by Avery Flynn
“She said some things. I said some things. Then it got ugly and she told me to leave.” His whole body ached, every single muscle and bone, as if he’d been picked up by a tornado and thrown against Mount Rushmore. “Like an idiot, I stormed out and never looked back.”
How could he have done that? He should have stayed. Pleaded his case. Instead, he’d just quit on her.
“Do you know why I picked out Zara from all of the bios I saw on Bramble?” his mom asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Because she was honest about what she wanted,” she said. “Sure, it was a little more straightforward about things I really don’t need to know about, but she presented herself as she was without apology. That’s something to be appreciated and respected. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you get to take away their agency. It’s a hard lesson to learn, believe it or not.”
She tapped her finger three times on his leg. It was their code since he’d gotten to that age where having his mom tell him she loved him in public just seemed like one more thing to get embarrassed about. Instead, it was three taps for “I love you.” He tapped her on the knee right back.
“Do you love Zara?”
“Yeah,” he said, not even needing to think about it. “I do.”
“Does she love you?”
There was that gut punch again. “I don’t know.”
“So you apologize and you make amends. Then you hope for the best.” She tapped him three times again. “Life is like hockey—you put in the preparation, you put in the work, and you pray like hell that the calls will go your way.”
“And when they don’t?”
“You play harder.” She grinned at him. “Do you remember that awful middle school teacher you had?”
Yeah, he wasn’t likely to forget that prick ever. “The one who didn’t care about teaching because he was about to retire? Yeah, he was awful.”
His mom raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “He wasn’t about to retire. He was forced to when I found out what was going on and how he was treating you at school because of your dyslexia.”
“How?” Then he remembered who he was talking to. His mom was a master tactician. “You found a way.”
“Always. And I would have sooner if I would have known. I wish you’d have felt you could come to me. There’s nothing, nothing, in the world that I wouldn’t do for you. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize sooner.”
“I should have said something,” he said, shaking his head at the nervous little boy afraid of sticking out in any way. He wasn’t that kid anymore, but how much had he really changed?
“Well, prove that’s a lesson learned by not letting it happen again,” his mom said, the tone in her voice proclaiming she was back in coach mode. “You can’t keep how you’re feeling bottled up again. You have to let Zara know how you feel.”
He sat up, the wheels already turning in his head. It was the beginning of the third period. He still had time. He could fix this.
…
Zara knew she was in trouble when her dad showed up at her door with Gemma.
Okay, so she’d spent most of the past forty-eight hours since her fight with Caleb in front of her TV binge-watching The Great British Bake Off while eating chocolate frosting right out of the can. She hadn’t returned calls. She’d ignored social media. She’d deleted her Bramble app because the little dings of her notifications reminding her to go on date number five made her hiccup-cry. Even with all of that, she’d managed to pretend just well enough to fool her pride that she’d been right and everything would work out.
However, the moment she opened her door and found her dad and Gemma, she burst into tears. Both of them freaked out while Anchovy tried to give her a ball. It was the Ice Knights ball Caleb had given him. She just cried harder. After confiscating her frosting-eating spoon, Gemma left with Anchovy, leaving Zara alone with her dad. He looked about as thrilled with that as she was.
Pacing the length of her couch and then back again, he kept his hands gripped behind his back. Every few steps, he’d look over at her and give her what he probably meant as an encouraging smile that actually came across as more of a nervous baring of teeth.
“Dad, it’s okay,” she said, sinking farther down into the couch, wishing it could swallow her up. “You don’t have to pretend.”
He stopped mid-step and pivoted to look straight at her. “Pretend what?”
She didn’t want to say, but the words burned in her throat. It was time to let them out—past time, really.
“That you want to be here,” she said. “When I was growing up, you were always off making plans or helping other people in the neighborhood. If I’m not used to it by now, I never will be.”
All of the color drained out of Jasper’s face. “What are you talking about, Button?”
She tried to answer, but the words just wouldn’t come. All she could do was stare at him and feel all the same hurt she had when she was poring over the bills while he was buying rounds to cheer up the neighborhood after the community center burned down. She’d never doubted his sincerity to help people; she’d just always known that her place in the rankings for people who needed some of Jasper Ambrose’s kindness was near the bottom.
His chin trembled just once before he firmed it. “We both know I wasn’t the greatest dad when you were growing up. I’m still not.” He came over and sat beside her on the couch. “When your mom left, it hit me hard. It killed my hope, and that had been the one thing that had filled me since we brought you home from the hospital. Once we had you, I was sure that everything was going to work out.”
How many times had she heard that as a kid? Don’t worry about the light bill; it will work itself out. Don’t worry about the landlord; the rent will work itself out.
“But it didn’t,” she said. “Not with Mom or your business plans or anything.”
