by Skye Jordan
Giselle stepped into the kitchen and forced the doubt back as she pulled open the fridge. With a little rummaging, she came up with enough food to put together a fruit-and-cheese plate. She added a bottle of chilled red zinfandel to the snack and called it perfect.
Gazing out at the ocean while she washed the berries and grapes, Giselle forced her thoughts to the details that made her life at this moment pretty damn fabulous. How amazing it looked moving forward with Troy in her future. He gave her life an entirely new dimension, one that added richness and light and fun and meaning.
But she couldn’t look ahead without allowing her mind to wander outside this house, outside this beach, outside these stolen moments together. She tried to frame “meshing” their lives together in a positive light. But without knowing where her future lay, that was difficult. And when she thought of Troy’s career with travel and hours just as crazy as hers, her angst intensified.
That thought turned her mind toward the sponsors she and Chad had been courting. Which made her wonder how things were going and if anything had happened over the last few days. She thought of Chad and Brook and felt guilty she wasn’t there to help them carry the load.
She turned off the water while guilt and frustration battled beneath her ribs. She worked endlessly, suffered a near-death experience, and reunited with her only love. She deserved a few days off. Even the doctor had said so.
If only there was a pill to cure guilt. Or insecurities instilled in childhood.
Straightening, she turned and glanced around the kitchen again for her phone. Checking in with Chad was a double-edged sword, she knew. Knowing what was happening would give her a sense of control, but it would also give Chad the opportunity to drag her back in.
It was inevitable, though. She had to face it soon. Better to at least get an idea of what she’d be walking back into—if she could find her damn phone. “Where the hell did I leave that thing?”
She couldn’t even call him on Troy’s phone, because it had run out of battery two days ago, and he didn’t have a charger with him. They’d been truly disconnected from the world—which had been heavenly, but it couldn’t go on forever.
Her stomach cramped and rolled with a hellacious growl, so she gave up on it for now and tossed a strawberry into her mouth. She’d ask Troy to take her out later to pick up a new phone, or at least a charger for his. She had to ease herself back into the real world so she wasn’t blindsided when it hit her full force.
She pulled two wineglasses from a cabinet, then went in search of a corkscrew. Drawer after drawer after drawer. “Come on,” she muttered. “You’ve got wine. You’ve gotta have a—”
She tugged open the drawer at the far end of the island a little too hard, and all the contents came flying to the front. A flashlight, batteries, pens—
My phone?
She stared at it for a long moment, stunned, while a burgeoning sensation of dread balled up beneath her ribs. She couldn’t seem to reach for the device, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off it either. All she could do was stand there, frozen, while her mind scrambled to make sense of this.
But short of the phone accidentally getting swept into the drawer, she couldn’t.
She reached for it, and as soon as she picked it up, her stomach dropped. The phone was too light. She flipped it over and found exactly what she already knew she’d find—the battery cover missing. The battery gone.
She rummaged in the drawer and uncovered both her battery and the cover. Her phone had definitely not ended up here by mistake.
Troy.
Her eyes narrowed. She shook her head in confusion. Why?
“You promised me a week.”
Anger crawled across her shoulders.
She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth to tamp down the immediate resentment.
Don’t snap. Put this in perspective.
Opening her eyes, she let her vision blur over the counter. He loved her. They’d been apart seven years, and he wanted a week alone. That wasn’t too much to ask. Maybe the way he’d gone about it wasn’t so perfect, but she had to admit she never would have given in willingly to being cut off from the world. And she also had to admit the time away had both changed her perspective and been good for her—mind, body, and soul.
The rationalization shaved off the sharpest edge of her anger. Exhaling, she stretched her neck right, then left, and replaced the battery, then the back, and switched on her phone.
She leaned her hip against the counter and felt her whole world shift as she waited for her phone to power up.
Back to reality.
She closed her eyes, her stomach tight and a little topsy-turvy. Man, this was going to be a rough transition.
The ding of her phone drew her eyes open. But what greeted her made them fly wide: twenty-two missed calls? Eighteen new voice messages? Thirty-five new text messages?
“What…?” Panic and dread blended to push her to the edge of an anxiety attack. Her heart raced as she tapped into the missed phone calls and scrolled through, finding the majority from Chad. “What the hell…?”
Troy told her he’d called Chad. That he’d explained…
Her mind snapped back to the way he wielded power over a film set. To the way he’d made sure she would get the best plastic surgeon for her stitches. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Troy spinning a tale to get her out of town.
She skimmED Chad’s texts, but the messages stole her breath. She couldn’t be reading that right: Offers from sponsors like Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, and Bose had brought the big promotional guns AEG and Live Nation calling?
Holy shit.
Holy. Shit.
Her stomach floated into her chest. Her heart lifted to her throat. Giselle pressed a hand to her mouth to keep them both inside her body while she took little gasps for air. “Oh my God…”
She read the messages again, checking dates and times, hoping—praying—it wasn’t too late to get back to them. These offers could be tenuous. Sponsors could be sensitive. If they weren’t treated with the respect and deference they felt they deserved, they could easily turn their backs on an entertainer.
