Page 22 of Sinner's Vow

Chapter Seven

NOAH

I can honestly saythat I have never, ever in my life been this happy.

Three weeks go by. We have shows in Berlin, Amsterdam, and France. Kennedy and I spend our days together playing tourist, and maybe I’m trying to make up for all of the shit I put her through in the first month of our marriage, but I’m spoiling her rotten. If she looks at it with a smile on her face, it’s hers. She teaches me how to paint, though I’m completely horrendous at it. I ship every one of her paintings back to the house in California. And one night, she even paints me, and it’s one of the most erotic things I’ve ever experienced in my life when I paint her in return, vivid colors on bare skin.

I get to know my wife over the next three weeks. I learn what makes her laugh. What makes her sad. What kind of cheese is her favorite and how she loves any food that is spicy. I learn she’s a terrible dancer, not that I can ever get her to do it. She’s terrified of spiders and when two are found in our hotel in Amsterdam, she screams until I come and take care of them.

And I smile more than I’ve ever smiled in my life. Lying in the bed with her, with my head laying on her chest, staring up into her chestnut eyes, it’s the very best place in the world to be.

And I know without a doubt in me that we made the very best decision ever that night we decided to risk it all and get married.

Gina leaves us alone. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t talk to me. And it’s absolute fucking bliss.

After the worst six months of my life, I finally feel like her grasp around my throat has slipped.

The world is perfect, until one morning, two days before we are supposed to head to Madrid.

I’m lying with Kennedy in a massive bed in yet another hotel suite. She’s still sleeping. Lying naked in the bed, my eyes trace the shape and slope of her legs, up her hip, down her waist, over her shoulder, sliding down her neck, getting tangled in the mass of her red hair.

Seeing the soft expression on her face, I smile.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been in love before. I’ve had girlfriends over the years. A few in high school. One for a year after we got signed. One very briefly just before we released our second album. But if this is what love feels like, I never felt it for those other women.

Kennedy has done something new to me. She’s saved me. Maybe she only saved me from myself, from the darkness of my own mind. But she’s set me free, and she makes me feel worthy again.

After living in hell for six months, I don’t know that anyone else could do that for me.

And the fact that we aren’t pretending for publicity anymore, the fact that we’re actually a happy couple, it’s such a relief. Kennedy deserves to feel genuine happiness, and I’m trying my damn hardest to make that happen.

A knock sounds on the door. Hard. Loud. It sounds again, faster and more insistent.

“Noah?” Gabriel’s deep voice reverberates into the room. Kennedy’s head pops up and with sleepy eyes, she looks around. I jump to my feet and pull on my boxers before going to the door.

“Keep it down,” I hiss at him as I open the door, but my heart falls into my gut when I see Gina standing beside my best friend. “Kennedy was sleeping.”

“This can’t wait,” Gabriel growls, and when I meet his eyes, cold goosebumps flash over my arms. There’s darkness in his eyes, the kind that calls for action.

“Some photographer in Las Vegas posted some pictures last night,” Gina says. She doesn’t meet my eyes when she speaks. She holds up an iPad.

I flinch back when I see them.

Those are my wife’s breasts. My wife’s pussy, barely covered in a tiny scrap of pink fabric. That’s her, naked, looking back over her shoulder at the camera.

The caption reads, “No questions here why one of the world’s most famous singers put a ring on her finger the first night of meeting her. Treasure isn’t meant to be kept to yourself. Enjoy Kennedy Alexander.”

“Fuck!” the word bellows out of me. My instinct is to throw the screen at the floor, to stomp on it and shatter it, so no one else can see what I’m seeing. But that wouldn’t do anything to the damage done online. “I need to call the lawyers.”

“I’ve already been on the phone with them all morning,” Gina says.

“They’re saying Kennedy was paid for the pictures,” Gabriel says, his tone dark. “The man says he has a contract. If he’s telling the truth, there’s not much they can do. They’re looking over the contract right now.”

Vile anger is raging through my blood at a thousand miles per second right now. I look back over my shoulder and miraculously, Kennedy is asleep again. She sleeps the deepest in the morning.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say, my tone going low and cold. “I’ll be taking care of this myself.”

“Noah,” Gabriel says, his eyes widening just a bit.

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