Page 135 of Between Never and Forever
“Free? I have a dissertation to write,” Olive immediately snarled at him. “My professor has been quite interested in what I’ve come up with.”
“That the same professor who called you the other night?”
“The other night?” I questioned, wondering what evening they were even talking about.
“Yes, Olive.” Dimitri smiled. “Why don’t you tell Kee about the other night?”
“I… You… Why are you here?” she stuttered out.
He smirked. “I came to discuss the night in question.”
“What happened the other night?” I finally asked, because neither Olive nor Dimitri had shared anything with me.
Olive’s eyes widened before she grabbed Dimitri’s arm. “Let’s go.”
And before I could ask, they both hustled out of the office.
Pink got up and walked toward the door too. “Pretty sure they’re sleeping together.”
“Wait… what?” There was no way. Dimitri or Olive would have said something to me.
“I literally can feel the tension when he walks into the room. You see him too much as a friend, but that man could melt her clothes off with his hot stare.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Pink. Are you meeting up with Bane? Me and my wife are having lunch.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved off Dex’s death stare and then pointed to the photos on the ground. “You’re making the right decision.”
I stared down at my wedding pictures, admiring how we both had so much love in our eyes, how Dex held me close around the waist, and how the breeze pushed my hair back just right. The photographer had captured us perfectly, but the train of the dress was showing. With the spots I could see.
“No one can see what you’re worried about.” Pink sighed. “I think it’s badass anyway.”
I shouldn’t have worn the dress with Ezekiel’s blood on it. The move had been bold, reckless, and freeing. My shoulders relaxed into the feeling. “I know it’s the right decision. I’ll let the magazine know.”
The magazine’s focus wasn’t at all about Ezekiel. It was about our marriage, our success, and the triumphs throughout our lives. They talked about how love could conquer all. They quoted me saying, “He’d always been the boy who saved me. And I wasn’t about to leave behind the man who saved me too.” And they quoted Dex saying, “She broke my heart once. I had to make sure she wouldn’t again.” The magazine got our exclusive interview after Dex and I agreed to only this one.
We’d waited months after Ezekiel’s kidnapping to actually go through with the wedding because there was too much trauma, too much healing to be done, too much of everything.
“I won’t rush when I have you forever anyway,” Dex had told me. So, we waited.
I finished out my residency in Vegas with special guests flying in to sing with me. They sang my songs, my words, my heart. They made me realize once and for all it’s what I wanted to do, that I could make someone shine in the limelight while still enjoying my life out of it.
Owning Trinity allowed for me to do that. Dex and his family buying Trinity allowed that. So, this past month, I’d worked tirelessly to prove to them all I’d exponentially grow the label. I restructured management, leaving Mitchell out of it, and I’d brought on artists that thrived in the limelight. I worked alongside Dex most of the time, because he followed me everywhere—hence him being in my office now.
“So, stamp of approval on that and my work is done here for the week.” Pink winked at Dex as she backed out of the office. Right before the door closed, she yelled, “Don’t tell Bane I left!”
Dex nestled into my neck as he said, “Why do you always have a million people in your office?”
I chuckled. “Because I’m trying to make Trinity thrive.”
Dex’s family had been there for me every step of the way, and I would be there for them, by making sure this label wouldn’t go under.
Not that any of them truly seemed to care about the success. When Izzy and Lilah called, it was to talk about my mother and how I was adjusting to the shift in my career. They wanted to talk a lot. Clara and Evie did too. They’d become the family I never knew I needed, and maybe in a way, the Hardys had always been that. I just needed to come to terms with it.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the sun when you’ve been standing in the dark for so long. Dex and I were each other’s light to find our way back to it. Now, our home was each other, although Dex whispered in my ear, “Do you plan to look at the blueprints of our home soon?”
He was having Dom draw up plans for a perfect ranch in our hometown on land near our parents. Ideally, I wanted to be closer to my mother when I could, but it was clear we’d both be traveling for work for years to come.
I also think Dex might have needed to heal from what had happened so long ago. We’d been home for the wedding, and Gabriella had seen us in a grocery store. I hadn’t talked to her much after the accident. I don’t think either of us could get past it back then. Our conversations had been stilted as she learned to walk again, and then we simply hadn’t called one another much after. I knew she’d gone to college, got married, had kids and was living back in our hometown.
