by K. A. Linde
I snorted. “No. Just like TikTok and Instagram and such. They met online. He lives in Midland, and they went on a date this week. She asked him to the wedding as a joke, and he said yes.”
“My brother sure doesn’t look pleased,” Hollin noted.
Campbell sure as hell didn’t look happy. He looked hot as hell though. I’d only seen him in his regular attire, which usually meant ripped jeans and leather jackets. But today, he was in a crisp black suit and tie. It had his own flair of eccentricity with gold trim and a shimmery gold pocket square. But still, it was the most put together I’d ever seen him.
He was currently glaring at my best friend’s back. As if she’d purposely decided to bring a date to thwart him. Though…maybe she had.
“Do you know what happened with them?” I asked Hollin.
He shook his head. “He blows me off when I ask him.”
“Blaire is the same way. She insists that Campbell didn’t even know who she was in high school.”
“Yeah, right. Not with that look.”
“I know. Maybe it’ll come to blows tonight, and we can finally find out.”
Hollin snorted. “He’s already on edge after what happened with Nora.”
“Yeah, fuck August.”
“No, thank you,” he said, pulling me away from Blaire and Nate and Campbell.
The first dance ended, and we applauded. The rest of the party went off without a hitch. The food was incredible, and the cake even better. I stood next to Hollin as the party did the Electric Slide.
“You’re not going to join?” he asked.
“I have limits, and a wedding line dance is it.”
He chuckled as he slid his phone out of his pocket and checked his messages. “That sounds right.”
I watched Blaire, Annie, and Sutton shimmying to the dance. Peyton was at the center of it all, teaching the dance to Aly, who picked it up like clockwork. Jennifer stood nearby, taking pictures as everyone got down.
“Piper, come on!” Annie called.
“Get out here!” Blaire said.
“Right now,” Peyton agreed.
Aly stomped her foot. “That’s an order.”
I snorted and shook my head. A second later, they all barreled off the dance floor toward me. “Oh God, save me.”
Hollin laughed. “Have a good time.”
“Ugh,” I groaned.
“I’m going to go down to the cellar. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
My friends grabbed my arms and dragged me out on the dance floor.
“Save me when you get back.”
He shook his head as they ordered me into the Electric Slide. I went along with the words with disdain as Hollin somehow got out of the entire thing. Typical.
Once the music ended, I hustled off the dance floor. Peyton waved but let me retreat. She could only pull that off once and get away with it.
Blaire plopped into a chair next to me and kicked up her feet. “Thanks for joining us.”
“It didn’t look like I had much choice.”
“What do you think about Nate?”
“He’s hot,” I told her. Nate was currently at the bar, talking to Jordan and Julian. “Seems to get along with everyone.”
“Yeah.”
“Pisses off Campbell.”
“What?” she peeped.
“You haven’t felt his gaze on you like a hot brand all night?”
Blaire rolled her eyes. “No way.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened with y’all?”
“Nothing,” she said automatically.
“Riiight,” I drawled.
“I’m here with Nate, and that’s all that matters.”
“If you say so.”
Blaire pinched her lips together. One day, I’d get the story out of her. One damn day.
Nate strode across the room and handed a drink to Blaire. “Bombay and lime.”
“Excellent.” She gestured to me. “Nate, this is my best friend, Piper.”
Nate King was tall, dark, and handsome. I’d stalked his social media videos after Honey had confessed that Blaire was talking to him. He was drop-dead gorgeous. It was no wonder he had a million followers, who liked to watch him dance and sing and wink at the camera. He and Blaire had done a few videos together and the results were staggering. Apparently, their joint audiences liked them together, too.
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” he said with a disarming smile.
I could see why he got millions of likes and follows. The charisma oozed out of his pores.
A slow song came on the speakers, and Nate held his hand out. “Dance?”
She grinned excitedly and put her hand in his. He dragged her out on the floor and whirled her around the room. I was happy for her. It had been a long time since I’d seen my friend even consider dating.
“What a party,” a voice said, sliding into Blaire’s unoccupied chair.
I found Chase Sinclair seated next to me. I’d seen him in the crowd, but the wedding was upward of four hundred people, and it had slipped my mind that he was even here. Small-town weddings were enormous. And since Peyton had had so many friends coming in from New York, it had swelled nearly out of control.
“Hey. Yeah, it’s great, right?”
“I suppose.” But he was watching Annie and Jordan out on the dance floor.
“Did you want to dance?” I asked. “Hollin left to take care of something. Work, I guess.”
“I’ll just sit, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. I didn’t realize that you were invited.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t. I came here with a date. Tori. Do you know her?”
“Oh, Tori. Yeah. She works with Peyton.”
“That’s right. We met online,” he said with a shrug. “Tinder.”
“I’m happy for you,” I told him honestly.
