by Staci Hart
They cried and laughed and hovered over their child. They kissed and held each other, and when Ivy passed the baby to him, he cradled his daughter in his arms with more care and wonder than I’d ever seen a person possess.
They were three, their love creating another, a bond between them that couldn’t be broken. Their lives would forever be full of love, full of joy. Full of pain too, because that was the nature of life, after all. But I knew without a doubt that they would cling to each other just as they did now, with all the hope and love they held in their hearts. Which was a lot.
I was struck again with a longing, a moment of wishing for that other life, the one with the easy Sundays and the abundance of kisses. I added a new daydream to the reel, one just like this.
And there was only one man I could imagine it with.
I felt myself approach a moment, a precipice. A cliff face where I was given a choice. The wind of change whipped my face, beckoning me closer to the edge where I’d have to decide—fly or flee. The life I had or the one I dreamed of.
I knew what I wanted to do, but what would I sacrifice to do it? Could I have it all, the life I wanted and the one I was living? Was there an in-between, a middle ground, or was I destined to have one or the other?
And how much did I even want what I had?
I didn’t know the answer, not yet.
But the wind carried me closer to the edge all the same.
22
Girls Like Her
KASH
I smiled down at my phone where a picture of Ivy and her baby smiled back at me.
“Lemme see,” Luke said impatiently, reaching across the worktable where we’d perched that night, the display I’d been helping him build finally ready for Tess’s finishing touches.
When I passed my phone over, his face went all gooey.
“Man, would you look at that? A baby. Ivy has a baby.”
I laughed. “She’s been pregnant for a year or something. Didn’t you ever figure that was going to happen someday?”
“I mean, theoretically, sure. She’s just the first person I’ve ever known to actually have one. It’s wild—a few hours ago, that baby was inside her. All this time, that little baby has been right there.” He shook his head at the screen.
“That’s usually how it works.” I held out my hand for my phone, amused.
He sighed and passed it back. “Someday, that’s gonna be us. Someday, Tess is going to have a baby—my baby, if I play my cards right.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“No, it really doesn’t. Because it’s Tess. Things that should scare me just don’t anymore.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But I figure if I have her with me, I can do just about anything.”
My smile tilted as I leaned against the table across from him, folding my arms. “Never thought you’d commit, Lucas.”
“Everybody’s got to grow up sometime. Isn’t that what they say?”
“That’s what Mom says. I dunno about anybody else.”
“How about you?” he asked. “Things going good with Lila?”
“They are. So good. Probably too good.”
His brow quirked. “What’s that mean?”
“We came clean last night and it went well. It went so well, in fact, that I woke up this morning terrified something will go wrong.”
“How doomsday of you.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve seen my track record,” I joked.
But he didn’t laugh. “Come on. You don’t actually believe she’s anything like the rest of them.”
I didn’t—in fact, I knew she was nothing like the women I’d dated. But I couldn’t explain to my brother that when I’d woken up with her in my arms, my unbound joy was immediately dashed at the thought of losing her.
That fear rose swiftly and without warning, and I’d struggled to contain it ever since.
“I know she’s not,” I answered, defaulting to levity. “But you’ve gotta admit, things like this happen to you, not me. I’m not the one who gets the girl and rides off into the sunset. I’m the one who has the girl for a minute before she rides off with a guy like you. Or in this case, a guy like Brock Fucking Bancroft.”
“Fuck that guy,” Luke shot. “And if she doesn’t want a guy like you, then fuck her too.”
My brows drew together. “Watch it.”
“I’m just saying. If she’s going to be a snob, she doesn’t deserve you.”
“I wouldn’t know a Gucci bag if it hit me in the face. She lives a life full of things I can’t even wrap my tiny little brain around.”
“A life she affords just fine on her own. She’s not looking for a meal ticket, Kash.”
I shook my head. “I know. I really do. But it’s Pavlovian. I keep doing the same thing, over and over again. It’d be naive to expect new results. I can hope. But I can’t expect. This could be the best thing to ever happen to me, and I hope it is. But I’m not wrong to be scared.”
“Lila isn’t Ali.” He called me out quietly, sternly.
“No, she isn’t. But this is the first time I’ve involved my heart since Ali, and we all know how that turned out.”
“I know you’ve been conditioned to think you’re not worth more than a night, but have you ever stopped to consider they never wanted more because you were so sure it couldn’t be?”
“Maybe,” was all I was willing to concede. “I want to be the one to make Lila happy, and I finally have the chance. We’re together, really together after all our skirting around our feelings. Trust me when I say that I am relieved. Relieved and hopeful and finally happy, happier than I’ve been since…well, since I don’t know when. It’s just not so easy to believe my luck won’t run out, that’s all. But I won’t let her go without a fight.”
“No, I don’t think you will. I’m only saying all this is in your head. Who knows—maybe you’re soulmates and everything will be a cakewalk.”
“We’ve been official for less than twenty-four hours. I hardly think that constitutes being soulmates.” I shook my head at him, laughing. “I might be dumb, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“That you’re dumb.”
