The Something about Her
Opposites Attract book four
Rachel Higginson
Contents
Other romances by Rachel Higginson
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Untitled
Never Fall in Love with a Rockstar blurb
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Never Fall in Love with a Rockstar Chapter one
Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2019
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Copy Editing by Amy Donnelly of Alchemy and Words
Cover Design by Zach Higginson
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Other romances by Rachel Higginson
The Five Stages of Falling in Love
Every Wrong Reason
Trailer Park Heart
Bet on Us (Bet on Love Series)
Bet on Me (Bet on Love Series)
The Opposite of You (Opposites Attract Series)
The Difference Between Us (Opposites Attract Series)
The Problem with Him (Opposites Attract Series)
Follow Rachel
Keep up with Rachel on her Newsletter
Connect with Rachel on her Facebook Page
Follow Rachel on Twitter and Instagram
To Sam,
My favorite Conversation Starter,
So glad to call you a friend.
Thanks for writing your number on the
Back of a picture of your kids.
You always know how to make the
Best first impression.
One
When I was a little girl, I collected personalities. For me, becoming someone else was an art form and a secret challenge, like a competition with myself that I always won. The less I was myself, the easier it was to blend into the different social situations I was forced to experience.
And the longer I lived, the more I realized most experiences were of the horrific and traumatic variety. Or at least the experiences that left the biggest mark. The longest scar.
But I relied on those alternate personalities, my chameleon ability to blend in so seamlessly. That collection of personalities had saved me over and over again. It was the one constant thing I could rely on when I was a kid. And it had followed me into adulthood as I navigated the rough waters of living and working and struggling to breathe through everything.
For my dad, I dressed up in princess gowns and greeted grown-ups with handshakes and tiny curtsies. I tolerated the late-night business meetings he dragged me to by pretending I loved to sit and stare at walls for hours. I smiled at his balding, middle-aged friends that had more money than was good for them and pretended their uninvited wandering hands on my butt didn’t bother me. I played the perfect daughter. While he played the negligent self-absorbed father.
For my mom, I wore party dresses and high heels and laughed at all the bawdy jokes I didn’t understand. I played off her bad decisions and supported her unhealthy addiction to my dad. I skipped homework so we could hang out with her wild friends. I didn’t mention the school plays she forgot or the ballet recitals I had to skip because she wanted to drive to the beach for the weekend. I was the best friend in her life, not her child. And she loved me more than anything else on the planet. The feeling was mutual, even if the hard truth of our relationship was only remembered by me.
At school, I got straight As and answered every question when called on. I was on student council and the senior class vice president. I tutored. I was the basketball team captain. Like every teenager, I stole my mom’s cheap liquor and my dad’s cash paid for all our shenanigans. I said yes to everything. Boys and parties and drugs. A life of endless fun and zero responsibilities. Even when I wanted to say no.
And when I did say no, nobody listened. I had said yes too many times to be taken seriously. I played my party girl role too well.
I played all my parts too well.
Dillon Baptiste, the girl everyone liked because she was the girl no one knew.
Not really.
By the time I graduated high school, I’d lived a hundred different personalities for a thousand different people. And I hated who I pretended to be.
Because they weren’t me.
The worst part was, I didn’t even know who I was.
Still don’t.
Depression hit hard those first few years after school. I lacked direction because I didn’t have a purpose. And I didn’t have a purpose because I didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t know what I wanted because I had no idea who I was or how to even figure that out.
And then my dad got sick.
There wasn’t a therapist in the world who could have untangled the mess my mind became. My thoughts were overrun, watching a man I equal parts loved and hated, succumb to a disease he couldn’t pay to go away.
Those were dark, dark years.
Ezra had shown up because he cared about his father. Like a white knight in gleaming armor, he rode into our broken mess ready to fix everything—including me.
Maybe especially me.
Our dad was too sick for Ezra to help. But I wasn’t totally irredeemable. I, at least, had my health.
And so he’d started the slow, arduous process of pulling me out of the black abyss I’d let myself fall into. I didn’t latch onto him like I had every other person in my life. I studied him. I learned from him. And eventually, I tried to become him.
Not literally, of course.
