging my mouth from above, his tongue delving deep, the way I crave. “Don’t make me hard when I don’t have time to fuck you properly.”
“You call that proper?”
His laugh is whiskey soaked and husky. So masculine that the sound of it rolls down my spine and makes me shiver happily. “I do fuck you quite improperly, don’t I?”
“In highly inappropriate ways, yes, but I’m not complaining.”
His forehead rolls right to left against mine, his big hands sliding up my skirt to knead my bottom. “Good. I don’t plan to stop.”
“You have no idea what I’d let you do to me, if you played ‘Worth Your Wild’ on stage tonight.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Every muscle in Deke’s body is instantly riddled with tension and he’s pulling back to look at me, his gaze shuttering.
“I don’t play that song anymore.” He releases me, plowing a hand through his hair.
“I’ll never play it. Don’t ever ask me that again. ”
I should apologize for poking a sore spot.
But that’s not who I am. I’m not a girl who backs down from fights.
“Why won’t you play it? That song is a classic. It’s everyone’s favorite. People miss hearing you sing it. I know I do.”
He storms off the bus, his tread heavy on the steps. “That’s too fucking bad, ain’t it?”
I follow right behind him, running to stay on his heels while everyone stops walking toward the venue to watch us argue. “Tell me why you refuse to sing it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He rounds on me, leaning down to get in my face, his upper lip in a snarl. “Because I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“You owe one to everyone!”
“It’s my song. I wrote it. I decide what to do with it.”
“I’m sorry, but the first time you sang Worth Your Wild, it started belonging to everyone.”
There’s a brief shift in his expression, as if he never considered what I’m saying, but it’s gone in a flash, replaced by irritation. “I’m not listening to this fanciful bullshit,” he scoffs, storming away from me again.
I start to let him go, but he glances back at me and I catch it.
A tiny thread of vulnerability and I have no choice but to pull it.
I catch the door through which he enters on the way backstage, following him into the space where roadies are already milling around and preparing for the sound check. “Talk to me, Deke.”
“Let it go, June Bug.”
“I can’t. I’m speaking on behalf of millions of fans.”
“Because that’s what you are, right? At the end of the day, you’re just a fan.”
A needle stabs me in the center of my chest and hot liquid pools in my eyes, but I lift my chin and refuse to back off. “Does it make you feel better to hurt my feelings?”
“God, no.” He reaches for my face but curls his fingers into a fist and lets it drop before he can touch me.
“Look, baby, I wrote that song when I was a different man. I don’t like to sing it because I’m reminded how much I’ve changed.
For the worse. It hurts to sing a song I wrote when I was so fucking green.
And idealistic. And I had no idea that everyone around me would bail as soon as I failed to write a hit album. ”
Sympathy and grief hit me in the chest, knocking me sideways.
The pain in his voice. The betrayal.
I always assumed he stopped singing Worth Your Wild because of a copyright issue or a disagreement with his label. This is personal, though. This is a pain he’s been carrying around and keeping all to himself.
“I’m sorry people turned out to be unworthy of you, Deke. But I didn’t bail. A lot of people didn’t bail. You just can’t see them, because they’re a blur of faces in a crowd or listening to you in their truck a thousand miles away. But they’re there.”
He grinds his jaw for several seconds, once again considering my words. Taking me seriously, even though I’m only half his age. Oh, he’s exactly the good and decent man I always hoped he’d be, even if he’s buried under a lot of baggage and self-pity right now.
“The song is retired,” Deke says, finally, accepting a fresh bottle of Jack from one of the roadies. He uncaps it with his teeth, taking a long gulp. “And that’s the end of it.”
When it’s time for our duet, I walk out on stage, and it’s a vastly different experience this time.
At the last show, they were disappointed.
This time, they chant my name and stomp their feet with such ferocity, my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in.
I almost book it off the stage to go hide in the safety of the dressing room, but when my gaze latches on Deke’s, the nerves recede and there is only him.
Maybe Deke watching me face my fears will inspire him to face his own.
It’s wishful thinking that I could join the tour and say the magic words to fix Deke Decker, but a girl can dream, can’t she? And honestly, I don’t think he needs much fixing to begin with. To me, he’s incredible exactly how he is. What he needs is some healing.
“Hey, June Bug,” he rasps into the microphone.
To my ears alone, it sounds like an apology.
I accept it with a small smile.
“Hey, Deke,” I say, lifting onto my toes to say into the mic.
The crowd screams in response.
“These people want to hear ‘Sweet Venom,’” he says in that deep drawl. “You reckon we should give them what they want?”
“Guess we ought to. They paid the admission.”
We’ve been gravitating toward one another while speaking and now, we’re close enough for the brim of his cowboy hat to brush my hairline.
Our argument lingers in his eyes, but there is yearning in their depths, too, and I’m sure it matches mine.
It’s not an act for the audience. It’s real.
It’s my dream come true, but it’s better than any fantasy, because I can smell him, feel his breath when he sings the opening notes to the song.
There’s whiskey in the air between us, and I know he’s been drinking since our fight.
My body is sore from the last two days of making love with Deke Decker and I know that’s a plight I want to endure for the rest of my life.
I must be telling him all of that with my eyes, because he goes off key at the end of the verse, his throat shifting with a heavy swallow.
He stares at my lips while I sing my line, his fingers strumming with added insistence on the strings of the guitar.
I respond to that forcefulness involuntarily by batting my eyelashes and swaying my hips. An invitation.
The invitation is more than sexual, though.
It’s an invitation to keep me.
This doesn’t have to end.
Be my boyfriend. Be my man.
“Sweet Venom” ends and the crowd releases their deafening approval while Deke stares down at me, his eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his hat.
The longer we go on looking at one another, the air rife with longing, the louder the audience cheers.
Finally, when our moment has stretched too long, I force myself to turn on a heel and leave the stage, waving as I go—
Deke strums the opening chords to Worth Your Wild.
A ripple of shock goes through the crowd. Exclamations of disbelief and joy.
My heart launches into my mouth and I turn, just outside the spotlight, to find Deke’s hand hesitating on the body of the guitar, his body riddled with tension. It’s clear that he’s not sure about continuing, but his conflicted gaze ticks up to mine and I nod.
When he strums the next series of chords, he keeps going.
He keeps going.
Then, into the microphone, he drawls, “Darling, dance a little closer, tell me what it takes to be worth your wild…”
I can barely hear his voice, everyone is singing along so loudly.
A brief sweep of the audience reveals faces covered in tears or smiles. Both.
But Deke looks at me while he sings the song that made him a household name.
Every backstage hand and roadie flanks me in the wing, in awe of what they’re witnessing.
For the first time in almost a decade, Deke Decker is singing his most beloved song.
It’s about halfway through the second verse when his posture relaxes and he winks at me.
That’s when I realize I’m in love with him.
I’ve always been in love with him. But I loved a one-dimensional hero on a poster.
Somehow, almost overnight, I’ve fallen for the real man.
The stubborn one who makes mistakes and drinks too much. I love him.
I love every version of him.
I don’t bother to hide my feelings while he sings “Worth Your Wild”, blowing him a kiss when the song ends and the standing ovation carries on for several minutes.
He watches me recede backstage while he continues the show, but not before he makes me a sensual promise with his eyes.
“Don’t go far, June Bug,” he says into the microphone, his voice deeper and darker than a pitch-black country sky.
And I listen.
I stay right at the edge of the stage, waiting for my man.
When he comes for me, he moves like a charging bull.