HeartLess

by Love, Kristy

Part Two

  AFTER

  Chapter 13

  Eight Years Later

  My body seized. For a split second, I turned to stone, unable to pull air into my lungs. My heart stopped beating, my hand fisted the folder until it crumpled. My eyes were glued to him, taking in his face that had changed so much in eight years, but also not at all. His jaw was more prominent with scruff on it. His hair was longer on top with the sides shaved close. His eyes were still the same piercing green. I scanned the rest of his body—apparently, my eyes had escaped the momentary paralysis—to his arms, and they were covered in colorful ink. They were strong, but not bulky. He looked like a man, not a boy on the verge of manhood. Even with the Hollywood starlet next to him, he commanded the room.

  I’d expected a lot of things when I walked into my office this morning, but Nash James was not one of them.

  In the short amount of time I’d devoured Nash with my eyes, Nash’s eyes flashed with recognition, and his nostrils flared as he stared into mine, stealing my thoughts and my breath. The air in the room shifted and filled with tension, and a current of anxiety ran through me. As if he needed to make sure I was truly me, his eyes fell on the rest of my body. When his gaze came back to my eyes, a brief look passed over his face that I couldn’t place, then his body stiffened. He turned toward my desk, his body so rigid it looked like he would break apart with the slightest touch.

  As soon as our eyes connected, the vault and chains around my heart rattled. Memories and emotions seeped out. I’d kept them at bay for so long, it nearly brought me to my knees as they washed over me. It was as if no time had passed and the love roared through me. The good memories, the times at his gigs, the kisses, the love we shared. It was followed closely by the gut-wrenching pain, the feeling of not being enough for him. The pain was very real and very fresh. It was like he’d just broken my heart yesterday. I held my chin up high. He may have broken me at one time, but I’d be damned if I gave him a chance this time.

  As soon as he looked away from me, the spell was broken, and I was unfrozen. Striding to my desk on shaky knees, I sat down, smoothing the folder out on the desk. I took a few shallow breaths to try and calm the turmoil happening on the inside. My thoughts were racing so quickly I could barely keep up, and my stomach hurt. I couldn’t throw up. It was completely unprofessional and unacceptable, and Nadine would destroy me. I needed to get myself under control.

  I cleared my throat, leveling my eyes on Vivienne, ignoring the way she held hands with Nash and the giant rock that was damn near blinding me. The words there’s someone else echoed through my mind. I knew Vivienne wasn’t the other person he’d left me for. For two weeks after he’d broken up with me, I scoured everything I could to find out who this mystery person was. But there was no indication. He wasn’t paparazzi fodder, so he wasn’t likely to be caught with someone. As the band’s star rose, he was pictured with different girls, but there wasn’t a slew of women. A few here and there.

  Not that I was paying attention. It was impossible to even check out at the gas station without his face staring back at you. His every move was dissected, his every relationship displayed. I swallowed and gave myself a mental shake. I needed to be in the here and now. Forget the past.

  “Hi. Welcome to As You Wish. I’m Bianca Fair, and I’ll be your planner.” I plastered something I hoped looked like a smile on my face. I wanted to storm out of my office and tell Nadine I wouldn’t plan this wedding. I entertained the idea for a split second, but I had to do it. I’d lose my job and any credibility I’d built over the years.

  There was no choice. I had to plan a wedding for the only man who’d ever owned my heart and who’d completely decimated it. I’d have to do it with a smile and pretend I wasn’t being gutted. Avoiding Nash’s eyes was my number one priority. If I saw them, if he looked back at me and there was any emotion there, I’d crumble. My hold on my sanity was tenuous.

  “I’m Vivienne, and this is my fiancé, Nash.” She stuck her hand out, the one not clutching Nash’s hand, and I shook it. Of course, she was gorgeous. Vivienne Petit was Hollywood’s It Girl. Her movies were always hits at the box office and she was at the very top of the A-list. Everything about her was perfect: her posture, her smile, her hair, her face. I wondered if she had a team of stylists who got her ready this morning. In the movies, she appeared larger in life, but in my office, she was tiny. Next to Nash, she seemed like a tiny girl.