And after things hadn’t worked out with him and Annie, I wanted him to be happy. We’d had one date, but it hadn’t been anything special. Dating someone new was a good start for him.
“Thanks,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “It’s nice to kick back. I’ve been working with my dad day and night. The insurance company for the barn has been such a headache.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in confusion.
“Well, you know,” he said casually, “because he bought back Sinclair Cellars.”
Part V
A Love Like War
34
Piper
My stomach dropped out of my body as we both came to our feet. “What are you talking about?”
Chase paled and straightened. “You do know, don’t you?”
Every nerve in my body went numb at the same time. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. No, Chase must be wrong.
“That’s not possible.”
He frowned. “I swore that you already knew.”
“No. Why would you say something like that? The winery is my entire life. There is no way in a million years that my dad would sell to your family again. Never, ever, ever.”
“Piper, I’m sorry.”
I scrambled away from him. I couldn’t deal with this right now. It wasn’t true. It absolutely wasn’t true. And my dad would confirm it. That was the only scenario that I would consider. Chase had wrong information. That was it.
I scoured the room for my dad. He was currently standing in a corner, talking with some people I only had vague recollections of. Some of Peyton’s friends and a guy he golfed with. They were all laughing, as if my entire world wasn’t imploding.
“Piper,” Chase said, reaching for me again.
But I was well past whatever he was going to say. I needed to hear it straight from the source.
I hiked up my shimmery dress to march across the room. Someone tried to stop to talk to me, but I just kept going. My dad saw me coming, and his smile ignited.
“Piper!” he cheered. “You remember my friends—”
&nbs
p; I interrupted him, “We need to talk.”
He balked at my tone. If I’d used that voice with Abuelita or my mom, either one of them would have been cussing me out in Spanish for ten straight minutes until I got my attitude in order. My dad looked half-ready to start in on it, but I didn’t have the energy for any of that today.
“Now,” I barked.
He seemed shocked. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with my daughter.”
The men all looked at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows before hustling away. Let them talk. I didn’t fucking care.
“What is it, mija?” my dad asked. “You were very disrespectful.”
“Tell me it isn’t true.”
“What isn’t true?” He conciliatorily held his hands out in front of him.
“Tell me,” I ground out, “that you didn’t sell the winery to the Sinclairs.”
My dad opened his mouth and then closed it. “I, uh…I was going to tell you.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, covering my mouth in horror.
Everything I’d felt earlier when Chase said the most asinine thing I’d ever heard came back to me fresh and new. My stomach dropped hard, and at the same time, it felt as if it were in my throat. Everything tingled and ached as if I’d been hit by a bus. I was numb and empty and on fire and bleeding out, all at the same time. This couldn’t be real.
“No,” I whispered.
“Let’s step outside,” he said, gesturing to the open door at his back.
I rushed through the door and took in deep, heaving breaths. I couldn’t get enough air in. I was hyperventilating. “How could you do this?”
He hurriedly closed the door. “It isn’t what you think.”
“What isn’t what I think, Dad?” I demanded. “You sold us out to the Sinclairs. You sold the winery that we run. The winery that we have made what it is. I was always upset that you wanted to keep the name, but I understood. It made sense because it was an established brand. But now? I can’t fathom what you were thinking.”
“Listen, mija, we were in trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked. “What sort of trouble?”
He shook his head and paced away from me. “The IRS performed an audit on the company. Remember that last year?”
“Yes. Of course. We handed over all of our documents, and then all was well.”
My dad shook his head. “No. We handed the documents over, and it turned out, the accountant we’d worked with for the last decade had been pocketing our tax payments and forging our paperwork.”
“What?” I cried. “How could this have happened?”
“I had no idea. I trusted him with my life. But we weren’t the only company that he did this to. We would have lost everything. We owed over a million in back payments. Plus fines and fees. There was no way I could afford that. There were only two options: bankruptcy or selling.”
I shook my head. Desperation was taking over. This was too much. Far too much. “So, you sold.”
“Bankruptcy would have been on our records for seven years. We never could have gotten anywhere. The winery would have been all but defunct. I took the only viable option.”
“You reached out to Mr. Sinclair.”
He nodded. “Arnold had been contacting me periodically over the last decade, as he’d resumed interest in the winery. I never took him seriously. I never had any intention of selling. But we needed the money.”
“And you never told me,” I hissed. “We could have done this together, Dad. You took it all on yourself.”
“I did what needed to be done.”
“That’s why Chase has been coming around the winery. Why he was there when the barn burned down.”
“Yes,” my dad said. “I got Arnold to agree that we would continue to manage day-to-day operations. It’s no different than before.”
“No different?” I gasped. “Are you crazy? Everything has changed.”
“Nothing has changed.”
I stepped away from him. He had no idea of the absurdity of what he was saying, the enormity of how this affected us all. He might have gotten Mr. Sinclair to agree to treat it like normal, but for how long? Was it written into the contract? How did we know that we wouldn’t all be fired tomorrow and put out on the street?
