by Amelia Wilde
“We’ve got a few days. You have to get back on the road, or else you’re going to get fired.”
Driver smirks. “Who told you that?”
“Beau.”
The smirk on his face fades away. “Roman’s under stress,” he tells me. “He can’t kick me out of the family, even if he doesn’t like how much I’m in town right now.”
“But he also can’t make you want to stay,” I point out, and Driver sets his jaw. “Nobody can make you want to stay here.” It would be easy—it would be so easy—if Driver was the kind of man who slotted himself neatly into new roles, but he’s not.
My heart aches, because if he were that kind of man, I’m not sure I’d be falling for him like this.
And I shouldn’t fall. I should never, ever allow myself to fall for someone who’s so different, who needs such different things from life. It’s a recipe for heartbreak.
“You could come on the road with me,” Driver offers. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing, having you in the passenger seat next to me.”
“It wouldn’t,” I agree, but it’s a lie, and it curdles on my tongue.
14
Holiday
The pie emergency, it turned out, wasn’t so much an emergency as it was an opportunity.
I get back to the cottage in time to find Sophie stuffing her clothes into her rolling suitcase, everything strewn across the living room, and dancing to Sia. She has the music cranked so loud on the house’s speaker system that it’s rattling the windows.
“I’m not abandoning you,” she shouts as soon as she sees me. “I have a thing.”
“What’s the thing?” Sia belts about chandeliers.
“There’s a diner over in Lakewood that sells homemade pies, and the lady who normally supplies them skipped town for Florida.”
“The Short Stack?” I shout back.
“The what?”
“The Short Stack.” My family liked taking the drive to Lakewood when we’d visit on summer vacation because my dad was in love with the sign on the door. A big ol’ stack of love, it read, and he got a knee-slapping laugh out of it every single time. “Is that the diner?”
“It’s in a house,” she shouts back. “That seems wrong but that’s what the guy on the phone said. They want me to stay for a few days and make some pieces, which is good, because I shut down the pie stand to come here.”
“It used to be a house.”
“What?”
I go over to the switch on the wall and lower the volume, sadly cutting off Sia’s big crescendo in the song. Sophie laughs. “Sorry. I was into it.”
“No apologies. The Short Stack diner did used to be a house. It still looks kind of like one, so don’t be surprised when you go over there. We used to eat there all the time.”
Her eyes wide, Sophie shakes her head. “Worlds colliding.”
“Our worlds have already collided, but I still think it’s cool.”
She looks me up and down. “Are you still going to be here when I get back?”
“Are you staying there for…” I check my phone. “Ten days? That’s how long I’ll be here for.” My heart shudders up into my throat. “Then I’m out of here. I’m hitting the road and headed for the big city.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound like she believes me. “I’ll be back before then. In the meantime…how was your date?”
“It was a drive. And it was good. He said I should come out on the road with him.” I snort with laughter—I can’t help it.
“You should.” Sophie’s serious. “You absolutely should do that. Can you imagine? Out on the road, falling in love…”
“In a different place every night? With who the hell knows around? No. No way. And anyway, my job starts too soon to start flirting with that idea.”
Sophie cocks her head to the side. “Has it ever occurred to you that this was meant to happen? Maybe your uterus released an egg at that moment to stop you from doing the wrong thing with your life.”
“You’re saying I got accidentally knocked up from a one-night stand in order to…save myself from New York City and the one job I’ve ever been able to picture myself doing?”
“You are such a liar.” Sophie crosses her arms over her chest. “You want to write. Publishing is just a side gig on the way to the top for you. It’s networking. And by the way, you hate networking. You’re in this for the books.”
“I was in it for the books. Now my brain…” I don’t know how to explain it to her. When I sit down in front of my computer, there are no words to add to my book. None whatsoever. “The writing dream is on an indefinite hold.”
“Right.” She looks me in the eye. “You’re willing to put off your writing dream, but you won’t accept fact that your true soul-dream is to be at home with your family?”
“Soul-dream,” I scoff, but the words have struck deep.
“I have to go.” She comes across the living room, pulling the suitcase behind her, and throws her arms around me. When she steps back she jabs a finger into my face. “If you need anything, you text me. Or you call, and you keep calling. Do not disappear off the face of the earth again. You’re always home. It’s terrifying when you do that.”
“Got it.”
I give her one last hug and see her out the front door.
Sophie’s been here long enough that as soon as she pulls out of the driveway, I feel the silence in the house as viscerally as I ever have in my entire life.
It’s so quiet.
I go out to the back deck. The deck chairs call to me, but I go past them in favor of the beach. The moment my feet hit the sand, it’s right there again—that homesick ache in my throat that makes me feel completely pathetic.
I love it here.
I love the way the water is always rolling onto the shore, and the way the sand heats up as the afternoon progresses. Ruby Bay itself isn’t massive but it’s wide enough that the other side is a distant green haze. Nothing bad happens here. Surprising things, yes—but nothing I can’t learn to live with.
