by Noelle Adams
Another shrug. “Sex?”
“I can get laid a lot closer to home. That was never all this was about. Not for me anyway.”
Her full pink mouth stretched into a trembly little smile as she threaded her fingers through his. “Me neither. I’m sure it probably seemed like that, with everything I wrote, and the way I treated you after that first time…” Her lids drifted down as regret flashed across her face. “I spent so long fighting how I felt about you, convinced it could never work out.” She caught her plump bottom lip in her teeth and slanted an uncertain look at him from under her lashes. “I love you too, Deck.”
He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until it came whooshing out of his chest. “As long as that’s true, I can handle whatever flavor of crazy you throw at me.”
***
Jane’s stomach quivered as the G6 started its final descent towards the private runway at LAX. As though he could sense it, Deck reached over and wrapped his big, warm hand around hers.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“I know,” Jane said. She closed her eyes and leaned against his shoulder, savoring these last few minutes of calm before the storm. Even though they were flying into a private runway away from the airport’s main terminal, she knew from experience that no matter how quiet she tried to keep it, there were always photographers at the airport, lying in wait for a celebrity sighting. She knew that after the way she’d dramatically dropped off the map for a couple of weeks, her sudden reappearance in LA would be the night’s top story on TMZ.
As the plane touched down she took a big gulp of her Diet Coke. She wished she could have something stronger, but since this was her first appearance since her alleged breakdown, she couldn’t afford to be anything other than stone cold sober.
A thin film of sweat coated her skin as she slung her bag over her shoulder and followed Deck to the door. He preceded her onto the tarmac and retrieved their bags before calling her down. Jane switched on her phone, wincing at all of the messages she’d ignored for the past week and a half.
Hal had called a half a dozen times since Jane left him the message that she was coming back to L.A. She contemplated listening but then decided there would be time enough for him to air his grievances in person.
He couldn’t be flipping out too hard. She hadn’t even told him about Deck yet.
As they walked across the tarmac, Deck stayed a few paces in front of her. They were careful not to touch or give any indication they were a couple
“Let’s wait for Hal to come up with a strategy,” she’d said when they’d started discussing the logistics of revealing their relationship to the public.
Deck’s mouth had flattened into a hard line. “I know what Hal’s strategy will be. Keep it quiet until you come to your senses and dump me.”
“I’ll make it very clear to him that’s not an option,” she replied emphatically, “but I do want his help to make the process as smooth as possible.”
Deck hadn’t looked happy about it, but he’d agreed to act like he’d recently come back into her employ—nothing more—until she and Hal came up with an agreed upon schedule of events and appearances leading up to the big reveal that yes, Jane had a boyfriend, and yes, it was her ex-bodyguard.
“Once I’m on the set for a few weeks—”
“Wait, we’re talking weeks here?”
“No, we can still see each other, we just have to keep it quiet. I’m just saying once the interest about me coming out of hiding dies down, we can start being more open about everything.”
Deck had given a frustrated sigh. “I still think it’s bullshit, but I’ll go along with whatever you think is best.”
Jane’s lips curled in a secret smile as she remembered how thoroughly she’d thanked him for his understanding.
As they walked into the terminal, she braced herself to face the gauntlet. They walked through the terminal and didn’t make it more than a few feet before she heard the murmurs ripple across the crowd.
“That’s Jane Bowden.” Within seconds flashbulbs were going off in her face as photographers shouted unintelligibly. Deck served as a human blockade, pushing his way through the crowd that formed around them.
As they neared the door, one question cut through the din. “Mr. Decker, can you confirm you’re the man in the pictures from Jane’s iPhone stream?”
Jane stumbled and would have fallen if Deck hadn’t caught her arms. “What pictures?” Jane said flippantly though she was afraid she knew exactly what they were talking about.
Finally Deck managed to get her out of the building to where the car was waiting outside. It seemed to take ages for Lewis, her driver, to maneuver his way through the throng surrounding the car. At this point, Jane didn’t really care if he ran over someone’s foot, but supposed she should be grateful to him for sparing her a lawsuit.
She pulled her iPhone out with trembling hands. The phone she’d gotten just a month ago with the express purpose of it being her private line, her private camera, her private link into the world. Only a handful of people even knew she had it.
She clicked on the browser and for the first time since she’d fled pulled up one of the gossip sites to see what everyone had been saying about her.
Jane Bowden Frolics with Musclebound, Mystery Boy Toy on the Beach!
Blood roared in her head as she read through the endless stream of sensational headlines.
All were accompanied by the pictures she had taken while they were in the Caribbean. They ran with stories that speculated about Jane’s mental stability and whether or not her new lover would be able to keep up with her “nymphomaniacal” sex drive.
Every private moment, every sweet, sexy smile Deck had flashed her, every goofy grin she’d given as she pressed her cheek against his, was on display. To be pored over, mocked, speculated upon.
