Jahleel (47 page)

I now understood his anger towards me the day before. His anger both to me and to God. He was gutted. I couldn’t even begin to pretend I understood what it must’ve felt like for him to find me like that. To think I was really gone. Poor Amanda must’ve lost it, yet I treated her like complete crap earlier today.

Jesus, I was truly selfish.

Naked silence descended. I had no excuse or plausible words for what I did. For hurting the people around me.

I raised my eyes to the clock on the adjacent wall and watched ten slow minutes tick by, while Jahleel kept his head lowered, eyes on our hands again. It was 1:34am, and I idly wondered how the Awards went, and if Jahleel’s new family was waiting up for him.

“Does she know you’re here?” I blurted.

“She who?”

“Marsh, if I remember correctly.”

“My life’s none of her business.”

“Isn’t she—”

“Marsha led you to believe something that isn’t true,” he said, eyes snapping up to mine. “We’re not together. We never were. She was already on thin ice with me for what she did, then she went ahead and fuckin’ lied to you.”

“So…” I swallowed, “you don’t live together? As a family?”

“No,” he said, slowly enunciating the word so I’d get it. “Claire’s not used to me. She’s almost five, for shit’s sake. Never knew her father until now. She doesn’t understand my role in her life yet, so whenever I admonish her, she doesn’t listen. She’s fuckin’ rude, feisty and answers only to her mother. Drives me fuckin’ crazy.

“I understand I can’t just shove this father thing down her throat and expect her to adapt, so I let Marsh come over sometimes and we spend time together so Claire can get used to me. That’s all it is. After what she did? You kiddin’ me?”

Shaking his head, he ran a hand through his oh-so-amazing hair again. “Swear to God, ever since I learned about Claire, it’s like my cock went into repulsed mode against women. I’m afraid to fuck again. Because apparently not even condoms can protect you. Women are sick fuckin’ creatures.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Maybe you should try the dick to dick route then. To avoid us ‘creatures’.”

He dipped his head to hide his own smile, brushing his thumb over my knuckles. “I’ll think about it.”

This smile wasn’t his usual arrogant, crooked one, but a sweet, shy smile that somehow made him appear boyish and innocuous. How misleading, eh?

“Oh,” he murmured, removing his hand to dip into his front pocket. “Picked up your ‘stolen’ stuff from the station today. Including your engagement ring…”

“Ah,” I groaned with a roll of my eyes. “The act. Blimey. How long do we have to play this through?”

No answer came while he got the ring out—an ornate titanium goth-like ring with a not-too-large baguette black diamond, outlined with red stones. Very
me
. I couldn’t have chosen a better ring for myself. Hell, this man
knew
me.

Lifting my ring finger slowly, caressingly, he slid the ring onto it. He raised his eyes to mine, answering with a question, “Forever?”

Not a peep came from me. I couldn’t breathe let alone speak. My gaze left his and dropped to the ring on my finger, then back to him, then back to the ring, then back to him.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod…

Did he just…? Oh. My. God.

“Sassy?” he questioned, when several long minutes passed and…nothing.

My mouth opened and closed like a fish gagging on bait.

Releasing my hand, he reached up and touched the tips of his fingers to my cheek. “Breathe, Sassy, breathe.”

Doing as he suggested, I let out the breath I held in, and the ability to speak returned. “Are you doing this because you think I’ll try killing myself again?”

“No.”

“Are you
lying
to me right now?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea what this means?”

“Yes.”

“So you
do
know you have to be committed to me and me only, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you, a whore and more, have absolutely no problem with that?”

“No.”

“And you’ll never, ever, cheat on me again?”

“
No
.”

“Do you
love
me, Jahleel Kingston?”

His lips tipped up in that damned crooked smile. “Yes.”

I forgot to breathe again. “You…Oh God…For how long?”

“Six years.”

Wait, what?
“What?”

Standing up, he set his sketch pad down on the chair and ordered, “Scoot over.”

When I shifted over on the bed to make room for him, he cuddled up beside me. Reaching a hand up to my hair, he captured a wild raven curl, twirling it around his finger. “This, this is fake. Naturally, you’re blond.”

“That’s true,” I admitted in a whisper.