For the first time, I let myself drop a hand to my belly.
It’s flat as a pancake. There’s not the slightest hint of a bump. I would never do this if anyone else were around to see.
It’s okay to indulge if it’s just me and the lake, though.
I look down past my hand to my feet in the damp sand and spot a piece of pink sea glass, its edges round and smooth, two inches from my right pinky toe. When I bend to pick it up I’m struck by the fact that nine months from now, if everything goes according to plan, I will absolutely not be able to bend down and pick up a piece of sea glass.
Will anybody be around to do it for me?
Will Driver?
I shake the thought out of my head. I won’t be here in nine months, if everything goes according to plan. I’ll be taking the subway to work in New York City. Or walking, if I can still hack it. I’ve never been pregnant before, so I don’t know how it’ll all shake out. I press the sea glass against the front of my sundress. In nine months, I’ll be able to rest it on top of my belly.
And Driver will be able to rest his hand there, too.
I want it so badly my knees threaten to give out.
He’s everything that should scare me to death. He’s a man who likes what he does and does what he likes. He’s a man who can’t be tethered to one spot. He’s not afraid of anything, and me?
I can still hear that asshole laughing.
It’s been years since high school. Years since the stupid incident that ended with my picture plastered all over social media. Years and years and years, and still…
I’d rather be at home, where there are no cameras and there are no assholes, even at the cost of everything else.
But not at the cost of Driver.
I turn my head at the crunch of the footsteps in the sand. It’s not Driver—it’s one of his other brothers. The one who looks like Beau. He rolls to a stop a few feet away. “You must be Holiday.”
“If
all of you weren’t so clearly Driver’s brothers, it would be creepy how often people say that.”
With a serious smile, the kind that would have melted my panties clean off back in college, he extends his hand. “Charlie Bliss. My twin brother’s Beau.”
“He of the parties.”
“Yes, though he’s…pulled it back in recent weeks.” Charlie takes a look up the beach at my uncle’s cottage. “Nice place.”
“It’s only mine for a little while,” I tell him, and something in his eyes makes me think…he knows. “Then I’m headed to the city.”
Charlie runs a hand through his hair. “What do you do in the city?”
“I’ll be an editor for a publishing house.” I’ll be pregnant, and I’ll be alone, and I’ll miss him so much it hurts. I open my mouth to elaborate, maybe to name the company, but instead what comes out is: “I’m not sure it’s going to work out.”
“Driver would probably say that if it doesn’t, you can always take an alternate route. He’s obsessed with the GPS apps they have out now. You can avoid almost any traffic jam, according to that guy.” Charlie cheeks his watch. “It was good to meet you, Holiday.” He hesitates. “I don’t make it a habit of getting into other people’s business, but for what it’s worth…I’ve never seen Driver stick around here so long. You must mean something to him.” He gives me a nod and jogs away, disappearing down the beach in a matter of moments.
Charlie might be right, but I’m rendered speechless by a cascade of images, flickering one by one through my mind. Driver in the bed at his house, looking down at me with soft eyes. Driver standing in my kitchen, preparing elaborate pancakes for a one-night stand. Driver’s hands on the wheel of that convertible.
Driver in the pool, helping out a little kid so he wouldn’t get left behind.
I’ve been so focused on being scared that I missed the more important factor: I’ve fallen for him.
Hard.
15
Driver
“Did you break up with your girlfriend?”
I’m lingering in the bullpen of the resort offices, waiting for a suspiciously late Roman, but it’s not Roman who makes me stand up straight from the wall.
“What? No. Why?” Charlie has his phone in his hand and a portfolio in the other, but his hair is wet, which is weird. “Why are you wet?”
He looks up from the phone and meets my eyes. “I’m not wet. My hair is wet because I took a shower. You know about showers, right?”
“Why are you asking about Holiday? Also, she’s not my girlfriend.” Not technically. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know.
“Bullshit,” says Charlie. “I saw her on the beach.”
“Why were you on the beach?”
He shakes his head. “What is this, some kind of police interrogation? I went for a run.”
“In the middle of the day?”
“Yes, Driver. In the middle of the day.”
“Why are you running in the middle of the day in August?”
“For stress relief. Not that it makes a difference when you work with your own brothers.”
I put a hand to my chest. “So kind.”
“She looked…melancholy.”
“Melancholy?”
“She looked sad when I saw her.”
“I know what melancholy means, you ass.”
Charlie shrugs. “You never know.”
“All right.”
“You should go see her.”
I let my mouth fall open and stare at him.
“What? You should.”
“I thought all of you wanted me back on the road.”
He gives me a meaningful look. “Roman wants you back on the road. I don’t have a personal stake in whether you go or not, as long as you bring in sponsorships. God knows the travel budget could be reduced.”
“I do plenty to reduce the travel budget.”
“What are you two hens arguing about?” Beau steps up between us, putting a hand on each shoulder. He’s in a ridiculous mood most of the time now, since he and Claire got together. “We’re brothers. Let’s not fight.”