The most recent article identified Deck as Jane’s long term bodyguard, and was careful to highlight the fact his employment started before she’d even married Ryan.
“So much for keeping it quiet,” Deck said.
Nine
Deck had once spent three days pinned down in rock-strewn ravine outside of Kandahar and he’d never felt as much under siege as he had for the past twenty-four hours.
They’d gone straight from the airport to Jane’s house where Hal and Hailey were already waiting, along with what seemed to be about nine hundred photographers crowding the gates of her Brentwood estate.
Hal’s face had been beet red when he’d opened the door. Combined with his agitated wheezing and the vein throbbing in his neck Deck hadn’t been able to resist asking if he should get a defibrillator.
Hal had pinned him with a glare so fierce his eyes disappeared in the plump folds of his face, but he didn’t miss Jane’s quickly stifled giggle.
It gave him a small measure of relief from his fears that she would drop him cold now that their “reveal” wasn’t going anything close to the way she’d hoped.
He was also relieved when Jane refused to give into Hal’s demands that Deck leave immediately. “He can’t stay here, Jane, not until we figure out how to get in front of this—”
“Thanks to that little dweeb from the repair shop”—that’s who Jane had concluded leaked the photos, since he’d had access to her computer recently and Jane had forgotten to turn of her photo stream that connected her phone to her iCloud account—“there is no ‘getting in front of this,” she snapped. She went to stand beside Deck and slipped her hand in his. “We’re a couple, and we’re serious. That’s the only story we need to tell.”
Despite Jane’s words, after a sleepless night spent in her bed, Deck rose with a nagging sense of dread that all of the chaos swirling around them was steering them straight toward disaster. It didn’t help that Jane had gotten up hours ago and locked herself in her office with Hal like they were negotiating the fate of the free world.
“You don’t really think she cares about you, do you?”
Hailey’s nasally voice speared through his foggy brain like a knife.
Deck cocked an eyebrow and continued sipping his coffee.
“Really, I mean, she may say she cares about you, but the only thing she really cares about is herself and how the world sees her.”
Her words brought his own doubts churning to the surface, doubts that had plagued him since they’d left the island and she’d told him that even though she was in love with him she still wanted to keep it quiet. She could say whatever she wanted in their own private retreat, with no one around to hear.
Now they were home, under the relentless glare of the spotlight. Would Jane really choose her love for him over her need for the world to love her?
He forced the dark thoughts aside. If he couldn’t have faith in her and the way she felt about him, they didn’t stand a chance. “Are you still pissed I turned you down?”
Hailey’s pale skin flushed red at the reminder of the time six months ago she’d made a pass at him and he turned her down cold. “Don’t flatter yourself. But you should think harder about dating so far above your pay grade. She’s practically royalty in this country. How long do you think she’s going to want to be with someone who comes from poor white trash?”
He felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. “Leave my family out of it.”
Hailey let out a mocking laugh. “Come on, Deck. You can’t be that naive. When you’re dating a huge star, everyone in your life is fair game.”
As she whirled and stalked out of the kitchen, he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew his own life would be thrown under the microscope, every misdeed however slight highlighted for the world to see.
But he’d been so caught up in his own happiness and the incredible idea that not only was he in love with Jane Bowden, she actually loved him back, he hadn’t thought about what it all might mean for his family.
Stomach clenching, he dialed his brother, cursing when the call went straight to voice mail.
“Damon, it’s Deck. Listen, you may have heard some stuff about my love life already—sorry I couldn’t tell you first. But I wanted to give you a heads up that the press might be sniffing around, and you need to make sure not to tell them anything before we talk to them, and don’t let Mom talk to them either.”
As soon as he hung up he dialed his father to tell him the same, but he didn’t even get past the area code before Jane walked in.
He knew from her pale, shocked face that it was already too late.
“How could you not tell me?” she said, holding her iPad out in front of her like a shield.
Deck’s stomach did a flip as he took it from her. It took a second for him to focus on the words swimming in front of him. Pain exploded behind his right eyeball as the headline jumped out at him in all its salacious glory.
Jane’s Lover’s Bloody Past
The blood roared in his head and his legs threatened to collapse under him as he scrolled farther. He set the tablet down on the counter and braced his hands to hold himself upright as he looked at the picture that showed a dark-haired, slender woman being led to a cop car. Nearby was a woman holding a little boy’s hand as he strained to go after the dark-haired woman.
That little boy was him at age two, screaming for his mother the night she’d killed his father to save herself and her two-year-old son.
Though Vivian Marshall was never charged, claiming her husband had long abused both her and her son, Daniel, some sources believe she used her relationship to the county sheriff to convince him to look the other way. A suspicion supported by the fact that Marshall married Harlan Decker less than a year after her first husband’s death.
Bile burned like acid in his throat as he thought of what his mother must be going through. His beautiful, generous mother who would do anything to protect her children.
