I ground my teeth together as he brushed the long piece of grass along the soft spot between my collarbone and my neck.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said triumphantly before clamping my mouth shut again. He laughed even harder this time, and I almost caved but pressed my quivering lips down tightly against each other.
“I guess I have no impact on you whatsoever,” he whispered throatily in my ear.
“Sorry, none at all.” The words rushed out before I closed my mouth again.
“I see,” he murmured when I felt his rough hand quickly graze against my bare thigh pushing up the soft fabric between his fingers. My eyes snapped open and my mouth dropped in shock. He laughed and rolled off of me carrying me along with him until I was on top of him with my legs straddling his sides. I slapped him hard on the shoulder.
“Hey!” I playfully slapped him again.
“I surrender! I surrender!” He held up his hands in laughter.
“Yeah, you better,” I warned, then smiled down at him.
He pushed my hair back to rest his hand on the back of my neck while looking up at me with those simmering eyes. “I love you, Joie.”
My heart ached as we watched each other. “I, I.”
“No, I know.” He put a finger to my lips while narrowing his eyes. “I know you can’t say it yet.” A small smile crossed his face. “But I can,” he confessed. “I love you.”
Biting my lip, I knew that I felt the same way and slowly bent over with his hand behind my neck and kissed him. With his lips pressed up against mine, he kissed me lovingly. It was slowly becoming more intense with each second. He couldn’t seem to get enough so he rolled over on top of me, continuing his kisses. God, how could a kiss feel this good?
“Joie?!” Riley call out. “Joie?!”
Hawkins and I abruptly broke away from the kiss in confusion.
“Joie?!”
Hawkins dropped his head over my shoulder and groaned, “I really want to like him, but he’s not making it easy.” He rolled off of me and I stood up. Stumbling to get my footing, Riley’s face dropped at the sight of me. Something about the way I looked must have been a cue to him as to what he interrupted because he started apologizing while bracing my cell phone against his chest. Flattening out my dress, I looked down at Hawkins. “I’m going to—”
“Go, ahead,” he sighed while propping himself up on his elbow.
I gave Hawkins another smile, then bodyguards started converging from the trees encircling the field. “Holy shit.”
After standing up, Hawkins glanced around before he dropped his eyes to the ground. “They were insistent that they needed to be thorough because it’s a field,” he muttered. “You weren’t supposed to know.” He added quickly, “They couldn’t see us.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I waved it off. “But someone is going to have to tell them to go back to their hiding places,” I smiled up at him and continued, “because I’m not done.”
Hawkins laughed and kissed my forehead.
“Seriously.” I smirked up at him. “Don’t go anywhere.” I turned back around towards Riley and began walking towards him, but I couldn’t quite find the little trail we had walked along earlier. Riley looked so alarmed that I just started making my own path. Thankfully the leather boots went up to my knees and could protect me from the whipping grass.
“What did you want?” I asked when I was close enough for him to hear.
“It’s your mom,” he gulped with a crazy fear in his eyes.
“Couldn’t you have taken a message?” I mouthed animatedly while approaching him.
“She threatened to call the cops,” Riley whispered.
Taking the phone, I answered, “Hello, Mom?” Riley went to straighten out my hair, but I slapped his hand away.
“JOSEPHINE HALL!” she yelled loud enough for anyone to hear in a twenty mile radius. “Lizzie McIntyre just called me.” My mom ripped into me.
Oh, hell.
“She told me that you aren’t working for Senator Johnson’s campaign. That you’re on tour with the same band that she’s following around.”
“Mom, she’s lying,” I insisted.
“Josephine where are you really?”
“Working for Senator Johnson’s campaign.”
“Why would she call me, then?” my mom snapped. “She said that you hit your head off something and that you’re not thinking straight. Lizzie called to ask me what she should do? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her while bracing my head. “You know Lizzie, she’s probably on some wild trip. You know she does drugs, right? I’m not stupid enough to follow a band around, Mom.”
“Ha, ha.” I heard a familiar voice behind me. I whirled around to face the field again when I realized Hawkins was behind me and had overheard everything.
“Are you there?” my mom asked, demanding my attention.
“Umm.” I watched Hawkins storm off for the parking lot. “Mom, I have to go.”
“Josephine, do not hang up the phone!”
“You’re breaking up, Mom,” I lied. “I love you.”
Snapping the phone shut, I chased after Hawkins and grabbed the back of his arm. He turned to glare at me. “Is that what we’re doing together? Some wild trip?”
“No.”
“Then what
are
we doing, Joie?”
“It was my mom,” I tried to explain. “You know I can’t tell her—”
“That you’re with me?” He was quick to answer.
“No, it is not because I’m with
you
.” Panicking, I tried to explain. “It’s the tour. She’s not going to understand why I’m following a band around.”
“Funny.” He grimaced. “I’m wondering the same thing?”
“What do you want to hear? That it’s because I want to be around you? Because I do,” I pleaded with him.
“Then why don’t you tell her that?” He looked over at me intently, but I didn’t have a response. Lizzie’s voice whispered in the back of my mind,
“He’ll just get bored with the innocent act and then move on.”
“That’s what I thought,” he sighed.
“Please don’t be mad at me.” I reached out for his arm.
“I’m not mad,” his eyes softened, “just disappointed.” He turned and walked away. I went to go after him when Riley grabbed me firmly from behind. “Let him cool off, first.”