“A blonde that glistens when the light hits it. A blonde far more luminescent than an angel’s. An unusual blonde I’ve never seen before, and will probably never see again.”

“How do you—”

“Six years ago, I was backstage at a concert in Manchester, heading back from the restroom after a break in warm-up rehearsals. This gorgeous blond went up on stage. She was opening for my boss, and the second she began singing, I stopped moving. Her voice, it did something to me, and like magnet to steel, I went straight to the foot of the steps at the stage where I could see her better. Every inch of her taunting curves.

“And she sang on,
‘How do you know it’s real? Does he make you paralyzed? When he’s there, do you see only him? Does he suck you in? Consume you? Overwhelm you? Does he make you forget to think? How, how do you know it’s real? Is there a pull? The brain still works? Thoughts jumbled together? Nothing makes sense? You feel but don’t understand? Knows right but do wrong? You explode in a song? How, how do you know it’s real?’

“I couldn’t move. Her voice wrapped around me like barb-wire and trapped me in a painful trance. I fell in love with her voice. I fell in love with her curves. I fell in love with her hair. I fell in love with
her
. Right there. Back stage. Seeing and hearing her for the first time in my life. I fell in love.”

A stray finger traced the outline of my lips.

“When I finally got my damn legs to work, I practically sprinted to my boss. Lion. I asked him if he’d heard her sing. He hadn’t. But I believed in what I heard, her voice, so I badgered and badgered until he gave in, saying, ‘Alright. I’ll send for her and feel her out if it’ll get you to shut the fuck up.’”

Jahleel paused to have a good long laugh, as if remembering how much of a pain in the arse he’d been.

“When she came into the room after her performance, my hands literally shook. Fuckin’ ridiculous, right? My hands trembled like a bitch, heart raced like a teenager, and I bopped my head to muted music, pretending to mind my own business, all the while listening to the conversation to see if Lion would offer her a deal…or something. Now that I look back at it, the whole thing was ridiculous,” he said, laughing out, while I grinned so wide my face hurt.

As his smile melted, his expression became regretful. “But then I thought,
what the fuck is wrong with me? This ain’t me. Practically obsessing about a girl who, up until fifteen minutes ago, I didn’t know existed. What if she has a boyfriend? She lives in the UK. How would this even work?
The whole fuckin’ thing was pointless. So I unmuted my iPod and tuned out everything, deciding to forget it all.

“Except, I couldn’t. When we got home, I nagged Lion to take you on. He wouldn’t. Said you’re British, managing you from the U.S. would be costly etcetera etcetera. So I gave up. Worse, I didn’t even know you.” He chuckled again. “Then one day I noticed Krissy watching this reality show about a Brit girl group who went to L.A. to pursue their music career.”

“Stingers?”

“Yeah, them,” he confirmed. “No hesitation, I pounced on Lion with that idea. He bitched around for a while, but finally relented, ‘cause I was relent
less,
and of course, because he respects me—the only reason he tolerated my nagging in the first place.”

“So, basically,
you
are responsible for me becoming this famous superstar?”

“No,” he said, face serious. “You are.
Your
talent,
your
voice and
your
hard work. I only believed in that voice, sat back and watched you bloom like a fuckin’ sunflower.”

A great sigh tore through me. As much as the small bed would allow, I turned over and stared up at the ceiling, a migraine approaching.

This had to be what Lion was talking about earlier.
“I kept both your secrets…”

He’d known all along Jahleel loved me as much as I loved him, and he said nothing, watching me suffer day after day. But that was Lion, he’d die before he betrayed a confidence.

“None of this makes sense, JK. I’m sorry. All the pain and heartache, for what? You were an unapologetic arsehole. You loved Krissy. You chose her over me. You let me get with your best friend…I just…it’s too hard to believe.”

For a long moment, he said nothing.

I kept my eyes trained on the ceiling. This was too much to digest. All the unnecessary crap could’ve been avoided had he refrained from being an arse all the damn time and told me how he felt.