I liked his mannerisms. He was detached. So effortlessly aloof. He didn’t come from money, but he walked into my world like he was meant to be there. He looked down on everyone except me. He was intolerant of incompetence and bullshit and knew how to get what he wanted.
More importantly, he knew what he wanted.
I was enamored with this new older brother of mine that selflessly took care of other people without letting them touch him in return.
I wanted his… armor.
Ezra already had a life before he walked into mine. He loved food. It started with his friend Killian and their foster mom Jo—hi
s small, trustworthy tribe, the only people he let in. And I experienced them at their most open and candid when they were creating and making good food.
Later, Elena showed up. I had hated her from the beginning, but too afraid to push my new brother away, I had kept my mouth shut. When he married her, he’d disappeared for a while. They had a restaurant to open. They had a new life to start. There wasn’t room for a spoiled brat of a half-sister that was lost in grief and confusion and couldn’t name one thing she actually wanted for herself.
I had parties to fall back on and a long list of contacts willing to help me forget what it was like to have someone care about me, someone who liked me because I was me.
I picked up my cache of personalities and dove back into a dark, depressing world that would show me the real meaning of rock bottom. Glitz and glam and money and parties and all the other beautiful nothings that filled up those years of my life came with a price—a price I had to pay with my soul.
I thought I was broken before… I had no clue. I thought I was wrecked and ruined and lost… I learned quickly that those words had sharp, lethal teeth and when aptly applied, sunk into flesh until they found bone. And then they did not let go. They left me bloody and broken and… alone.
Eventually Ezra came back, only this time he brought cooking with him. Not just food and good meals, but the art of it. The business of it.
And he saved me a second time.
I’d stolen more of him then. Out of necessity this time. Out of the need to cushion my survival and paint a picture of my reality that was something other than the truth.
I’d been desperate for purpose by this point. Greedy for anything that wouldn’t make me feel so… empty. So very wrong.
Violated.
When Ezra introduced me to cooking—real, heartfelt, blood and guts cooking—I absorbed everything he offered. It wasn’t mine to begin with, but somehow, surrounded by fire and heat and spice, I found myself.
In the middle of a kitchen, covered in sweat and grease, I discovered who I was.
It was the greatest gift Ezra could have ever given to me. It was a gift I couldn’t even explain to him without confessing the mismatched, messed up rest of me, and even then he would only ever see the surface. Of me. He would only ever see my mistakes. He would stop seeing the pretty sister he loved so dearly and find the ugly, distorted train wreck instead.
I kept those puzzle pieces hidden, even while I let cooking refine my soul—even while the heat healed me and the fire fed life back into my battered body. And I adopted one last personality to soften all the other hard edges. I became the girl that pretended everything was always fine and fun and wonderful. I created a second skin that seemed normal. And I decided to wear it for the rest of my life.
Ezra owned restaurants, so I got a culinary degree to work for him. It seemed consistent with this new personality. I knew it made logical sense to him. I knew I would never be able to explain all the intricate reasons for falling in love with food, but I also knew I wouldn’t have to. I came from a food family. Food was my present. Food would always be my future.
And most of the time, I loved working for my brother.
But he’d gone too far this time.
Way too fucking far.
“This is too much,” I whispered, struggling to breathe through the panic. My made-up personality was already slipping, but I was too flabbergasted to care.
My brother smiled at me from across the host stand of his most notorious restaurant, Bianca. “Happy birthday, Dillon.”
“You’re not serious.” I whispered the words, hoping he would mistake them for surprise instead of the hissing viper I felt rising inside me. My birthday was two weeks ago. We’d already celebrated number twenty-seven. He’d given me a Joule sous vide for my apartment. This had to be a joke.
His grin widened—a rare and unusual sight to see him so happy. “I am. Serious.”
“Ezra, I can’t possibly—”
“I know what you’re thinking,” he rushed to say. “But you’re a perfect fit for this kitchen. And the staff here has been running the place on their own for over a year. They’re here to help you make the transition.”
