All the Wright Moves, page 18
“No, he didn’t kick me out,” I told her as I pulled into the vineyard. “But I can’t stay there, you know?”
“I got you, girl. I’ll make time in between my appointments. Text me when you’re heading that way. I’ll make it work.”
“Thanks, Eve,” I said truthfully.
I hung up, parked the truck, and headed to my office. I pulled up the long list of things I needed to take care of before the wedding this weekend at the vineyard. Luckily, I didn’t have another out-of-town wedding until July. It was truthfully the only one that I was looking forward to. I liked helping my friends here in town, but the rest was a lot of red tape and trying to keep bridezillas from not ruining their big day.
Hollin popped his head in an hour later. “Hey.”
I glanced up at him and frowned when I saw the worried expression on his face. “Dad talk to you?”
He strode in and flopped into the chair in front of my desk. “Well, he said you were living with him.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “I told him not to talk to you.”
“You going to tell me what’s going on?”
“No, I’m not,” I growled. “Just leave me alone.”
Hollin reared back at my tone. “Nora, it’s me. When have I ever not been there for you?”
“Hollin, please. I just…I can’t talk about it.” At the thought of West leaving for LA, tears came to my eyes again, and I blinked furiously to stop them.
“Fuck, you look like someone broke up with you.”
I froze at those words.
Hollin noticed though. Of course he noticed.
“This is about West, isn’t it?” he asked carefully.
I put my head in my hands. “Do you always have to pry, Hollin? Can’t you let me be sad?”
“Nora…”
“Yes, it’s about West. And if you tell Campbell that anything happened, I will have your balls,” I snapped at my brother, rising to my feet and staring down at him.
Hollin’s eyes rounded in shock. I’d never talked to him like this. Not ever.
“Wow. What did he do to you?” he asked, all soft with concern. As if he were approaching a baby deer.
“We were dating, but I didn’t want either of you to know. He left for LA. That’s what happened. Campbell would go ballistic if he found out. I don’t want to break up the band. Swear you won’t tell, Hollin.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay, okay. I won’t tell Campbell. Breathe.”
I sank back into my seat. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. And don’t cry,” he said hastily as a tear streaked down my cheek.
“Damn it, Hollin!” I said, reaching for a tissue.
He laughed at that. “What are siblings for?”
“To be a royal pain in the ass.”
He snorted. “True story.”
I blew my nose. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. You know you can come to me. Even though I want to punch him.”
“And that’s why I didn’t.”
“I would have listened. I don’t want you to think that I wouldn’t.”
“You punched August.”
“He was making out with Tamara!” he cried. “That is not the same story. Then, they got engaged. He fucking deserved it.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not engaged anymore. Tamara called to tell me that he dumped her because he was still in love with me.”
“Tell me you’re not going to go back to him. I’ll punch him again for emphasis.”
“No, that’s long over. He started texting after it happened. I told him I wasn’t interested and to leave me out of the drama.”
“That’s grown-up of you.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t deal with anyone else’s problems when I’m going through my own heartbreak.”
“I understand that perfectly. Just…try to keep your chin up,” he said gently as he came to his feet. “You’re perfect just the way you are. If Weston Wright didn’t see that, then he doesn’t deserve you.”
Tears spilled onto my cheeks again. “Thanks, Hollin.”
Then, he disappeared, back to work. I stared down at the mound of paperwork in dismay. Fuck, I needed to stop crying every time I thought about West. It wasn’t like he was coming back.
I met Eve at West’s house after work. She rubbed her hands together.
“Let’s do the damn thing,” she said.
“You’re enthusiastic.”
Eve put an arm around my shoulders. “No. I’m sorry about everything that happened. I feel partially responsible since I set you on this path. We agreed that, of course, you wouldn’t have to end up together, but I didn’t plan for what would happen if you did fall for him and he left.”
“That’s not on you. I didn’t really think it through either.”
“All right. Let’s go empty your closet. I brought my secret weapon.” She held up a box of garbage bags.
“Trash bags?”
“You can’t pack a closet without them. Realtor secret. Come on.”
I shook my head and followed her into the house. It was exactly as I’d left it. I’d neglected the plants, and I nearly started crying again when I found one of my babies wilting. I let Eve into my bedroom as I took a watering can around to all the plants. I’d have to figure out what to do with them all. I couldn’t bring a proper garden into my dad’s house. And I didn’t have a new place yet to move them. Which meant I needed to come over more frequently to take care of them.
I sighed. Just one more thing.
“Oh my God, your shoes!” Eve shrieked from the bedroom.
I laughed at her assessment. “Pretty amazing, right?”
“A girl’s dream. You want all of them?”
“Yeah. Let’s just clear everything out.”
I grabbed another garbage bag when my phone began to ring. I glanced down at the number, but I didn’t recognize the area code. Half of my job was answering strange phone calls from people about weddings. The number of people without an 806 area code in Lubbock was sometimes dizzying.