“Because what do I know? I’m just a gardener who lives with his mother.”
“And I’m just a fuckup who couldn’t hold down a job. Oh, and who also lived with his mother.”
“Lived, past tense. Plus, you went to college and moved away and lived on your own.”
He pinned me with a look. “You could have if you’d wanted to. Why not just own the fact that you didn’t want to?”
“Because it doesn’t matter what I want. It matters how it looks.”
“To who?”
“To people.”
“To Lila?”
“You know how it is, Luke,” was all I said.
“I don’t get it. I don’t get why you think you’re not good enough,” he fired off in challenge. “It can’t be money—you have that just as much as the rest of us. It can’t be your job because you fucking love your job, and don’t lie to me and say you don’t. And you don’t live with your mother because you can’t take care of yourself. You live with your mother because she can’t take care of herself. There’s a big difference, and anybody who doesn’t see that is an asshole.”
“Guess I have a thing for assholes,” I fired back in defense.
“Man, you assume a whole lot, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering you think you’re so dumb.”
I opened my mouth to argue when Marcus busted into the workroom with Jett and Laney in his wake.
“We have a problem,” he said, his face dark as a storm cloud. And the pressure in the room changed to match.
The five of us gathered around one of the tables, Marcus at the head, looking grim.
“We’re being sued by Bower.”
Luke and I were t
oo stunned to speak. Marcus didn’t require a response.
“They’ve requested immediate turnover of the financial statements, which aren’t ready. But we’re easily over the noncompete limitations. If we comply, Longbourne won’t open its doors tomorrow.”
“But our contracts,” I started, thinking immediately of Lila, the risk she’d taken on us, the events we had lined up. “What about our contracts?”
Marcus shook his head. “I said, if we comply.”
“What do you mean, if?” Laney asked.
“Ben and I have been trying to build a case that the clause is unconscionable. If we can, it would mean the contract won’t stand in court. In fact, we could get the whole thing thrown out before it goes far. Theoretically. With enough money and weight to throw around, anyone can take a case like this all the way to the end.”
“And Bower won’t back down,” Jett noted darkly.
“There’s another thing to consider. If Bower makes all the right moves, the cost of litigation alone would bankrupt us.”
The room fell silent.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Marcus paused, scrubbing his hand over his mouth as he thought. “My instinct is to tear up the contract and throw it in the fire. I don’t think they can prove that Longbourne’s success would in any way threaten their own. And I don’t believe they can win.”
“Of all the Bennets’ gut feelings, yours is the one we’d follow without question,” I said to a chorus of nods. “But is there any danger for Lila? Will her contracts be caught in the crossfire?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, offering nothing more.
“If there’s any risk, I won’t put her anywhere near it.” I scrambled for a moment. Until an idea struck me like a bell. “Can we transfer them to me?”
Marcus paused, then lit up, his mind whirring behind his eyes. “You know, I think maybe we can. Why didn’t I think of that?” He was practically pouting.
“Think of what?” Laney asked, her gaze bouncing between us.
“I own a business. We can transfer the contracts to me, and I can fill them.”
Three-fourths of my siblings blinked at me.
“You own a business?” Luke echoed.
“Selling his hybrids,” Marcus added. “I made him set it up years ago. Seriously, why didn’t I think of this?”
I chuckled. “It’s all right. I forget about it too.”
“No, I mean … you have all that money to work with. You can get whatever you need. You could even lease Longbourne from me and keep it running, if it came to that.”
His words climbed their way through my thoughts, leaving me confused. “All what money?”
Marcus stared at me. “What do you mean, all what money? You have almost two hundred thousand in that account.” He kept staring as I stilled. “You mean to tell me you haven’t even looked?”
“No,” I breathed. “I didn’t ever need to. Didn’t even think to.”
He ran a hand over his mouth, glancing up at the ceiling as if to ask for deliverance from my idiocy. “Kash, you’re hopeless.”
“How about you berate me later,” I suggested. “Are we sure this is legal? They won’t see it like, I don’t know, like we set up a shell to evade paying them?”
“I think there’s a way to do it, but let me talk to Ben. Whatever we do, it’s got to be by the letter. If we don’t, Bower will burn us to the ground. Talk to Lila, see if you can get new contracts drawn up under your name. The rest of you, help Kash with whatever he needs to switch gears and get himself going. And maybe brainstorm a new name for his business, would you?”
“What, Kash Bennet Hybrid Flowers not catchy enough for you?” I joked, not at all feeling funny.
“That’s your business name?” Laney said in disbelief.
“It’s not like I ever thought I’d put it on a sign,” I defended.
“We’ll come up with something,” she promised Marcus.
“Good,” he said. “And I’ll figure out how to get us the rest of the way out of this mess. Kash,” he started, turning to me with earnest, grateful eyes, “thank you. I really wish I’d thought of that.”
I chuckled, but the flame in my chest fanned brighter. “I’m just thankful you forced me to do it in the first place. And that there’s some way I can help. Though I hope it doesn’t come to me taking over Longbourne. I don’t know the first thing about running the shop.”