“I’m barely out of school. I haven’t even been at Lilou for two years yet.” The growly edge of my voice didn’t dissuade him at all. If anything, his eyes got that glint in them that told me he wasn’t going to back down. Not now. Not ever. I swallowed the lump in my throat put there by dread, frustration, and large amounts of fear. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about running this restaurant. I thought you wanted to save her? Not run her into the ground!”
“You’re not going to run her into the ground,” he countered patiently.
“Fine. I’ll do something worse. Set her on fire. Blow her up. Send her to the freaking moon.” Hysteria clawed up my throat and jumped out of my mouth. “Ezra, I’m not qualified for this restaurant! Are you crazy?”
His smile finally fell, revealing his signature frown. “Dillon, are you? This is an opportunity of a lifetime.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, an opportunity to watch my career go up in flames. And I’ll never forgive you if you fire me. Which is bound to happen, since I’m not qualified for this job. And then we’ll be estranged. Do you want to be estranged?”
“You’ll do fine—”
“I’m not a good enough chef for Bianca, Ezra. I don’t want her. At least not yet.”
His eyebrows scrunched together in defeat. “I can’t wait any longer. Bianca needs a leader. And I want you. If I give her to someone else, they won’t only stand-in. I’ll find the best chef I can get my hands on. If you don’t take her now, she might never be yours.”
“Ezra, goddamnit. Let me get my feet beneath me before you start handing out jobs like this.”
He shook his head. “I wish I could.”
The kitchen door swung open and our friends burst out into the dining room. “Congratulations!” they shouted in unison.
I resisted the urge to cry.
Molly and Vera walked out, both hands laden with balloons. Kaya held a ridiculously expensive bottle of champagne. Wyatt walked beside her holding a stark white chef’s hat in his hand, marked with Bianca’s lily emblem. Killian followed behind all of them, pushing a cart with a monstrosity of a cake on it.
I blinked at the frosted eyesore. Congratulations Chef Dillon.
“Is that from Costco?”
The lot of them burst into laughter. Explanations of time constraints and nobody knew who exactly was in charge of it and what kind of cake did I like anyway were shouted back and forth.
It was hard not to smile when my friends filled this space and laughter rang through the air. It was hard not to take in the elegant décor and open design and the Bianca’s eyes, the mural that Molly had painted so perfectly on the long wall, and not want to make this place mine. It was even harder to remember Bianca’s sullied reputation and the difficulties she’d been through over the last several years and not want to bring her back to life.
I wanted this place.
I wanted her more than I wanted my next breath.
But what Ezra failed to see was that I just wasn’t good enough for her.
I was a newbie. Green at best. Hopelessly ignorant in my worst moments. I was still navigating waters of not even knowing what I didn’t know.
Sure, I’d worked in kitchens since I started culinary school. I worked as the maître d’ before that. My brother was a restaurant business genius. And my best friends were all chefs.
Just like most things in my picture-perfect life, I had the pedigree for this job. I just didn’t have the experience. Or the ability. Or the fucking know-how. And how dare Ezra dangle this in front of me when he knew I’d have to turn it down.
“She doesn’t want it.” Ezra’s sullen voice cut through the joy in the room and turned the atmosphere to ice.
God, he could be a true bastard when he wanted to be.
Killian was
the first to speak. His disbelieving “What?” echoed through the room.
“She doesn’t want Bianca. There’s no reason to celebrate.”
Every gaze in the room swiveled to me. They looked at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was for turning down this once in a lifetime opportunity, as Ezra had so articulately put it.
But I would have been crazier to take it.
Their reaction churned in my stomach and my chest burned with the desperation to please these people I loved so much. They knew me as fine. Everything is fine. Everything is always fine.
Their expressions reflected utter disbelief. It would make sense for me to take this job, to take my place among them.
Each of them owning or running their own kitchen. Each of them career-oriented and relentlessly driven. These were the best of the fine dining best in Durham. These were the influencers that shaped culinary culture in our part of the world.
And why wouldn’t I want to join them in their quest to give the masses the best dining experience on the planet? Why wasn’t I part of the Durham, North Carolina Food Revolution?
Why didn’t I want to carve my name in the chopping block of who’s who in the holy, almighty food-dom?
The Something about Her: Opposites Attract book four Page 1