  Against my will, my eyes flashed to Nash. His eyes were trained over my shoulder, looking out the window that overlooked the city. His jaw ticked. I wished I could read his mind. Why would he pick me as a wedding planner? Did he really think so little of me? Was he trying to drive the knife in even farther? “It’s nice to meet you.” The words felt like sawdust on my tongue. It physically hurt to pretend not to know him, but I had no option. There was not a single chance in hell that I was telling the bride-to-be that I’d loved her fiancé—that he’d been my first everything. I felt like I was trapped in a web and getting more and more ensnared with every second.

  Nash nodded, not taking his eyes off the window.

  “I have so many things I want to go over, but we should probably start at the beginning. We need to plan how to announce the engagement.” Vivienne giggled, and I fought the urge to claw her eyes out. Her dark eyebrows, which betrayed her natural hair color, scrunched together as she laughed.

  “You haven’t announced the engagement?” That explained why I’d had no clue that they were engaged. I knew they were dating, at least casually. As hard as I tried to avoid any and all headlines pertaining to Nash, it was impossible. When he’d hooked up with Hollywood’s sweetheart, the press had gone into overdrive. After that, I’d ignored everything else. Sometimes I even went as far as turning magazines around, so his face wouldn’t haunt me anymore.

  “No, our publicists recommended announcing it after we met with a planner and ironed out some preliminary details.” She pulled out a thick binder and laid it on my desk, moving closer as she flipped through the pages. “We need to set a date before we announce anything.” Stopping at a date, she pointed a perfectly manicured finger at a square on her calendar. “We don’t have much time. I’m about to start filming a new movie and I’ll be gone for about three months. Nash is heading back into the recording studio.” She gazed back at him, her eyes full of love. Pain raced through me like barbed wire, cutting me apart, pricking my insides. “He’s also finishing up a tour. We’re very busy, so nailing down a time to have the wedding will be a little tricky.” After separating her eyes from Nash, she looked back at me with a smile. “That’s why we came to your company. You came highly recommended.”

  “We have two more shows before the tour is over,” Nash said robotically. “We have the show later this week in Pittsburgh, then we finish it in New York. After that, I’m taking it easy for a while.” Finally, his eyes landed on me and his nostrils flared. “I’m taking some time off, so we could have the wedding anytime. I’ll be around.”

  “I’m on set until at least September. Filming starts next month, but I’ll be going back and forth for fittings and meetings and such.” She looked down at her calendar. “What about November?”

  I nodded curtly. “November is totally doable, but we’d need to iron out details quickly. A lot of places will already be booked. If you want to have your choice of vendors and a venue, you need to make decisions quickly.” That was about six and a half months away. I could make it through half a year.

  “November,” Vivienne squealed. Again, she turned to Nash. “Oh, Nashy.” Nashy? How did he not puke every time she said that, especially in the high-pitched voice she said it in. “We could have a winter wedding. Wouldn’t that be perfect?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “Let’s do late November so we can do a winter theme.”

  Part of me wanted Nash to speak up, to throw Vivienne out of my office and say this was all a ploy to get back in contact with me, but he sat there like a sculpture, not saying a wo
rd. He didn’t look at either of us or even nod his head in agreement. His silence was another slice to my heart. “That sounds good.” I opened my MacBook and opened my own calendar. I could do this. I could do this. I could do this. I willed my heart to turn to stone, so this would stop hurting.

  How could a wound that I’d thought was at least scabbed over be ripped open so quickly? My lungs burned with each breath and my nose stung with the urge to cry.

  Nash shifted in his chair and my eyes went to him against my wishes. For a brief second, our eyes locked on each other and the old familiar longing coursed through me. I clenched my teeth. He wasn’t mine to want anymore.

