Between Never and Forever

by Shain Rose

“Do you even hear yourself?” “I do. I sound deranged.” At least I was admitting it out loud. “Exactly.” She turned and smiled at me. “You sound like a man who cares.” “And I shouldn’t.” I took in a deep breath, and she nodded. We were aiming for the same goal. “It’s okay. I was jealous of your girlfriend last night too.” She chewed her cheek. “We need to work through that.” “Want to work through some of it now?”

“I don’t think screwing around is going to help us, Dex,” she murmured. “It’s the one thing that helps me always.” “Right.” She gulped, and her eyes seemed so innocent as she asked me, “How?” “How what?” “How does it help you?” I saw the blush rising to her cheeks. And then she cleared her throat. “I haven’t… Well, I haven’t experienced any of this before.” Jesus, I wanted to corrupt the fuck out of her. I wanted to be the one to stain the blank canvas that she was, make her my own and only mine. It wasn’t healthy though. “I’m aware you haven’t,” I ground out. “So, well, maybe you could help me.” She offered up the idea like it was a good one. “Help you how?” I asked even though I shouldn’t have. I should have left the room right then, backed away from her and saved my sanity.

You could…teach me.” “Teach you?”

“You have more to give the world than that.” “You think? I seem to recall you saying I am what I’ve been faking to be.” “You couldn’t hide the gift of your voice under anything pretend, Kee. When you sang down in that garden to me, you came alive. I fell in love with…” “With what?” she whispered. The words clogged in my throat. The heartbreak and pain of losing her, seeing her here, remembering what we’d been and what we’d lost all stopped me from speaking the words. I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter. The past between us can’t matter. Just keep the damn room,” I said, stepping back and away from her, away from the honesty between us. “But Dex—” “And if you want me to teach you something, learn something about me first. I’m not here to help you any more than I already have. I don’t want to help you at all.” My voice held finality, and I walked away like I didn’t care. I wanted to not care. I needed to try. I’d try everything to rid myself of her.

Douche

It was already quite apparent he wouldn’t be eating with me, but his text drew an even bolder line.

That night, I called Olive and ate at a resort restaurant with her, too nervous to sit around the penthouse waiting for him. Still, I was home early enough that night to see him working in his office, and although I was sure he heard me too, we didn’t talk. I holed up in my bedroom and read through a whole romance novel because I couldn’t sleep, knowing he was just a room away.

That night, I wondered where he could be that he would have gone off his structured schedule, and then I told myself I didn’t have a right to know. He lived a neat life where everything had a place, and he wouldn’t mess it up with a contract he didn’t know anything about. Unless I pushed for it. “Everything’s going to be changing anyway. Let’s leave the past in the past,” Mitchell summed up. I sighed. I wanted that too. I didn’t want Dex to know why I’d given him up. My father had squandered so much of our money, and I’d never been strong enough to tell him how much that hurt, that he needed to find help for his gambling problem, that he was hurting the whole family. How do you tell the parent you always wanted to make proud that they weren’t making you proud? How did you stand up for yourself when all you wanted to do was stand with them? I wasn’t only ashamed though that I hadn’t stood up to my father, I was ashamed that I hadn’t handled my family’s situation. My father reminded me time and time again that we kept our family issues private, that he didn’t need any help with finances, that we could handle this ourselves. I continued to believe him. Or just hold on to hope that I could and would figure out how to take care of them on my own. Dex didn’t need to know anything else about it.

He didn’t care to be around me but wanted to know where I was? We hadn’t talked all week, and I sort of hated living in his space where the ghost of him was all around me. What was the point?

He brushed off my invitation so easily that I put my phone away without responding to avoid feeling hurt. Yet, when I tried to pay for dinner later that night, the waitress handed back my card. “Sorry. Mr. Hardy has it covered.”

I growled at my phone, at how he thought he could command something from me so easily, how he thought this was about the press. “Trouble in paradise?” “He’s such an ass,” I grumbled. “Dex is texting you?” she inquired, but I was too busy to think about her questions as I silenced my phone, consciously and deliberately not responding back.

He’s gonna show up 😂

And yet he hasn’t been around ever since we—” I stopped myself. I hadn’t told a soul about us sleeping together. Olive’s honey-colored eyes widened. “Ever since you what?” “Nothing.” “You’re blushing.” She pointed to my cheeks. “Did you— Are you still—?” “Don’t talk about it!” I shook my head at her. And then I knew—because she was such a close friend and I needed someone to confide in—that I was going to blurt out everything. So, I said, “If we talk about this—” “Oh my fucking God, you lost your virginity to Dex Hardy and you didn’t tell me. Spill it right now.” So, we drank champagne. Too much. And I told her all about that night. “He’s still in love with you.” “If that’s true, why isn’t he taking the opportunity to sleep with me and teach me everything he knows?” “Because he’s protecting you from yourself.”

I waved her on and was about to use my fingerprint to let myself into the penthouse but the door swung open before I even tried. “You intend not to answer your fiancé when he texts you about when you’re going to be home?”

Instead, I’d been mature. I’d texted. Then, I’d threatened. And she’d ignored me. Thankfully, I got an alert for her spending over ten thousand dollars on my tab at one restaurant and I knew then where she was. It still didn’t stop me from watching the hallway cameras while waiting for her ass to show. It had taken hours.

Guessing you did if you were out there drinking fifty thousand dollars’ worth of booze, right?” Her eyes widened. “Fifty thousand? What? There’s absolutely no way. We need to go down to the restaurant right now.” She turned toward the door but I stopped her. “What were you drinking?” She spun back around. “Well, I just said the most expensive bottle…” Her eyes narrowed on me now. “Do not tell me you have bottles worth over fifty thousand dollars here, Dex. Do not.” “Of course I do.” “That’s ridiculous!”

“Need it?” Who the hell did she think I was? Did she even get why I was upset? “You think I need fifty thousand? Jesus, it’s not expensive for me and who is a more important guest than my fiancée? Spend what you want. I don’t give a shit. But I do give a shit when you don’t text me back.” I saw how she straightened her spine. “Well, I was too busy having fun while you were too busy to come down because you needed to work all night to keep us safe, I guess.” “And did you feel safe?” I don’t know why I even cared to ask at this point. She squinted at me, like this was some sort of quiz. “I felt somewhat safe.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted praise and trust like I would have gotten from her fifteen years ago. “You do realize people have to scan IDs just to walk the premises, right?” She shrugged like it was nothing. “The camera system has facial recognition embedded, a software I patented, just to be able to play the slots.” “I played the penny slots the other night.” “You think your face isn’t in my system?” I scoffed. “It’s been in my system since the damn moment I built it.” “Why?” she whispered. “Because, Kee, if you were going to walk into one of my resorts or my buildings, I was going to be informed, but they weren’t going to stop you. They would have left that job to me.” She rolled her eyes and her whole body swayed with the movement. “Of course you built a system just to make sure you could spite me. How does it feel holding on to that hate from so long ago?” “Feels like I’m moving toward getting over it.” I didn’t offer more because I was sure I wasn’t moving in the right direction.

“What I don’t have figured out is how you’d like to release the statement of us together. It’s why I texted you tonight.” “Of course there’s no other reason you’d have texted,” she grumbled, and her bottom lip pouted out. “Should there be another reason?” I had a million reasons. I’d flipped through them all mentally before I’d landed on that one for texting her tonight. I wanted her home at the time she’d come home every night this week, I’d made a mental note she should be walking through the door then. I didn’t want her with anyone else but me. She was my fiancée, and my fiancée should be having dinner with me. None of them were logical, considering she wasn’t really mine anymore.