Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29451 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29451 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
I’ve made this relationship into something much more romantic than he did.
Feeling stunned and hollow, I drop Deke’s hand, ignoring him when he tries to take it back. “Hold on, June Bug. That didn’t come out right.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I’m…God, I feel so stupid.” I evade Deke’s attempt to grab me, quickly sidling past Deke and Sandy, out of the dressing room. Everyone backstage is standing there looking at me with abject sympathy. Am I just one in a long line of girls who fancied themselves in love with Deke Decker and started hearing wedding bells, only to realize their heads are in the clouds?
“June!”
Once again, I ignore Deke’s alarmed shout of my name and jog through the backstage area, ordering an Uber on my phone at the same time. Not an easy thing to do when my eyes are flooding with unshed tears. I don’t know where I’m going to go once I’m inside the Uber, because I’m in a strange city. What do I even enter as the destination?
With a sound of frustration, I drop the phone to my side and settle on walking. Walking until I’m somewhere I can cry alone—
“June, goddammit,” growls a voice behind me, a split second before I’m hoisted off the ground. Into Deke’s arms. My feet are suspended in mid-air, my back confirmed to his powerful chest and I just go limp. I go limp and give in to the tears. “No, baby, no. Oh Jesus, I should be shot for making you shed a single tear. I’m sorry.” He squeezes me tight, laying kisses all over my head, neck and shoulders. “You’re going to listen to me now.”
“You said all the important stuff back there.”
“No, I did not.”
“I don’t want you to think I…I wasn’t thinking about getting married already, I swear.”
“Well, I was,” he roars. “I am.”
I’m stunned into silence, mid-sniffle. “To who?”
“To you, June. Are you really asking me that?” Deke, the picture of frustration, settles my feet onto the ground and turns me around in his arms. He makes a pitiful sound, using his thumbs to wipe away the moisture from my cheeks. “Baby, I will be marrying you. Nobody on this earth could stop me, you hear? I’m in love with you, June Bug. I’m lost for you.” He swallows hard and continues, without giving me a second to absorb his declaration. “But what Sandy said was right. I’m a washed-up drunk—and what I realized on stage tonight is, I don’t want to be that anymore. I don’t want to bring that part of me around you.”
“You won’t,” I whisper, shaken. Trapped between elated and nervous. What is he saying? “You are not a washed-up drunk.”
“Yes, I am, baby. And the cracks would start to show. Unless I take care of it.” He takes my face in his hands, his gaze running lap after lap around my face. “I’m canceling the rest of the tour to get sober. Will you wait for me?” His chest pitches up and down. “Please, I want to do this right. I want to do right by you. I want to make you my world with nothing to hold me back.”
Pride in him swells in my breast.
This was and is the man of my dreams. Still. Always.
I don’t have to think.
I know the answer. I’d stick by Deke Decker through anything.
“I know…I know I’m not the hero you thought I was,” Deke says, obviously mistaking my silence for indecision. “But I—”
“Of course I’ll wait for you,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I’ve waited my whole life to feel your love. And give you mine. I love you. Not because of some dream I built up in my head, but because of the reality of you. This Deke is the one I love.”
His Adam’s apple shifts up and down in his throat. “You mean that, June Bug?”
“You’re more than worth my wild,” I whisper, going up on my toes to kiss him. “And you always will be.”
Seven days later
Deke
Rehab was supposed to be twenty-one days.
Too bad I’m going out of my fucking mind.
I went through alcohol detox when I arrived at the facility, but that strain on my nervous system is nothing compared to being away from June. I would have broken out a hundred times by now if the orderlies hadn’t physically restrained me and handcuffed me to a metal radiator several times. I’m losing my mind without my June Bug, and I only miss her more as I grow more clear-headed.
In seven days, I’ve easily spent a million dollars sending her gifts and I have no plan to stop spoiling her any time soon, but I need to hold her in my arms now. I can’t wait another goddamn minute.
My heart is pounding out of my chest on the way out of the front door of the facility, my eyes scanning the horizon for June. She promised she would be here to pick me up, but what if she changed her mind? Maybe she’s had seven days to consider how drastically her life is going to change with me in it. In the last week, I’ve rehired Whit as my manager—and I’ve been keeping him busy as hell. He put a downpayment on a house for me in Nashville near June’s college campus and started construction on a recording studio in the basement.