The bottom line was that the winery was no longer mine. I’d grown up there. It was the one constant in my life. The one thing I’d always loved and turned to. And now, it didn’t even belong to me.
“You’re wrong. This changes everything.”
“Piper,” my dad said earnestly.
I kicked off my uncomfortable heels and carried them in my hand as I walked away from my dad. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. Didn’t want to have to process all of this information in front of the person who had created this catastrophe.
And it was already done. Finalized and signed away. There was nothing I could do to fix it. I was fucked.
I couldn’t go back to the party either. As much as I wanted to be in there, celebrating with my sister on her big day, there was no way I was going to be able to keep it together. Not now.
All I needed was my boyfriend. I needed Hollin to hold me and tell me that it was going to be all right. He’d gone through West Texas Winery falling apart and gotten Wright Vineyard out of it. There was hope, and only he could give it to me.
Tears streaked down my cheeks as I hurried down the walkway toward the cellar. I sure hoped that he was still down here and hadn’t come back to the barn when I went outside to talk to my dad. I didn’t even have my phone on me to text him and ask where he was. So, I kept walking far, far away from Peyton’s happily ever after.
I opened the door to the cellar, dropped my heels at the entrance, and headed down the worn wooden hallway toward Hollin’s office. I choked back a sob and opened the cracked door.
“Hollin, I need to talk to you.”
I froze.
Because Hollin wasn’t alone.
He was standing in his office with his hands gripping Tori’s shoulders.
35
Piper
A vacuum opened in my mind, and all the air rushed out. There was nothing inside but a sense of depthless unknown. Because what I was seeing made no sense. I couldn’t even process what they were doing together. Not after the last couple months. Not after finding August and Tamara together. Not after the way Hollin had reacted to seeing me just talking with Bradley.
I wanted to be the bold, stubborn, tough-as-nails Piper. I wanted to rip into him right then and there. To tear him apart for having the audacity to make me think he had changed and throwing it all back in my face.
But I’d been hurt too much today. I could barely stand after finding out about the winery. I’d yanked all of my walls down, hand over fist, to let Hollin into my heart. And then this? This was too much.
“What…what’s going on?” I asked, my voice breaking on the words.
Hollin pushed Tori back a step. “Piper…”
My eyes tracked between the two as Tori slowly turned to face me standing in the doorway. She bit her bottom lip and took another step away from Hollin.
“I don’t understand.”
“This isn’t…it isn’t what you think,” Hollin said.
I almost laughed, but it came out as a muffled sob. “Isn’t that what August said?”
The blow landed, and he winced. “I’m not anything like that fucking idiot. Nothing was happening here.”
“You’re alone with another girl.”
“I’m just going to…” She gestured to pass by me.
But I blocked her path. She wasn’t going to get to just leave.
“Aren’t you here with Chase Sinclair?”
Hollin wrinkled his nose. “Seriously, Tori?”
She shrugged at Hollin. “I thought it’d piss you off the most.”
I looked between them. My confusion deepened. They seemed to know each other. And here I’d thought, he was stupid enough to go back to his old ways. Give up
on our relationship and fall for some other vapid girl. But it was more than that. Like I was missing the key to open the vault that explained how any of this made sense.
“I don’t give a fuck who you’re here with,” Hollin growled.
And he looked angry. I’d seen him look like that before when dealing with August. It didn’t absolve him of what the fuck was happening right now.
“Then, why are you down here with me?” Tori asked.
“I’d like to know that, too.”
Hollin looked up at me helplessly. I didn’t like that expression on him. He’d been caught, and now, he was acting the part of the prey. When I’d only ever seen him as the predator.
Tori sighed. “Just tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest.
“Tori is my…ex,” Hollin finally said.
“So? Aren’t there a hundred of them?”
“No,” he said softly. “There’s…just Tori.”
I looked between them one more time, and it all fell into place. The ex-girlfriend who had wrecked his life. The one who had abandoned him after years of bullshit and left him in shambles. The very reason he’d been an asshole to my friends. The reason he hadn’t dated since. Until me.
Lucky me.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “The one who ruined your life?”
Tori huffed and stared at the ground. “Really, Hollin?”
“Shut up,” he snapped.
Tori looked up at me and frowned. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Piper. I really did like you.”
I blinked at her. “It sure doesn’t seem like it.”
“Wait…how do you even know each other?” Hollin asked.
“She works with Peyton,” I said. “We’ve been getting lunch and stuff for a while. I’m going to guess that you knew the whole time that I was with Hollin.”
“I figured it out after you told me about the concert.”
I winced as I remembered divulging to her about the tour bus sex. It had been fine because I was talking to a stranger. Not realizing I was talking to his ex-girlfriend, who apparently still had designs on him.
God, I felt like an idiot.
