Wright Rival

by K. A. Linde

  “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Please,” Hollin said, reaching for me.

  “Don’t touch me!” I yelled at him. “Don’t you dare touch me. I don’t know why you’re down here or what you’re doing with her. But it all feels like a cosmic joke at my expense.”

  Hollin sighed heavily. “It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated,” I repeated. The word tasted like cyanide—acrid and bitter. Suddenly, that empty feeling evaporated, and all that was left was a burning, seething rage. “Complicated is bullshit. You’re a hypocrite. You were jealous and angry that I was even talking to Bradley out in the open, where anyone could see, obviously doing nothing nefarious. And now, you’re here in your office with her instead of at the wedding. You didn’t tell me what you were doing or who you were doing it with. So, forgive me if I don’t give a single fuck about your complicated situation. The fact of the matter is, you hid this from me.”

  Tori reeled back at my anger, but I was still blocking the exit. There was nowhere for her to go.

  “I did, and it was stupid. Tori has been texting and emailing me for months, and I wanted to make her fucking stop,” Hollin said, gaining his own anger back.

  But at those words, I stumbled back a step. “What? Months?”

  “She emailed when she moved back into town around Christmas and more aggressively since the concert,” Hollin said. “I didn’t know why, but I guess I do now. She’s trying to come between us.”

  “You know why I did that,” Tori gasped. “I did it because we were supposed to be together.”

  Hollin rounded on her. “Shut your mouth.”

  “You could have told me,” I yelled back at him. “You could have told me that your ex was reaching out to you, but you didn’t. Think about why that is.”

  “It’s because she didn’t matter!”

  “If she didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be down here, alone with her.”

  “She has a point, Hollin,” Tori muttered.

  Hollin didn’t even acknowledge her this time. He only had eyes for me.

  “She messaged me at the wedding, asking me to meet her. I only came here to tell her to leave me alone. That is the only reason I came here.”

  My horror dawned brighter and more lethal. “Let me get this straight. She messaged you at my sister’s wedding. You opened the message while you were standing next to me. And instead of telling me about it, you went to meet her?”

  Hollin opened his mouth as I laid out the facts. Then shut it quickly.

  “I don’t care if she manipulated the shit out of you,” I told him. “I trusted you, and you broke that trust.”

  My voice wavered again, and I realized I was shaking. My entire body trembled from head to toe. Hollin looked like he wanted to take me in his arms, but there was no turning back from this shit.

  “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I should have told you. I thought I could handle it myself. That if I ignored her, she’d go away. And if I could end it here and now, we wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore.”

  “That’s the thing, Hollin—we weren’t worrying about anything. You had this one all to yourself.” I shook my head. “Fuck, I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “Piper, please,” he said, stepping toward me again.

  “Just…leave me alone.”

  Then, I turned and fled the office. I picked up my heels on the way out and just kept running. I couldn’t go back to the party. I couldn’t fake it enough for Peyton, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin her wedding day. And I didn’t want to face my dad or Chase or anyone about what had happened with the winery. If Hollin came looking for me, I didn’t want him to find me. I didn’t want anyone to find me.

  There was only one place that could envelop me entirely—the vineyard. This wasn’t my winery, but my winery wasn’t mine anymore either. It never would be again. Just like Hollin. Everything I’d worked for, everything I’d opened myself up for, was gone.

  So, I darted into the maze of grapevines. I lost myself in the earth. The sun setting big and orange on the horizon. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then dropped to my knees in the dirt, panting and breathless. I cracked wide open. My hands clawed into the ground, tears watering the holes I dug, and all the primal fire released until I had nothing left.

  36

  Hollin

  “Fuck,” I raged, throwing all the paperwork off of my desk.

  Tori edged past me now that Piper had left, but I’d known her long enough to see that she was pleased. Her lips tilted slightly upward. She’d gotten everything she’d wanted. I’d thought that she’d go away if I ignored her. When that didn’t work, I thought I could finally tell her to stop contacting me, stop interfering, stop trying to weasel her way in, like she always had before. And now, I’d spectacularly fucked everything up.

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” I roared at her.

  Tori blinked, tears coming to her eyes, like flipping a light switch. “Don’t yell at me, Hollin.”

  “All I wanted was to be free of you.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to be free of you,” she shouted back. “Can’t you see that?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “If you wanted to be free, then you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I came to tell you to leave me alone. I told you multiple times to stop contacting me.”

  “But it doesn’t work! It doesn’t work for us,” she said, reaching for my hands.

  I yanked away from her. “It’s over, Tori. It’s over. I love someone else.”

  “You think you love her?” Tori sneered. Her expression was of pure horror. “You don’t love her!”

  “Stop.”

  “You can’t love her. That’s not possible, Hollin. You still love me. You’ll always love me.”

  I wrenched away from her and stormed toward the door. “I don’t love you, Tori. And you don’t love me. You just need me to crawl after you. That’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

  “Hollin,” she gasped, following me out the door.