Her hand was shaking when Troy’s voice broke into her thoughts from the other room.
“Ellie?” His tone carried alarm. Fear. And drained every ounce of excitement from her belly.
He knew. He. Knew.
Quick footsteps touched her ear just before Troy called again, “Ellie…” and came around the corner into the kitchen as if he were chasing her. But halted his forward momentum with a hand on the doorframe, and his gaze homed in on the phone in her hands.
And the look on his face—the oh-shit-what-have-I-done look on his face—told her everything. The phone was not in the drawer by accident. The phone had not lost its battery by accident. Troy had not disabled her phone so they could disconnect from the world together.
He’d done it knowing what the consequences would be for her.
A second of supreme, deafening silence stretched while Giselle quivered with tension, with hurt, with disbelief, praying he would blurt out some plausible reason—any plausible reason—for doing this.
But his eyes fell closed, his shoulders dropped, and his head lowered.
Everything from their past swirled in, combined with everything from their present, and cut into the possibility of their future.
“How did this happen?” she asked, holding out the very last thread of hope. “Why did this happen?”
He lifted his head and came forward with a look that implored her to understand while knowing she wouldn’t. He’d pulled on only boxer briefs, and his hair was a tousled, sexy mess.
“His messages were getting more and more…crazy. I was afraid he’d trace your phone and I didn’t want him coming here and creating any more stress for you.”
“You read the messages.”
He pressed a hand to the counter, standing so close, the afternoon light shone through his irises, turning them a beautiful and clear
shade of brandy. “I…saw them.”
She waited. Waited for him to pull some miraculous excuse out of the ether to make all the hurt inside vanish. But nothing more came.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Anger balled in her gut. “You saw them?”
He straightened and took a deep breath. One of those, oh-here-we-go-type breaths. “You promised me a week, El.”
“Don’t. Don’t even. What you did here has absolutely nothing to do with any time limit, and you know it.” She thought back over their time together, over the things he’d said. “You knew where my phone was when I asked. You knew those messages were waiting. And you knew exactly how important they were.”
She started past him toward the bedroom.
He caught her arm. “El—”
She jerked from his grasp. Pain throbbed beneath her ribs. “I can’t believe you did this. I really can’t.”
“What can’t you believe?” he barked. “That I love you and don’t want to lose you to that damned career again?”
“No, Troy. I know I hurt you when I walked away. And I expected some insecurity. What I didn’t expect is the way you minimized the importance of my career by hiding these messages from me.” She held up her phone. “This is not meshing our careers. It’s controlling and deceitful. It’s unacceptable.”
Turning away, she pushed her feet into the bedroom and grabbed clothes from a chair.
“Giselle,” he said, following her. His use of her full name made her shoulders inch up around her ears. “Take a few minutes to calm down and put this into perspective.”
Her mind felt like a messy, slippery knot of seaweed. Her heart felt like shattered shards of glass. She wouldn’t calm down in his presence, and she wouldn’t do it in a few minutes. Perspective in this situation would not come easily.
She jerked a skirt from the arm of a chair and pulled it on, then riffled through a pile of things on the dresser and found panties, dragging those on beneath the skirt.
“Pepsi, Bud, AEG, Live Nation?” She swung toward him, on the edge of hysteria. The more she thought about the magnitude of the offers on the table, the deeper his actions cut and the more panic-stricken she became. “We’re talking promotion at the level of Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan…the Rolling-freaking-Stones, for God’s sake. You know this. Seriously, Troy. Seriously. Step back for a minute and really look at what you’ve done.”
She was yelling now, her emotions completely out of control as the enormity of the situation sank past the shock and the hurt. “You’ve made it look like I couldn’t care less what offers are on the table. Like I don’t have the time of day for the biggest opportunity the music world could offer. But what makes it even worse is that you did it knowing how long and how much I’ve sacrificed to get those very offers.”
She pulled off his T-shirt, grabbed a bra, and fought to snap it into place with her fingers shaking.
“First of all, you shouldn’t be yelling,” he said, his tone measured but brimming with frustration. “It’s not good for your head or your voice. And second of all, that’s not true. Everyone knows what happened in the caves—it was front-page news. They know you were hurt. Chad and Brook will be covering you with explanations. No one but you—you and Chad—expect you to be at meetings now.”
She finally got the bra clasped and reached for a blouse, desperate to get out, get space, find level ground. She had too many voices ricocheting around her head. Too many emotions twisting her heart. Too much pressure inside her gut. She felt like she was going to explode.
“And how much are you going to continue to sacrifice, El? At what point do you stop sacrificing? At what point should your career start giving back? After all you’ve given to it, what does it give you now? Stress, stress, and more stress?”
Fear and fury turned her vision red around the edges. “You’ve been back in my life two weeks, and you think you know what I want, what I need, how I feel?”