Why couldn’t I just tell my mom the truth? What could she really do? Actually, she would probably do what I feared the most and tell me to come home. Technically I was an adult, but that didn’t mean my mom still couldn’t tell me what to do. My dad’s money could only take me so far, probably just enough to finish the summer tour. Then what was I going to do? I knew I would pack it up and head back home eventually just like Hawkins would at the end of summer. I just didn’t want it to end it like this, before I was ready to say goodbye. Not that I would ever really be ready for such a thing. I may not know what I wanted to do with my life, but I was quickly figuring out who I wanted by my side while I went through it.
Lizzie, I thought to myself while walking quietly beside Riley for the remainder of the way to the gate. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to talk to her again, even though I knew why she called my mom. She was becoming desperate because things weren’t working out for her like she had planned.
Refocusing on Hawkins, who was leaning against his bus, we walked back through the parking lot. Riley nodded towards the van before leaving as we approached Hawkins.
“I’m so sorry,” I pleaded with him.
“I know,” he murmured. “You’ve been honest with me and I can’t ask for anything more than that, even if I want it.”
“When my brother died,” he suddenly lowered his voice. I could tell that he wasn’t used to talking so openly about it. “I felt exposed by the media,” he confessed. “It was all over the gossip magazines and probably even on YouTube.” His eyes leveled with mine for understanding. “It was a vulnerability that I never wanted to feel again. In fact, I came up with my own version of rules after that, a lot like you did,” he explained while his eyes flickered from the ground up to mine. “One of mine is that I don’t like to talk about my personal life to the press anymore.”
“Then here you come along and I thought, who is she to pry into my life? First, I got angry,” his smile widened, “and then I got even.”
Hawkins looked over my shoulder like his thoughts were miles away. “I’ve been thinking.” His eyes flashed down to mine. “Wondering, really,” he clarified. “What it is about you that triggered me to be able to write again.” He narrowed his eyes and glanced down at his hands.
“Then it occurred to me that when I’m spending time with you, I’m not thinking about my brother or his death. Suddenly, I understood that it was me who hadn’t moved on these last couple years.” He looked down at me. “You called me a shadow of a man.” His eyes flickered down at the ground as his eyebrows pinched together.
“And I was so angry,” a little wicked grin played on his lips, “because I knew that you were right. I have been walking around half a man, a ghost…” he drifted off. “But when I’m with you I don’t think about the past.
“You and I are so similar,” he added. “In a way, you liked Jake because he helped you cope with the death of your father. And I get it because, Joie, you’re that person for me. You fill that space…” he drifted off. “But where my rules keep me safe from the public eye, your rules are another thing entirely,” he emphasized. “Your rules are keeping you safe from me or anyone else who wants to love you.”
He reached up and cupped the side of my face. “Don’t you see?” he pleaded. “Keeping these rules because of how someone hurt you in the past is keeping
you
in the past.
“Joie, I want you in my future. I don’t want to hide our love away anymore like it’s something to be ashamed of,” he murmured into my hair. I knew that he meant everyone; the press, the public, and probably more than anything, my mom.
“You need to decide what you want,” he continued, “because being with me means breaking all your rules for forever. No more games.” Hawkins pulled back a little to look at me.
I went to speak, but he stopped me.
“Just think about it.”
“Rehearsal’s about to start.” He nodded towards Harrison who was just out of ear shot by the backstage door. He kissed me on my forehead before he turned to leave. As Hawkins was walking away from me, it felt like my heart might explode. I couldn’t imagine letting him walk out of my life for good. He was right, I had to pick him or my rules because we couldn’t move forward together without a decision. Although I loved hiding in the tall, swaying grass with him, we couldn’t continue to play these foolish games forever.
13. WHO TO TRUST
Riley found me by the bus just before the concert started. He didn’t press me for any details as we headed inside and down the hallway towards the side of the stage. He wrapped a protective arm around my shoulder and gave me one last good tug right before we nearly collided into Rob Harlow. Rob, who was looking down at a clipboard, was startled and started apologizing before he looked up. His eyes flickered to Riley and then to his arm around my shoulder. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that he wasn’t exactly thrilled to see the exchange between Riley and me.
“Umm,” Harlow mumbled, “we’re upstairs today.” He gave a curt nod and exited the stage behind us.
Beaming up at Riley, I sang, “Jealousy.”
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes, but a small smile played across his face. We walked up the set of stairs that crisscrossed to the top of the amphitheater. Once we reached the top, we walked down a small hallway that led to the lighting platforms. Riley waited patiently as I grabbed onto the semi-circular gate around the ladder and descended onto the platform. When my feet hit the ground, I looked down at the pavilion seats below. Riley came to my side and gushed over the high view as well.
“This is awesome!” I exclaimed as we looked down at the lawn that was filled with fans.
“It is,” he said. “And Lizzie is going to flip.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She’s afraid of heights,” he reminded me.
“Yeah, well, it’s me she should be afraid of,” I said with an edge as we turned around and looked over the long panel of switches for the lights that faced the stage in front of us.
“Who would have ever thought she would sink low enough to call your mom,” he agreed. “So what did Hawkins say?”
“He wants me to tell my mom the truth which I completely understand,” I sighed. “I just didn’t expect it to happen like this. You know, I’ve really had it with Lizzie—“ I had just enough time to tell Riley before being interrupted by the crew.
They climbed down the ladder and bounced to the platform one by one. They nodded at us before they went about their business.
I noticed Hampton came barreling down next. “The two of you need to back away from the railing,” he instructed while glancing down at the crowd. So Riley and I moved away. The sun was setting behind us as The Larks exited the stage.
“Where’s Lizzie?” Riley asked me when Harlow descended the ladder alone.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” I said dismissively.
“Are the side screen lights ready to go?” Harlow asked as he looked over the lighting board. “I have the set list for tonight. Hawkins just wrote it. There’s a new arrangement for the song ‘Josephine’ during the encore.”