  But I was done with this conversation. It had been stupid to think that I could make Tori leave me alone. That I could make her stop. That she wouldn’t twist everything up until my insides were a pretzel that I didn’t know how to disentangle. That was all she’d ever known how to do—hurt me.

  “Hollin, stop,” she yelled. “Why are you doing this to us?”

  I ground my teeth at the question and whirled on her. “Just stop. I spent a lot of time fucking other women to forget all the immeasurable ways you hurt me, Tori. I decided I’d never date again. That I would never put myself through what you did to me again. And then I finally—finally—found someone worth it all, and you started your same narcissistic, gaslighting behavior. Like the idiot you’d created, I fell for it…again. Fuck.” I ran a hand back through my hair.

  I wanted to hurt her the way she’d always hurt me. But all it would do was make her twist me up even more. She wasn’t worth it.

  “I’ll be damned if I let you ruin this thing with me and Piper. She’s the best goddamn thing that has ever happened to me. And you…you’re nothing.”

  I left her standing in the hallway of the cellar and ran out after my girlfriend.

  “Piper!” I called into the night.

  The barn was brightly lit as the sun reached toward the horizon. She could have gone back to the party, but I doubted it. She was as stubborn as ever. She wouldn’t want anyone to see her upset. Let alone to hurt her sister on her wedding day. But where the fuck would she have gone?

  “Piper!”

  I glanced up the hill and found her blue Jeep standing out bright in the parking lot. So, she hadn’t left, which meant one thing. My eyes landed on the fields. She had to have gone into the vineyard. It was her happy place in the same way it was mine. But if she was already inside, how the fuck was I going to find her?

  I didn’t give it another thought. I pushed through the vines and into
my fields. My heart raced as I called her name and raced down the rows. The fields were several acres big. She could be anywhere. Still, I jogged on the soft dirt in my stupid suit, ruining the fancy shoes Julian had convinced me to get for the occasion.

  It wasn’t until the sun dipped completely behind the horizon and only the last dying rays still shone over the fields that I gave up. She was gone. She was just fucking gone. She was out there somewhere, thinking that I wanted Tori more than her. I’d been stupid enough to come when Tori called, and I didn’t even have a good enough reason for it all. It was…years of being fucked up that had driven me back into her stupidity. And I wanted out of it. I wanted it to be done and over.

  I wished that I could explain it all to Piper. But what explanation would be good enough? She deserved better. That was for damn sure.

  With a frustrated sigh, I left the vines, making it out into the open before I lost all the light. If Piper was out there still, I hoped she could find her way through the dark. I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t like I could get a search party out for her. How would I even explain?

  “Fuck,” I said again as I trudged up to the barn once more.

  I came in the back way and looked around for Campbell and Julian. I didn’t know if it was luck, but they were standing together, drinking whiskey and laughing. If my situation wasn’t entirely shit, I’d be happy to see them getting along like this. My two closest friends. But all I felt right now was despair.

  They looked up as I approached them. Julian took in the wreck of my suit. Campbell’s eyes were on my face.

  “What did you do to your suit?” Julian asked. Our little fashion guru.

  “What happened?” he asked, always the intuitive one.

  “Same problem,” I grumbled.

  Campbell passed me his drink. “You look like you need this more than I do.”

  I downed the entire contents in one long swallow. “Yeah.”

  “Seriously,” Julian said. “Those are Dior.”

  I snorted. “Remind me not to let you convince me to buy designer shoes again.”

  “Remind me that you should only ever be in cowboy boots.”

  “Yeah.” I snatched his drink out of his hand, too, and downed the contents. “So, I might have fucked up.”

  “We can see that,” Campbell said.

  “What did you do?” Julian asked.

  With a final sigh, I explained the situation that had gone down. Both guys frowned as they listened. Julian crossed his arms over his chest. Campbell looked incredulous, at best.

  The worst of it was that…neither of them even knew about Tori. Everyone I’d known during her years of misery had basically been purged from my life. I wasn’t still friends with anyone from that time, except maybe Zach, but we’d only become close afterward. I hadn’t exactly had friends when we were dating. She was the kind of possessive and jealous girl who didn’t like me to even talk to other people. My brother had been in LA. Nora had been in high school. Julian hadn’t moved here yet. The two closest people in my life, and neither of them had any idea.

  “Fuck,” Campbell said when I finished. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged. “What would I have said?”

  “That your girlfriend was abusing you,” Julian said flatly.

  My mind immediately rejected that thought. It wasn’t a thing done to guys. Certainly not anyone else I knew. It was something you saw in TV and movies when the guy was beating his girlfriend. It wasn’t like what I had gone through. Was it?