“What I told you that day in the shower was true,” he said at last. “I wasn’t ready to be owned. The way I felt when I was around you, when I looked into those wide grey eyes, or when you touched me, I knew you held a certain power over me and I hated it. When you’re near, I see no one else, I get nervous, my heart races, I’m aware of nothing but you. And it terrified me. That’s what brought out the asshole in me. I knew if I let you in, that would be it for me, I’d be done for. Owned. So…that’s why I acted the way I did, fighting off the inevitable. I wanted you but I didn’t. I loved you but I hated you. And it was so fuckin’ immature.”

“Then what was the deal with Krissy?” I asked, getting inexplicably irked. “You couldn’t have loved both of us, Jahleel!”

Wrapping his arms tight around me as if afraid I’d bolt, he sighed. “I
thought
I loved her. I
knew
I was
in
love with you. It was two completely different feelings, and I knew without a doubt which was real and which was forced. But I felt, somehow, that my loyalties lied with her. Maybe because I’ve felt responsible for her since she first came to us when she was six? I dunno. I just always felt guilty whenever I tried putting you above her. So even though I knew she was selfishly using me that night, I let her. Plus I was monumentally pissed at you.

“For one, I just got news about the show and wanted to share everything with you, but you were completely unavailable. And two, you were going on tour
the next day
and I didn’t want you to go.” He lifted up my hand and tapped the ring. “This was delivered to me the day before.”

Rolling back to my side, I faced him, wide eyed. “You were going to
propose
?”

“Yes.”

“So because you rang me a couple times and couldn’t get through to me, you acted like a sulky toddler who got dog-shit thrown in his sand box and just decided to rip my heart into a million pieces instead? How fucking mature of you!”

“And I have regretted it every single day since,” he confessed, looking abashed.

“Did Chad know all of this?”

Face hardening, jaw clenching, he ground out, “From the get go.”

“Really?”

“
Really
,” he affirmed. “At first he was just flirting with you to feel you out. But then you fuckin’
kissed
him. After that, the fucker decided to make the shit real. ‘May the best man win’ he’d told me.”

“He almost did.”

“He couldn’t win when there was no contest,” Jahleel scoffed. “You belonged to me, even then. I owned you, just as you owned me. He knew that. I knew that. You knew that. God knew that. So that ‘relationship’ couldn’t last. You can’t force love. I’ve learned as much with Krissy. You have to go with what’s real. And what we have is one hundred fuckin’ percent real. What Chad did…” He trailed off, sighing heavily. “He sat and listened to me beat myself up every day. Listened to me talk obsessively about you. Tellin’ me to move on, when all the time he was…with you.”

My exasperation dissipated, and pure, undiluted contentment settled in as I let the scruff on his face abrade my palm. “I-I just can’t believe this is happening. That this is real. Are you sure I’m not dead? Life doesn’t usually offer these delicious twists.”

“It’s real,” he assured me, smiling. “I, Jahleel Giovanni Kingston, am in love with you, Saskia Valencia Day. I’ve loved you since you were blond. I’ve loved you since your first song. I’ve loved you as you grew, evolved. I loved you even as you’ve loved others. I loved you all over again when you sauntered through my studio doors. I loved you hard when you climbed onto the back of my bike. I loved you even harder when you begged me to kiss you. I loved you something fierce when you took care of me when I was ill. I loved you on a brand new level when we made love. I fell fuckin’ deep when you told me you were in love with me. I’ve loved you for every second of every day since you left me. And I love you even more now.”

“But, that night when I told you I loved you, you didn’t want to hear it. You were cruel. You made me feel so…worthless.”

“Didn’t want to hear it?” he gaped. “Sassy, those words made me whole. You have no idea. I reacted the way I did because I was mad, not at you, but at myself. See, I tried to hold off being intimate with you until you came back from tour. I knew once I had you, I’d fall hard then have to turn around and let you go. I didn’t have a problem with fallin’ hard, I had a problem with you going on tour.

“So I was pissed for letting myself have you that night, knowing you were going away in two weeks. Then the minute you said those words, I felt pain like I’ve never felt before at the thought of you leaving me. For
six
fuckin’ months. So…yeah, I reacted, instead of tellin’ you my true feelings.”

“You’re still forgiven.” I leaned in and kissed him, fingers curling into his hair, and then it hit me. I drew back, grinning at him. “I’m Headless Singing Girl!”