Now this disgusting article glossed over the truth and made it sound like she was some floozy who had been fooling around with Deck’s stepdad all along and used “questionable” abuse charges to give her an excuse to get rid of him.
And his dad—his real dad, the one who raised him—was written up like some ignorant redneck taken advantage of by his mother the black widow. Forget the fact that Harlan Decker had taught his mother to love and trust again, treated her like a queen for the past thirty years, and loved Deck like he was his own flesh and blood.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, knowing his family couldn’t hear him but unable to hold the words back.
“You should be sorry.” Jane’s tight, high voice broke through his haze. “How could you not tell me this, give me some warning that this would come out?”
Deck recoiled in shock. “Wait a minute, you’re pissed at me?”
Jane took a step back. Her face was bloodless, her skin stretched tight across her tense features.
“You have to see how bad this looks for her,” Hal snapped. Hailey stood behind him, wearing a smirk that made his hand itch to slap it off her face.
The roaring was back in his head, a red haze filming his sight. “How it looks for you?” he wheeled on Jane. “My family’s name is being dragged through the mud, and you’re worried about how this looks for you?”
“I—I’m sorry. I know it must have been a traumatic time, but you have to understand—” Jane reached out to touch his arm. He shook her off, barely able to stand to look at her, much less touch her.
He felt like his chest was cracking wide open at the sheer magnitude of her self-centeredness, her obsession with her image. She’d just learned he’d suffered a horrific tragedy in his childhood, and all she could think about was how that might reflect poorly on her.
“No, you don’t understand, because it’s not in this fucking article!” He grabbed the iPad and flung it across the room like a frisbee, ignoring Hal’s gasp as it crashed and skidded on the tile floor. “They didn’t run the mug shot of my mom that night sporting two black eyes and a busted lip!”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said again. Deck could see the realization, the shame, starting to shadow her face, but it was too late.
“You know what else they didn’t show? The pictures they took of me later, with the giant purple bruises running up and down my back from where that lowlife piece of shit was beating me with a fire poker! Apparently I tried to get in between them when he was beating on her and that’s when he went after me. That’s why she grabbed the shotgun and pumped two rounds into his chest. Because she knew if she didn’t stop him he was going to beat me to death.”
***
Jane’s stomach pitched and she felt like she was going to be sick. Not just at the horrific images conjured by Deck’s words, but at the tidal wave of shame rushing up and threatening to drown her.
When Hal had brought the story to her attention, Jane’s first thought hadn’t been about Deck, how horrible it must have been for him to go through that.
Her first thought hadn’t been for the man she loved.
It had been for herself.
So she couldn’t blame Deck for looking at her like she was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, over and over on an endless loop. “I’ll talk to the press—we’ll make sure they get the real story out there.”
She took a step towards him and reached out once again, stopping short when he shook his head, a look of resigned sadness, and worse, utter disappointment come down over his face. “I really thought we could have something. I really thought you could get over this bullshit about what people think about you. But the truth is that you’ll never care about anyone as much as your precious fucking image.”
Jane felt like ice was coating her veins as her mouth opened and closed a few times. But in the end there were no words to defend herself.
And while at that moment she would have gladly suffered a lifetime of bad press for just one more chance with him, she didn’t try to stop him when he turned and left without a
nother word.
A few minutes later she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and the front door open and close
She sank slowly onto one of the barstools that lined the island. She was vaguely aware of Hal and Hailey surrounding her, their voices an incomprehensible jumble that couldn’t break through the bitter truth pounding inside her brain, hammering at her skull from the inside until she wanted to curl up against the pain.
She’d lost him. Because she was too self-centered, too self-conscious, too caught up in this showbiz bullshit that tried to convince her that she had to live or die by what the press was saying about her.
What do you want? Deck had asked her. Just few days ago, but it felt like another lifetime. She’d spouted off a list of things then told him all the reasons the powers that be could keep her from achieving them.
But the truth was, she was a coward. Afraid to try and fail, knowing her failures would be shoved into the spotlight for everyone to revel and laugh. She was so afraid of what everyone would say about her, she let that stop her from going after what she really wanted.
And now she’d lost the thing —the person—she wanted more than anything she’d wanted in her entire life. Because instead of telling Hal and the press to go suck it and shouting from the rooftops that she loved Deck, she’d gotten caught in the worry of how to sell it, how to spin it. Until she’d lost sight of what was most important.
And lost Deck, this time for good.
***
With the press milling around him like flies buzzing around a manure pile, Deck didn’t waste any time getting the hell out of Dodge. That afternoon after he’d left Jane’s feeling like he’d taken a bazooka to his chest, Deck packed a bag, climbed in his jeep, and headed east.
A quick phone call to Malcolm had gotten him released from any gigs for the foreseeable future.
“Door’s open whenever you want to come back,” Malcolm had said.
“That’s cool of you to say, but I understand if you need to cut me loose. It can’t be good for business.”