“I’m going to take this,” I told Eve, holding up the phone. She waved me off, and I answered it. “Hello, Nora Abbey speaking.”
“Nora, hi, it’s English. Anna English.”
My feet stilled in the kitchen. English. Oh my God, she’d called. I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart.
“English, hi. It’s so good to hear from you.”
“I’m so sorry it took me this long to get back to you. I’ll admit, partially, I wanted to see how you’d do with an event as big as the Locke-King wedding. I spoke to Gavin and Whitley. They had nothing but rave reviews of the event. They said it was utterly seamless.”
“I’m so pleased to hear that. I’ve been working in weddings for about five years, and it’s where my true passion lies.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Plus, I hate my wedding planner. It was so nice to fire her this morning.”
“How did your mother-in-law take it?”
“Eh,” she said with a laugh. “It was fine. I told her it was fire the wedding planner or we elope, and she came around.”
I chuckled. “I bet she did.”
“So, I’d love to have you on board. You can feel free to send over your contract, or I can share the one that we used with our last planner, which includes a five-thousand-dollar retainer.”
I nearly sank to the floor at those words. A five-thousand-dollar retainer. I didn’t make that much on most of my weddings, period. The Locke-King wedding had paid well, but not like this. Holy shit.
“That would…that would be great. I would be open to either. Whatever you prefer.”
“Excellent. I’m so excited about this. We’ll have to arrange a meeting in the city, so we can discuss everything that’s in the works. You can meet my mother-in-law.”
The mayor of New York City. So casual.
“Thank you for the opportunity.”
“No, thanks for saving my ass,” she said with a laugh.
We said a few more pleasantries, and then I hung up in a state of shock. Then, I screamed and did a twirl.
Eve came hurtling out of the bathroom with a shoe in her hand. “Is it a spider? I’ll kill it!”
I laughed and flopped onto the ground. “I got the job.”
“The job?”
“As a celebrity wedding planner.”
“Oh my God! Nora!” Eve did a little dance and pulled me up into a hug. “That deserves to be celebrated. Ice cream?”
I nodded. “Ice cream.”
And though I was devastatingly happy, the one person I wanted to share the news with was no longer someone I could call. I promised myself it wouldn’t ruin the moment, but I’d lied to myself before.
29
Weston
It wasn’t until the initial rush of excitement over officially joining the band began to wear off that everything hit me with the worst bout of depression I’d had in years. I’d managed it with music, growing up, but the only song I wanted to play now was “Nora’s Melody.”
Even my music had turned against me.
Apparently, I would just suffer for my choice. I’d read Crime and Punishment in high school and never understood Dostoevsky’s point about how guilt could cause such mental anguish that a person would deteriorate. But I certainly understood now, I couldn’t go on like this. I just couldn’t.
So, I’d given up on trying to be okay.
I went to the studio. I still felt strange about walking into a booth this fancy with or without the rest of the band. But it felt necessary. I’d been avoiding the song for long enough.
I sat at the piano and began to work out the full tune to “Nora’s Melody.” It flowed like it had been held captive for weeks. A trickle turning into a stream and then a deluge.
The door creaked open behind me, and my fingers stilled.
“Hey, man.”
I found Campbell in the doorway with his hands in his leather jacket and a look of confusion on his face. “You came.”
“Cryptic message,” he said, entering our sanctum. “After that, how could I not?”
“I need you to do something for me.”
Campbell arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“Listen to this song.”
He toed the door closed behind him and nodded. “All right. What you got?”
Nerves bit into me fresh and raw. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing here. But no matter how many people said that I’d made the right choice, I knew it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t a choice at all.
It was a theft.
A coward’s way out.
And I’d been a lot of things, but never that.
So, I cleared my throat, prepared for everything that would follow by the end of this. All the consequences to my actions. And I sang.
No one had ever told me that I should be a lead singer. It had always irritated me that I could play ten instruments, but my voice would never match the tunes I could play. But I’d fallen so in love with music that I never really cared. And truthfully, it didn’t matter for this song that I didn’t have Campbell’s crooning voice.
The earnestness to the song made up for the rough vocals. I’d been holding it all back for so long that the song erupted out of me. A volcano pouring lava down a mountainside, flowing freely for the first time in ages.
And by the time I let the last note fade away, I felt as if I’d been exorcized.
We were both silent for a minute. My eyes closed as I held the sustain pedal down to let the last notes linger in the air. A mourning quality to the piece that had never been there before I royally fucked up.
The note finally ended, and I opened my eyes to find Campbell thoughtfully staring at me. My cheeks reddened, and I removed my hands from the piano. “What do you think?”
“You’re a little pitchy,” Campbell said with a smirk.
I snorted. “More than a little.”
Campbell held his hands up. “I wasn’t going to say it.”
I stared down at the keys and released the tension in my shoulders. “I wrote it about your sister.”
“Ah,” he said softly.
“Ah?” I asked, jerking my head back up to look at him. “That’s it? You’re not going to punch me?”
Campbell shrugged. “I could if you’d like me to?”