“If it does, you won’t be alone,” Luke said.
And looking around that table, I took comfort in that fact, believing it with so much conviction, I knew without a doubt that if there was a way to save the shop, we’d find it.
We dispersed, chattering our way out of the shop, but I wandered into the greenhouse looking for I don’t know what. Clarity. Answers. Comfort. And in many ways, I found it as soon as I stepped through the doors.
It was quiet and still, the darkness dotted with flower heads in rows. My worry eased to a bubbling whisper, one that spoke Lila’s name.
I thought of my past, of the things I’d run from, the things I’d feared. Things I never thought of, things dredged up by the depth of my feelings for her. It was easy to want her when I thought she didn’t want me. But now that I’d been given hope, the stakes had risen to dangerous heights.
The door opened behind me, and the familiar sound of expensive heels on concrete had me smiling, smiling and turning to find Lila walking toward me.
She glowed, floating down the aisle with a blissful, tired smile. And I met her, sweeping her into my arms.
When I’d kissed her well, she sighed, looking up at me with adoration.
“The baby is perfect. Everything is absolutely perfect, and I cannot believe my sister created that sweet, tiny thing. I’ve never been so terrified as I was holding her. I kept thinking I was doing it wrong, or worrying I’d drop her. Isn’t that silly?”
“Oh, I dunno,” I said, drawing her closer. “I think it’s natural to worry when you’ve got something precious in your arms.”
Her face tilted to inspect mine. “Are you worried, Kash?”
“I’d be crazy not to be.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t want to lose you.”
She softened, her hand moving to cup my jaw. “Why would you think you would?”
I turned to press a kiss into her palm. “You didn’t do flings? Well, I don’t do serious. And I’ve realized I am very serious where you’re concerned.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m a pro,” she teased, giving me the words I’d given to her what seemed like ages ago. “And for the record, I’m very serious where you’re concerned too. I’m not going anywhere, Kash—I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“Promise?” I asked with a sideways smile.
“Promise,” she echoed, stretching up to seal it with a kiss that washed my worry away, leaving only my trust and faith in her. In us.
And I sank into it without another thought.
23
Gravity
LILA
It took us a solid week, but we got my wedding contracts moved to Kash’s business, and I found myself unendingly grateful that through all of this—the tumult for his family and the uncertainty of their future—he’d been at all worried about me. They decided to give Bower the bird, keeping Longbourne open and welcoming the lawsuit like Bruce Lee stepping into a circle of drug lords.
There was much to be said for the single-minded determination and perseverance of the Bennet family.
They had already delivered on their promises to keep my position safe. In fact, at that moment, Kash and I were ambling down Fifth in the delivery van on the way to the Felix wedding.
My excitement was electric, the rush that came with the day I’d been working for, the dash of anxiety in wondering what kind of obstacles would be thrown at me, the thrill of knowing that after today, I would largely be done with the Felix family. And by proxy, Brock.
It was everything I’d been
waiting for, and I was only one very long, hectic day away from it.
I’d planned a whole celebration for Kash and me to mark the occasion. Tonight felt like the beginning, the real beginning when we could be together without any Felix-sized obstructions. No more cameras, no more humiliation, and most importantly, no more Brock. Just me and Kash and whatever our future held.
And tonight, I was going to surprise him with the news.
I’d bought an apartment.
It had fallen into place a few weeks ago when I found an apartment near Longbourne within hours of it listing. My real estate agent showed it before lunch, and by mid-afternoon, I made an offer. It was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and the second I’d walked through that front door, a feeling of kismet had struck me. The apartment so close to the imagined space of my daydreams, it was uncanny, though it needed to be renovated. Gutted, really, which was the only reason it was listed at such a price—still an insane amount of money, but a steal for the Village. Walking through that apartment, its windows tall and the light buttery and brilliant, I could see those lazy Sundays take shape, blossoming and blooming in the empty space.
Things moved quickly from there. I had the down payment in hand, and I’d been preapproved for the rest, including a home improvement loan to handle the renovations. My agent was connected well enough to expedite the inspection process, and she provided a strict list of paperwork that I supplied nearly on signing the contract. As difficult as it had been to find time in my already hectic days for all the extra running around—faxes and notaries and meetings galore—everything had gone off without a hitch. And yesterday, I’d picked up my keys.
It was a prime location, just around the corner from Longbourne and Ivy, and after renovations, I could not only sell it with ease, but make a good bit of money too. The perfect location and perfect apartment, with two bedrooms to grow into. I’d always heard that buying a house was one of the most stressful things one could do. But the truth was, I hadn’t felt it, not beyond the frenetic pace and the constantly growing checklist of things to do. I processed it all, absorbing the tasks with a businesslike detachment and the certainty that the investment was not only sound, but a boon. Of course, I felt that bit of buyer’s remorse that hit everyone when they made a major purchase—there was no way to walk away from a deal that large and feel like you unquestionably did the right thing.