  Breaking our connection, I looked back at Vivienne. She flipped through a wedding magazine, talking about something, though I had no idea what. I’d stopped listening.

  “Let’s start here, what are the things you want for the wedding? And what have you done already?” I opened a document on my laptop to take some notes, thankful to do something that didn’t involve looking at their twined hands.

  “We only got engaged on Friday,” Vivienne said. That explained the unexpected weekend call from Nadine. Vivienne must have jumped on the planning right away. “We haven’t really discussed any details, figuring it was better to talk about that with our planner.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  The next hour, I sat listening to Vivienne rattle off every thought that crossed her mind. She left hardly a second for Nash to chip in, though he usually answered in nods. I wanted to hear his voice in a way that made no sense. After all of Vivienne’s input had been exhausted for the time being, I turned my full attention to Nash.

  “What about you, Mr. James?” I quirked an eyebrow. I dared him to say something, to give me some indication that he understood what he was doing to me. I never took him for a cruel person, but he’d changed my mind eight years ago. Now? I thought he was positively heartless. “Do you have anything you want in particular?”

  When his full attention turned to me, it felt like a weight had been placed in my lap, anchoring me to the spot. His eyes were just as captivating as they’d always been, but there was something more about them. Maybe it was the experiences he’d had or the growing he’d done. There was a depth in them I hadn’t expected. “I’m good with whatever Viv wants.”

  His velvety voice wrapped around me like my favorite blanket while his nickname for his fiancée tore me to shreds. “You have nothing you want on one of the most important days of your life?” I was daring him. I wanted him to say something that would extinguish the love I still felt for him. I wanted him to take me and pulverize me, so I could plan this wedding without wanting what I could never have, what was never mine in the first place.

  He looked at Vivienne and her picture-perfect smile before shrugging. “I never really thought about my wedding day that way. It doesn’t really matter to me.”

  Pain lanced through me again. I’d thought about marrying him, not extensively, but I’d thought about it. I’d doodled Mrs. Bianca James on my notebooks and fantasized about what his face would look like when he saw me walk down the aisle in my wedding dress. It was another one of the many ways that Nash and I were always on different pages.

  Now, I’d get to watch his face light up for another woman as she met him at the altar. I’d watch him exchange vows with someone else and pledge to love her forever while I was nothing but the bona fide help.

  “Well, I have enough to get started. I’ll call some venues and find some that will accommodate what you need and want and then we can go from there.” I closed the folder Nadine had handed me before this meeting started and tucked it into a drawer.

  “How will this work? Will we meet in person, talk on the phone, email?” Vivienne asked as she gathered her magazines and notebook.

  “Whatever works for your schedule. All of my other clients have been given to other planners, so I’m at your disposal.” I smiled professionally.

  “Maybe you could come and meet me on set, and we could go over details?” Vivienne asked, sounding so hopeful that it was hard not to find her endearing. So far, she’d been nothing but nice and polite. I wanted to hate her, but it wasn’t exactly easy.

  “Babe,” Nash interjected. I fought a wince at the term of endearment. “I’m sure Bianca has better things to do than sit around on set and wait to talk to you between takes.” My name on his lips was a salve to my wounds and a fresh twist of the blade.

  “I’m open to doing whatever you’d be more comfortable with, Vivienne. If you’d like me to take some trips to the set to discuss things with you, I’d be happy to.” Anything for the client, Nadine’s voice rang through my head. I’d love to tell this particular pair of clients to fuck off, but I loved my job too much.

  “Perfect!” Vivienne clapped. “I’ll have my assistant email you my schedule, and we can iron out when it’d be best for you to come. Also, when Nash is off tour, he can stay here and do the meetings I won’t be in town for.”

  “Sounds good.” I stood and smoothed my skirt, wanting them out of my office so I could catch my breath.

  Vivienne extended her hand and shook mine, all smiles. “Thank you so much, Bianca. I’m so looking forward to working with you.”

  I pressed my lips into a thin smile, not trusting my voice. I feared she’d cringe away at my slightly damp palm. Could this day get any worse?