He let out a long sigh and then gave her a sad little shadow of a smile. “You know what I learned from all that failure? That you can’t force it.” He reached for her hand, curling both of his around her one. “You can’t force things to go your way just because you want them so badly that it shakes your whole world, and you can’t force it away when it breaks something inside you that you thought could never be broken. That’s what I learned from your mother.” A bone-deep hurt filled his eyes, and it was raw enough to steal Zara’s breath. “Your mom, well, I always said she was troubled. The truth was that, after you were born, she developed a drinking problem, and I thought if I loved her enough, I could help her beat it. I hadn’t realized yet that you can’t change people. They have to want to change themselves.” He paused, turning away from her for a minute so she couldn’t see his face as he lifted a hand up and wiped something away before turning back to her. “And once she was gone, I saw how it affected you. God, you were the happiest girl when you were little. No fantasy was too big, no dream too unlikely. But after she left, all of that changed.” He squeezed her hand as a tear spilled over onto his cheek. “All those schemes and crazy ideas, they were all an effort to bring that spark back to you. I thought that if you could feel that sense of hope just one more time, that it would stick. That what had been broken would be repaired. In reality, I just ended up doing more damage, didn’t I, Button? I’m so sorry.”
It was a shift in paradigm and perception that she couldn’t wrap her head around, but what she could do was give her dad a hug. It wasn’t much. It probably wasn’t enough, but she did it anyway.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, tightening her grip as he hugged her back. “I never realized.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly do a great job of communicating,” he said as he sat back, already sounding more like himself. “I just tried to do instead of talking.”
Ouch. That hit close to home. “That kinda sounds familiar.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
All of it came in one huge run-on sentence punctuated by sniffles and the occasional blowing of her nose. She’d
just gotten to the part where Helene Carlyle showed up outside her apartment when Gemma came back with Anchovy. Her bestie sat cross-legged on the floor while petting the dog’s belly for the rest of the story, adding in the appropriate gasps and tsk-tsk noises when necessary.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Gemma said, cringing back just a bit. “But, oh, honey, you just might have overreacted a bit. He did the wrong thing, but he really was trying to help.”
Coming from anyone else, that little bit of truth telling would have rankled. However, she’d been friends with Gemma for so long that there really wasn’t anything they couldn’t say to each other—especially when it was an oh-honey moment.
“I know, but I don’t know what to do about it.” Regret burned a hole in her belly as she contemplated her options, which basically came down to null and nada. “He’s never going to talk to me again, and who can blame him? I was a total bitch.”
“Don’t you think you owe him the opportunity to make that decision for himself?” her dad asked. “Dig deep into that Ambrose heritage and go big with hope.”
“I do still have tickets to the ball tonight,” Gemma said, a wide grin erasing the worry from her face. “And you know the Ice Knights are one of the major sponsors, so I bet he’ll be there.”
It was a ridiculous idea, almost as out of the bounds of reality as falling for the man who answered an ad on an online dating app calling for someone to clean out her vagina cobwebs. Oh my God, when this worked out, she was going to have to do whatever it took to make sure that ad was deleted from the app’s servers. When it works out. Oh yeah, she, the woman who never dreamed, was going to make that happen. She just couldn’t do it on her own.
She turned to her soon-to-be knights in shining armor. “Which one of you is going to be my fairy godmother, because I’m going to need help turning this fantasy into a reality.”
“I do believe that’s my calling,” her dad said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Let me work my magic, and then you can go win back your Prince Charming.”
All she needed was a trusty steed. Anchovy let out a happy woof.
It turned out that doing almost everyone in the neighborhood a favor every now and then meant Jasper was able to send a call out for help that was answered almost immediately.
Jasper tapped into his line of contacts, and within a couple of hours, she was sitting on a stool in her kitchen while Andrea from The Hair Bar did alchemy-level magic turning the rat’s nest on Zara’s head into some kind of dreamy updo that involved braids, waves, and enough bobby pins to pick a million locks—if Zara had that skill.
“Close your eyes and stretch your eyebrows up to the ceiling,” Jayse from the fifth floor told her before applying winged eyeliner to her. “There, finished.”
Zara opened her eyes. Her little apartment was filled with people. Mrs. Spatz had come over with three of her granddaughter’s old prom dresses to pick from. Amelia from the Donut Emporium had brought over a dozen of her most popular, sprinkle-covered sugar and carb bombs. Devon had his limo out on the street, waiting to take her to the ball.
Anchovy was in heaven. She was amazed, flabbergasted, and thankful.
“Dad, I can’t believe you made this happen with just a few calls,” she said, giving him a hug. “I never would have dreamed it was possible.”
“Now you know better.” He twirled her around just like he had when she was a kid and they’d dance in the kitchen after the dishes were done. “It doesn’t always work out, but when it does, it’s so very worth it.”
Tears were threatening to ruin Jayse’s hard work when Gemma burst out of Zara’s bedroom.
“I found the perfect pair,” she said, holding up a pair of knock-off heels covered in glass crystals that made them sparkle in the light. “Hurry up and put them on. You’re already late.”
Zara did as she was told, gave everyone thank-you hugs, and hustled out her door. She had no idea what she was going to say or how Caleb would respond, but she had a whole ride across town to figure it out. Fingers crossed, she hurried down the stairs and outside.