“Uh, no. No, thanks. I just…I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m not stupid.”
I blinked at him. “You knew that Nora and I were together?”
“I had my suspicions. You’re not exactly sneaky. Did you think you were being sneaky?”
“Uh…yeah,” I said slowly. “I thought you were going to kill me. You said to my face that you’d kill anyone who touched her.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, dropping into a chair across from me. “I had every intention of doing just that. I was even halfway to your house one night when Blaire helped to talk me down.”
“Blaire knows, too?” I ran a hand back through my hair. “Jesus, does everyone know?”
“Hollin doesn’t know or else you would have a black eye.”
I grimaced. “Yeah. So, uh, you’re taking this better than I thought. What the hell did Blaire say to you to get you not to beat the shit out of me?”
“She reminded me that I liked and trusted you. That we were friends for a reason. And if I respected you as much as I did—” He shot me a look. “Which I do. I wouldn’t have asked you to join the band if I didn’t think you were worth the shot.” He rubbed his hands together. “Then I should respect you enough to take care of my sister as well.”
“And you listened to her?” I asked in shock.
He chuckled. “Uh, no. She was right, of course. But I wouldn’t hear a fucking thing about it. I wanted to make you pay.” He met my gaze and shrugged. “It was Nora actually.”
“Wait, Nora told you?” I asked, coming to my feet. “There’s no way. She would have mentioned—”
He held his hand up. “She didn’t tell me. It wasn’t like that.”
I sat back down. “Oh.”
“But it was still Nora who convinced me. You remember after she and August broke up?”
I nodded. I hated thinking of her that way, but, yeah, I couldn’t ever forget how she’d been a broken, empty vessel. Sand poured out of an hourglass.
“Well, that wasn’t the first time I’d seen her like that. She was like that after Mom died. And she dragged herself out of it after a lot of time, but I wasn’t there to help her like I should have been. I didn’t want that to happen again. I promised I’d be there. So, I was pissed, thinking you were taking advantage of her depressive state.”
“I would never…”
“I know. Because that night I went to your house, I saw Nora happy. You were sitting in the living room, playing a video game. She would laugh her head off and then pounce on you. You’d lift her off you like she weighed nothing and drop her down on the couch. She’d wiggle away and snatch the controller back to play again. Blaire took one look at me and was like…would you be helping or hurting if you barged in right now?
“And she was right. Nora was happy. She was the happiest I’d ever seen her. I didn’t know what was going on between y’all. It wasn’t my place to interfere anyway. As long as she was happy, that was what mattered. If you make her happy, that’s what I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for her.”
I nearly choked. I remembered that night. So many nights when we’d dicked around at home. Deliriously happy, away from the rest of the world. In our own little bubble.
And I’d ruined that.
“I just figured you weren’t that serious after all,” Campbell said.
I hung my head. “We were. I fucked up.”
“Should I punch you now?”
“Uh, no,” I said quickly. “Not helpful. Mostly, I keep seeing everything as black and white. Her job is in Lubbock. Mine is here. We’d agreed that when I went back to LA, it would be over. I hadn’t realized how far we’d come in the time we had.”
“Do you love her?” Campbell asked. “Because if you love her, then all that other shit doesn’t matter. You’ll figure it out.”
And somehow, it was all so clear. We’d just figure it out. It had seemed so cut and dry in Lubbock. I still had no clue how it was going to work out. Things were fucking hard as hell, but still, I had to try.
I met his gaze. “Yeah, I do.”
Campbell nodded. “Good. That’s the right answer.”
He held his hand out to me. I clapped mine into his, and he helped me to my feet, pulling me into a hug.
“I have to fix this.”
“Yeah, you do because if you leave my sister broken, then I’ll actually have to throw that punch.”
I laughed. “That seems fair.”
“All right, what’s the plan?”
And that was when it all materialized before me. I knew exactly what to do. Exactly how to win her heart one more time.
30
Nora
“What the hell is this?” Hollin asked.
I passed him the paperwork. He stared down at it and back up at me. Piper was seated next to him. She craned her neck to look at the paper, and her eyebrows shot up.
“Nora!” Piper said in surprise.
“My two-week notice.”
“You’re quitting?” Hollin asked in dismay. “What? What for?”
I handed him a second piece of paper. “This is why.”
Hollin snatched it out of my hand and stared down at it. His eyes got huge. “Holy shit, Nora!”
“Oh my God, this was what Eve was so excited about the other night!” Piper cried. “She wouldn’t tell us until you said so.”
“Yeah. Eve was there when I got the call. It’s a contract to work for the Kensingtons as a wedding planner for English and Court’s wedding.”
“A celebrity wedding,” Hollin said softly. “That’s what you wanted.”
I’d accepted the offer from English and signed the contract the next day. This one wedding was two-thirds of my entire salary for the year, working twenty-six weddings or more a year. And instead, I could just work with this one. But I’d need to be in New York, and I couldn’t do that and keep my job here full-time.