  Vivienne flounced from my office, her hair swinging with her hips. Nash stood in front of me, his hands tucked in his pocket and his head slightly downturned, though he looked at me. I clenched my own hands at my sides, not knowing what he was going to say or do. I didn’t want to be the one to break the silence.

  “Bee,” he said, voice grumbly and his words full of something I couldn’t decipher. His hand went to the back of his neck as if he was bashful.

  I raised my hand, cutting his words off. My heart cinched with his old nickname for me. No one called me Bee but him and I didn’t want to go down that particular memory lane. “Bianca,” I said. My words were clipped, tone nothing but professional.

  He regarded me a few seconds. He nodded. “I didn’t have any idea that you were the wedding planner she booked. If you’d prefer, I can have her find someone else.”

  Truly, there was no end to the ways this man would gut me. “I’d like to keep my job.” He raised an eyebrow in question. “If I lose you as a client, my boss will fire me. Not all of us have millions of dollars and a foolproof career to fall back on, Mr. James.”

  “I don’t want this to be hard on you.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you walked into my office.”

  “That’s not fair. I had no idea.”

  “Regardless, you’re here now.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the carpet like he was searching for something to say, then pinned me with eyes. God, they were just as gorgeous as they used to be. They threatened to wipe my mind clear of every thought that wasn’t him. “I don’t want to hurt you, Bianca. Not anymore.” He turned, then followed his fiancée from my office.

  As he shut the door behind him, I whispered, “Too late.”

  * * *

  I opened my apartment door and threw my purse on the table I kept by the door. I kicked off my shoes and slid off my blazer. I’d never been so glad to be home in my entire life. Peyton was working and would be home soon. She worked twelve hour shifts at the hospital three days a week. She was the perfect roommate. Sometimes, I felt like I had the place to myself. Sometimes, I had someone to hang out with. It was a perfect blend. If only I could get her to clean up after herself a little better.

  In the kitchen, I got my biggest wineglass and poured myself a healthy dose. As I was at the counter, Alli, our cat, jumped up and meowed, bumping into me with her head. “Hey, Alli girl.” I stroked her back, and she arched up into me, turning around, so I had better access. Everything was on Alli’s terms, including getting love. She wanted exactly five strokes down her
back, and some chin rubs before she’d go back to pretending I didn’t exist. When she got her fill, she jumped down and sauntered off in search of a place to nap.

  I wasn’t a huge pet fan. I didn’t like the dirtiness or the extra work involved in owning one, but Alli was the perfect pet. She sometimes wanted love, she kept herself fairly clean, and Peyton cleaned her litter box. In some ways, Alli was a cleaner roommate than Peyton. As much as I sometimes hated to admit it, I fell in love with the black and white fluff ball. She’d been living with us for about three years now, and I couldn’t imagine not being greeted by her pushiness. We’d found her one day walking through the alley behind our apartment. Peyton had immediately fallen for her and wanted to bring her home with us. She’d looked pathetic, way too skinny and still clearly a kitten. We’d taken her to a vet to find out she was malnourished and in desperate need of some TLC. I’d relented and let her come home with us. For so long, we’d simply called her Cat until Peyton had the brilliant idea to call her Alli Cat since we’d found her in an alley. The name stuck, and so had our Alli girl.

  I had a little bit of time to unwind and figure out how in the hell I was going to tell Peyton about my day before she got home. She’d take one look at me and know something was up, so avoiding it was out of the question. After a healthy gulp of wine, I plodded to my room to change into comfy clothes. I wanted to get rid of all traces of this day from my body.

  Later, when Peyton came home, she blew through the door making all kinds of noise as she usually did. I muted the TV and turned to greet her.

  “You’ll never guess who I saw today,” she blurted out as she dumped all her million bags on the floor. As a nurse, she didn’t have much time to do anything while working, but she always took things to do. It wasn’t like the patients didn’t keep her insanely busy or anything. “Felix.”