Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
I could only hope.
“You coming?” Amos asked as he rounded the hood of the SUV.
I nodded at him and smiled.
But still, he hesitated, a frown forming over his lean features. “I really am sorry, Ora,” he told me again.
“I’m sorry too. I’m disappointed in myself for believing that the music thing would be a deal breaker. Give me a hug and we’ll call it even.”
He seemed to freeze for a second before rolling his eyes and coming over. Amos wrapped a loose arm around my back, which was pretty much the equivalent of the warmest hug from anyone else in the world, and patted my spine twice—letting me hug him back—before he pulled away. He gave me a tiny mouth twist that was also the equivalent of a great, beaming smile from anyone else before he shook his head, looked away, and went up the steps to the deck.
Rhodes was still in place, looking, waiting as his son disappeared in the house, closing the door behind him. Leaving us alone. “All right. Come here,” Rhodes said in that low, quiet voice, lifting his hand.
I took it. I slipped my fingers over his callused palm and watched as his long ones curled around my own, tugging me toward him. Those purple-gray eyes were steady. “Now tell me one more time. Why didn’t you say anything about who your ex was before?” he asked so tenderly I would’ve told him anything.
I answered, aiming for tender too. “There are a few reasons. A) I don’t like talking about him. Who wants to tell someone they like all about their ex? Nobody. B) I told you, it embarrassed me. I didn’t want you to think there was something wrong with me and that’s why we split up—”
“I know there’s nothing wrong with you. Are you kidding me? He’s an idiot.”
I had to fight a grin. “And for so long people just pretended like they wanted to get to know me because they thought I worked for him. I mean, I didn’t take you to be a fan of his, but I just got used to not talking about him, Rhodes. It’s a habit. There were very, very few people I could ever talk about him to. And I didn’t want to bring him up. I was trying to move on.”
“You did move on.”
My heart jumped, and I agreed. “I did move on. You’re right.”
He took a step closer, his body right there. “I want to understand, Buddy, so I know his level of stupidity.”
That made me grin.
“You broke up because he had to pretend you weren’t together? And that’s why you didn’t have kids?”
“Right. Only band members, people on tour, and close friends and family knew. Everyone had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. We pretended like I was his assistant to explain why I was always around. At first it was fine, but eventually . . . it really sucked. They were so paranoid about kids, his mom used to count my birth control pills. I would hear her asking him about fucking condoms all the time. It was so hurtful now that I think about it. And I don’t want to talk about him, Rhodes, because he’s the past and not my future in any way anymore, but I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” I wouldn’t mind knowing everything about him someday.
“There’s a lot of singers who get married and are still successful, aren’t there?”
I nodded. “Yeah, there are. But I told you, he’s a momma’s boy and she insisted things would never be the same. He valued his relationship with his mom more than his relationship with me, and that was fine. Not really, but I tried to be fine with it. With being the lie. Being a secret. With living a life that made me feel way too often that I wasn’t good enough, because maybe if I had been, it would have been fine for everyone to know. All I wanted was to be important to someone again, I guess. So I put up with it.
“Then at one point, she talked him into doing ‘publicity’ and being seen going out with this other country singer, and I told him if he did, he could go fuck himself. He said he had to, that he was doing it for us because there were rumors going around that he might not like women—like there’s something wrong with that—because he didn’t have a girlfriend and was never seen with anybody. And I left. I was gone a month. I stayed with Yuki. He did it. That’s when I told you that we’d split up and he’d kissed someone else. And eventually, then he came looking and begged me to get back together.
“Things were never the same after that. About a year later, he and his mom decided they were going to try and ‘do something else’ with his music, so they hired some producer instead of going through me . . . and that was the official beginning of the end. I think about it now, and I guess they figured out I was writing less and less. I bet they, or at least his mom, were trying to phase me out. A year after that, it was over. He had left for some ‘business meetings’—which I later found out had really been him staying at his mom’s—came home and said things weren’t working anymore, reminded me that the house was under his name since his mom wouldn’t let me be on the deed because ‘someone might find out,’ and he walked out. The next day, she disconnected my cell. It’s kind of messed up, but I think that bothered me more than splitting up did.”