Charlie shakes off his hand. “We’re not fighting. I was giving Driver a suggestion.”
“He was suggesting that I go see Holiday, even though she’s not my girlfriend.”
The two of them exchange a look, and anger flares straight across my chest. “Charlie, what the hell?”
“What?” He looks back down at his phone, then up at me. “Seriously, what?”
“You told him?”
“Congratulations, bud,” says Beau, smiling like an idiot. “Mom’s going to be thrilled. And Charlie here only told me the happy news because he thought I’d say something stupid otherwise. What a guy, am I right? He should know that somebody’s going to say something stupid no matter what he does.”
“Did you tell Roman?” I say through gritted teeth. “So help me god, if either of you told Roman—”
“Told me what?”
Oh, perfect.
“Nothing.” I hope the look on my face adequately communicates how much I will murder my twin brothers if this news goes any further than it already has.
“Fine.” Roman goes past us into his office. Charlie follows behind and puts the portfolio on his desk.
“This is the latest,” Charlie says. “I don’t have anything else.” I follow him in, with Beau hovering just over my shoulder like the world’s most annoying gnat.
Roman picks up the portfolio, scans through it, and gives Charlie a nod. “We’ll talk later.”
“Great.” Charlie leaves without a second glance back at me.
“Driver, I’ve got an endorsement I want you to follow up on. It’s time sensitive, and the flight out is tomorrow evening at six.”
“Hold on. What?”
“It’s a company out of Washington State. It’s a branding deal—we’ll carry their soaps in some of the rooms as a pilot test, and they’ll promote the resort to their following. From what I understand they’ve got quite a bit of their market. I need you on the ground for that meeting.”
“I’m not flying out.”
“Yeah, you are. The meeting’s tomorrow afternoon. There’s no time to drive.”
“When did you find out about this?”
“Yeah,” Beau chimes in. “When did you find out about this? It’s kind of a dick move to spring this on a guy?”
Roman lets out a long-suffering sigh. “How do you find out about these meetings? Isn’t it enough for you that I’m letting you revamp your processes for the events at the resort?”
“What the hell?” My heart thunders like a team of racehorses. I’ve been to a few horse races in my travels, and racehorses are no joke. “Beau gets to keep his own hours and make all his own decisions, and you’re going to send me out with one day’s notice? This is bullshit, Roman.”
“This is the work of the resort.” Roman’s tone is utterly serious. “I asked you to start lining up new endorsements a week ago, and as far as I can tell, you haven’t done anything.”
“I’ve sent emails.”
“You’re here, Drive. You’re never here. You’d have been gone before the sentence was finished a month ago. Did something happen? Because if it did, and we need to make changes, you need to tell me.”
No. No, I don’t need to tell him. My muscles tighten painfully, though I’m not clenching my fists. Maybe I’m having a heart attack.
I’m not going to do this Roman’s way. I’m not going to tell him every little thing that happens to me because he demands it. This has to be illegal. If we had a real Human Resources department, I could probably march down there and file a lawsuit. Except we have one lawyer on retainer, so that would be more than slightly awkward.
“Nothing happened,” I answer flatly. If Beau so much as breathes wrong right now, I will lay him out. “I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’d rather not fly.”
“The meeting is tomorrow.” He enunciates every word, and I want to punc
h him. “I think you need to clear your head.” Roman bends down and jiggles the computer mouse to wake up his screen. “I’m forwarding an email to you now with some other possibilities I’ve lined up for while you’re out there. Get going on this stuff and we’ll talk when you’re back in two weeks.”
I raise both hands in the air. “Two weeks?” This is so fucking stupid I could die. “You are not planning my schedule for the next two weeks.”
“I already did.” Roman straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest. “Beau, as long as you’re here—we saw another bookings boost from the kids’ day. I don’t want the grounds overrun with too many activities like that, but coordinate with Claire about setting up a schedule for the fall.”
Beau salutes Roman like the happy asshole that he is. “On it.”
“I’m not on it,” I cut in. “This is shit, and you know it. Even Beau knows it.”
“I have been the subject of…management…before, grasshopper,” he says, even though he’s two years older than me and has never struck me as particularly wise. “It might turn out for the best.”
There’s nothing else to say. Roman waits, but I don’t need to give him the satisfaction of an argument. That guy has been on a power trip since the day he was born, and I’ve had enough of it.
“Fine. Great. Anything else?”
Roman chews at his lip, the first sign that he’s not completely confident about this, either. “Show me you’re on board with this, Driver.”
He doesn’t have to follow through with the threat. I know what he means, and it only makes my rage burn hotter.
Asher is never here, and the man in charge of the Bliss Resort is a hypocrite in the first degree.
I don’t have anything to say to him, so I turn and go, moving numbly through the bullpen. He can fly me to Colorado, but good luck getting me to come back.
My chest throbs, a painful reminder—
There’s something else here waiting for me. Someone else.
It’s Holiday I need to be with right now. I pull out my phone, and…