Chapter Nineteen
Not even a thirty-minute ride was long enough to figure out what would come next. She had no plan and no ideas, but every ounce of hope was clutched tight to her chest.
Zara got out of the car, too jacked-up to wait for Devon to make his way around to her door, and walked as fast as she could into the hotel. Everyone was in designer ball gowns and tuxedos, drinking champagne and ignoring the waiters with trays of canapés. Even in the heels that were pinching her toes with every step, she couldn’t get a good enough look at the crowd to find Caleb. She had to find higher ground.
She made it up to the mezzanine overlooking the ballroom. It would give her the perfect view. Rushing to the decorative stone railing, she peeked over the edge.
“Oh, my dear, are you hiding out or on an assassin mission?” Helene Carlyle asked as she sat in a chair set in a nearby alcove. She put her phone with its case decorated with famous paintings by Hughston in her purse. “Either way, I support it; these things are always dreadfully boring.”
Zara jumped up in the air and whirled around before catching her breath as she stared at the older woman in shock. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Helene Carlyle was supposed to be on her way to Italy.
“Neither,” Zara said as she turned away to scan the crowd again without any luck. “Just trying to find my prince.”
Helene chuckled. “I like how high you set your goals…almost as much as I like your work.”
That got Zara’s full attention, and she spun around, the glass crystals on her shoes scratching her toes. “I thought you weren’t coming to the ball.”
“I got all the way to the family jet, sat down, buckled the seat belt, and realized I couldn’t go,” Helene said. “If your actual pieces were as good as those sketches I saw, my nemesis Patricia would snap them up at the auction and lord it over me for the next decade. The woman is a horrid little nit. So I told the pilot we needed to delay the flight. It was worth it. No one is going to beat me at the silent auction. I sweet-talked…” She paused and took a sip of her wine. “Okay, fine, I scared the bejesus out of some of those hockey players to keep watch on the bidding sheets for me and to make a bid in my name if I wasn’t the top price.”
Before Zara had written her Bramble bio, she would have zeroed in on what Helene was saying about her work and what it meant for her career and block everything else out as she freaked out. That squealing fit of oh-my-God-yes would come, but not now, not when Helene had said the magic word.
“You said hockey players?” she asked, her heart thundering in her chest. “Was one of them Caleb Stuckey?”
“I like that young man of yours, reminds me of my first husband—all drive and ambition with biceps that made my breath catch.” Helene looked over the railing and pointed toward a table near the band. “I stationed him there. If you pull him away from that bidding station, get a replacement. There is no way I’m going to let Patricia take home a dollhouse full of my favorite writers.”
A giddy jolt of adrenaline shot through her, and she gave Helene a grateful hug before heading back to the stairs leading to the ballroom. Weaving through the crowd like a lifelong Harbor City resident who knew from birth how to get around slow-walking tourists, she got to the dance floor when she felt the first snap of the thin crystal-covered strap across her toes giving way. Another three steps and it tore free, sending her stumbling forward right into the hard chest of the man she loved.
Caleb saved her from nose planting and swept her up into his arms. Looking at him, feeling his arms around her, everything settled into place inside her. This was it. This was right. She hadn’t been hoping for a Prince Charming to come into her life, but by some kind of luck, he’d done it anyway.
“We gotta stop meeting like this,” he said as he set her back down on her feet.
They stood there, so close but not touching, and the rest of the world f
aded away until it was just them standing on the edge of a dance floor.
“My shoe broke,” she said. “Which really is just the topper of a total hell day—really a hell month—that all started because I filled out a form on a dating app after a couple of shots of tequila.”
His smile flattened. Her gut dropped.
“I understand,” he said, turning and walking away.
Oh yes, Zara, please open your mouth and ruin the moment.
“That didn’t come out right,” she said as she did the up-down clomping walk over to him because she only had on one shoe. “It’s hell because I keep fucking it up, not because it happened.”
Caleb stopped and turned, crossing his arms over his chest. Damn. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to wear tuxes. The combination of Caleb plus tuxedo was lethal. Her stomach twisted as she realized she might never see him like this again if she couldn’t find the right words to fix things.
“You were right.” She reached deep for the courage to keep going as she stood in front of him, one foot in a shoe and the other raised up on her toes. “I was scared. I’ve always been scared, so I retreated back into work, creating little worlds where I got to control everything. It was all going wonderfully until I met you, because you made me want more than my little worlds.” She took in a raggedy breath because everything rode on this next thing. “I’m hoping you’ll give me—give us—another chance. We still have one more Bramble date to go, so what do you say?”
The people swarmed around them on their way to the dance floor, oblivious to the drama playing out right in front of their noses. Meanwhile, Zara was seconds away from a heart attack as she waited for Caleb’s answer. Everything hung on this moment, everything.
After an eternity of looking at her, his gaze moving from the hem of her baby-blue gown to her face, he shook his head. “No.”
All the air in her lungs evaporated, leaving her chest empty and aching. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes as she clenched her teeth together to keep from crying. She wouldn’t do that here. She’d wait until she got into the Uber for that, just like someone who hadn’t been decimated by a two-letter word.