Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 60342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
I fall back into Luke’s pillows and close my eyes. Imagining my father screaming at Stephanie over something I did makes my stomach heave. But I talk myself down with reminders of how much my best friend dislikes Dad.
As if she knows I need the reminder, she launches into a spiel I hear at least four times a year.
“He doesn’t listen to you,” she says. “You get no time off. You’ve been burned out for two years, Laina, and he works you to the bone. He may be your father, but he doesn’t have your best interests at heart. If he did, he would’ve put a stop to Tom Waverly a long damn time ago.”
“I don’t need someone to put a stop to anything. I’m a big girl.”
“Yes, you are. But you’re hiding from Tom right now for a reason.” She steadies her tone, working to reduce the anger teeming from each word. “I don’t know what has gone on because you won’t tell me, but I see the way he looks at you when you don’t follow his script. If I were a betting girl, I’d say you wanted to get out of this a lot earlier than now but were afraid. Today, you just so happened to be surrounded by security in a place you felt comfortable and at a time when it was do or die. And you chose not to die—thank God.”
My heart races. How did she know?
“Speaking of a place you feel comfortable,” she says, “where are you?”
I sink deeper into the pillows.
I couldn’t have had this conversation before today. There was never any privacy. Stephanie and my agent, Anjelica, are the only two people I truly trust, but I never trusted that we weren’t being spied on or listened to. Because everyone is willing to do Tom Waverly’s bidding. It’s a part of the charisma that makes him a box-office star.
“Troy brought me to Luke Marshall’s house,” I say.
“Wait a minute. Luke Marshall …” She hums. “The hot farrier we stalk on Social?”
“That would be the one.”
I can hear her wheels turning. “How do you know him?”
“Luke and I dated for a long time. We met when we were fifteen and started dating at seventeen.”
“You dated the farrier? Why am I just finding this out? I have literally sat beside you and drooled over this man’s social media posts, and you dated the guy?”
“Pretty much.” I wince.
“How? For how long? Why have I never met him?”
I sit up and prop myself against the leather headboard. “We dated from the time we were seventeen until I came to Nashville. It was just a few weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday. Then we … I don’t know, tried to make it work, kind of. For a couple of years, we talked off and on, and I’d come back to see him every chance I got.” A lump settles in my throat. “Then things really took off, and I couldn’t come back anymore, and he never came to see me. Things just kind of ended.”
My heart burns at the memories, making the cracks from my heartbreak obvious. The worst part of my life coincided with the best time of my career. Balancing the devastation of losing the man who I loved with every piece of me with the exhilaration of my first world tour was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
It was harder than walking out of the church today.
“And you are at his house now?” she asks, a hint of mischief in her voice.
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“I hear the little smirk in your voice,” I say. “This was unplanned. I haven’t spoken to Luke in years.”
“But you sure as hell have been keeping an eye on him.”
“Yes, but …” I pause, working through a thought. “You don’t think this makes me a bad person, do you?”
She laughs. “Why would I think that?”
I shift around and can’t get comfortable. The bedding is cozy. It’s my conscience that’s not.
“I was supposed to marry another man today,” I say, my voice growing louder. “And now I’m sitting in my ex-boyfriend’s house.” Not to mention in his clothes and bed, but details schmetails.
“You saved yourself from a bad situation and ran to a place you obviously feel safe. That’s supposed to make you a bad person?”
Yes. I feel safe here.
The flood of emotions that hit me nearly knock me over. I feel safe here—the first place I’ve felt safe in years.
“Sure, you could’ve done it differently,” she says. “But would it have made you a better person to have gone through with it then publicly divorced later? Is your mental health worth having the world think you’re a good person?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“And if you feel too guilty, let me remind you that Tom has put you in some prickly situations, too. He asked you to be his wife at the only concert of yours that he’s ever attended in the lead-up to his biggest blockbuster of all time—the one that they were pulling no punches to market.”