A familiar sense of claustrophobia settled in. The same type she’d experienced in the cave, where she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe, just needed to get out.
Out, out, out.
She picked up her phone, opened her taxi app, and requested a cab to her location. “I can’t fight about this now.” She dropped her phone on the bed and looked around, trying to think what she needed to gather up for her trip back to Las Vegas. “I need to get this mess straightened out so I can think. So I have direction…”
But nothing here was hers. Even the clothes she’d come in were still in the washing machine.
“Don’t go, Ellie.” His words weren’t a request or a plea. They weren’t even a demand. They were a warning. A warning that lifted her hackles. “Yes, I hid your phone because I was being selfish and I wanted a few uninterrupted days with you. But I also did it because you needed it—for your health, for your sanity. No one knows you like I do, and I knew those messages would have you doing exactly what you’re doing right now—jumping right back into the insanity too soon. You’ll work yourself into the ground unless there’s someone around to be your voice of reason.”
“Voice of reason?” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “You think you’re my voice of reason?”
“Well, it sure as shit isn’t Chad. Not when he’s getting a portion of every dollar you’re out there busting your ass to earn. And Brook, God, I think that girl would do anything you asked of her, which makes her a great friend but a lousy source of true reason, because all she wants to do is see you happy, so she’s going to tell you whatever she thinks you want to hear.”
“Stop. Twisting. Everything.” She picked up her phone and slid her credit cards and ID off the dresser, pushing them into the back of the case. “This is about you deceiving me.”
“Because I love you, Ellie.”
His conviction vibrated inside her. Her heart reached for him. Her soul begged her to pull down the walls and let him in. Believe him. Trust him.
“I don’t give a fuck about your money,” he said. “I couldn’t care less about your fame. I care about you. I care about your health and your happiness. And if you stopped long enough to really look at your life, you’d see you don’t have either.”
“Excuse me?” She pulled back, crossing her arms. “Who the hell are you to pass judgment on my life. On what I do or don’t have in my life. Just because I’ve struggled, just because I’ve gone through a rough time does not mean…” She stopped and collected herself. “I’m not doing this. I’m not going to stand here and justify myself or my work or my lifestyle or my choices to you.”
She cut a wide path around him and exited the bedroom.
“You’ve got a ton of money,” he continued, so close behind her she could feel his breath on her neck, “which you don’t even use. You’ve got the power of a celebrity, which you neither use nor want. You’ve got the hip and fast lifestyle of a musician on the road, which has done nothing but left you lonely and haggard.”
That made her spin on him with rage boiling in her veins.
But he kept talking. “Have you ever sat down and even thought about what you really want from your singing?” His extremely direct question surprised her. Confused her. She lost her focus. Her direction. “Or have you been blindly following the path where it led the past seven years the way you did all the years before that?”
When he stopped talking, the silence seemed to smother her. “What…gives you the right…to judge me?”
He ground his teeth and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“What makes you think…you have the right…to make decisions for me?” She had to stop and draw air every few words. “Decisions that reflect poorly on me…both as a person and a professional? Without ever once…talking to me about it first?”
His gaze lifted from the floor, his eyes liquid, dark, filled with desperate emotions. “I love you, Ellie. I love you, heart and soul.” He jabbed a finger at her. “That’s what gives me the right.”
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A double honk outside cut into their fight and put a chill on the room. Troy’s gaze flashed toward the window and hardened to rock. Giselle looked at the floor, searching her mind, her heart for the right solution. For the right thing to do.
“Goddammit, Ellie,” he said, voice vibrating with tension and hurt. So much hurt it stabbed at her heart. “Don’t you dare walk out that door.”
Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together.
She met his eyes. “This is my career, Troy. This is what I’ve been working toward for as long as I can remember. You know this is what I was meant to do. You know how much it means to me. If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to set it aside the same way I would never ask you to end your stunt career.”
She couldn’t take this torment another second. Yearned to cut herself free from the upsetting bonds of hurt, betrayal, distrust, and fear. Yet she found the act of turning away from him and forcing her feet to move excruciating. Found the door as heavy as cement as she pulled it open. Found the bitter, bitter taste of “Good-bye” lingering far longer than she’d imagined.
And found her drive to LAX as long as if she’d driven to Vegas itself.
Troy kept the side of his face pressed to the front window long after the taxi vanished from sight. Hoping against hope that she’d realize what she’d done and come back. That as soon as the anger cleared, understanding would set in and she’d come back. That as the hurt faded, their love would break through, and she’d come back.
Only…she never came back.
Not after he’d cried himself hollow. Not after he’d gutted himself with recrimination. Not after he’d smashed a dining room chair over the granite kitchen counter.
When he pried his wet face away from the glass, dusk was setting. He stumbled to the dining room and dropped into the lone mate of the broken chair and let his gaze blur over the hole he’d punched in the plaster wall—man, Rubi was gonna be pissed—thinking that he could draw a circle around the hole Giselle had left in his body, one encompassing his entire torso.