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “The fact that you can’t see it says you’re still fucked up,” Julian said, his voice laced with sympathy. “This happened to a friend of mine back in Vancouver. She fucking disappeared because her boyfriend went crazy anytime she talked to anyone else. He could do whatever he wanted without consequence, but he had her so warped that she didn’t even see it. She cut us all out because she said she loved him. It was only years later when she got her and her daughter out and was in loads of therapy that she came back to us. It’s emotional and psychological abuse, Hollin.”

  I shuddered. It made me sound so…weak. That I’d let her rule my life for so long because of everything we’d gone through. That I still wasn’t over it. That she could still wind me up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Campbell put a hand on my shoulder. “Which means, it isn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But hurting Piper was.”

  “To an extent. Abuse fucks you up though, man,” Julian said. “I can’t defend what you did to Piper. I’m not saying what you did was smart. It wasn’t. It was fucking stupid, and Piper has every right to be mad at you. But you’re not coming at it from a good place to start.”

  “And you definitely need therapy,” Campbell said. “It helps.”

  “You’re in therapy?” I asked with raised eyebrows.

  “If I wasn’t, do you think I’d have my anger in check the way it’s been on tour?” Campbell shot me a look. “I had a problem, and I got help. The only real triggers now are people hurting my family.”

  “August,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Jennifer has been in therapy for years, too,” Julian said. “I went once we started dating. She thought it would help me deal with my dad. Literally every person on the planet should be in therapy. We’re all fucking traumatized by our childhood.”

  I snorted. “True.” It helped, hearing that the other guys were in therapy. That this kind of thing happened to other people. I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just me. “I’ll…I’ll think about it.”

  “Good,” Campbell said with a smile.

  Julian clapped me on the back. “That’s what we like to hear.”

  “But what do I do about Piper?”

  Campbell and Julian exchanged a bleak look.

  “Give her time,” Julian said. “She’s the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. Do you think she’s going to forget that you abandoned her at her sister’s wedding to talk to your ex without telling her?”

  I grimaced. “No, but I’m not going to stop fighting for her.”

  “That’s my brother,” Campbell said, punching me on the arm. “May I recommend a bottle of Maker’s for your broken heart?”

  The three of us commandeered a bottle or two, and I drowned in my own misery. They were there to try to pick me up. Jordan appeared at some point and tried to convince us to stop. The guys filled him in on the situation, and then Jordan took a seat across from me and poured us both another glass. I was that thoroughly screwed that even Jordan didn’t see another solution. I was well and truly fucked.

  37

  Piper

  I didn’t go into work on Monday.

  My dad called to find out where I was and when I was coming in. I didn’t answer. Blaire finally picked up after he called seven times in a half hour and explained that I wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t a lie. I felt terrible. I was wrapped up on the couch, watching mindless television.

  The problem with having roommates who worked from home meant that they spent most of the day babying me. When, in reality, I wanted to be left alone. My heart was shattered in a million pieces. The two things I cared about most in my life were gone.

  There was no way that I was going in to work at that place that held all of my memories and all of my joy. Knowing now what had happened and how it had been stolen from us by our accountant’s stupidity and then the sale of the property. I didn’t even know all the specifics about how it had happened, but I found I couldn’t care.

  And Hollin…he was just as bad. He’d sent a number of texts that I deleted without reading. He’d called until Blaire, once again to the rescue, answered and told him to leave me alone.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she said, brushing my hair back from my face. “You’ll get through this.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re too stubborn to do anything else.”

  Over the next couple days,
Blaire and Jennifer made me tea and fed me through my misery. After I told them what had gone down, they didn’t ask too many questions. Jennifer had already known. Hollin must have told Julian. Great. Everyone would know soon enough. I was glad at least that Jennifer did the majority of filling in for Blaire, who was personally offended on my behalf.

  “If he shows up, I’m going to kick his ass,” she said.

  “That would be a sight.”

  She grinned and then dropped it. She picked at her fresh manicure with a sigh. “We have a game tonight. I assume…you’re not coming?”

  “No.”

  “It’ll be our first game without August. We got a new player to replace him, Eve Houston.”

  I flopped backward. “I know her.”

  “Really?”

  “I met her with Hollin,” I said, my voice raw as I said his name.

  “Yeah? Well, I hope she’s good.”

  “Have fun.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I gestured to the couch, where I’d taken up residence.

  She sighed and nodded. “All right. Maybe you should talk to someone.”

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “Abuelita?” she suggested.

  I met her gaze and saw the fear in them for the first time. She was worried about me. Worried that I wouldn’t get off of the couch again, except to use the bathroom and sleep. Worried that I was broken. And I felt broken. I didn’t want to do anything, but I didn’t want to hurt the one person I had left.

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll go see Abuelita.”

  Blaire’s face lit up. “Excellent. Do you want me to drive you?”

  “No, I can do it. Have fun at the game.”

  Blaire nodded uneasily. “Will do.”

  I got up when she left to change and went straight for the shower. When I came out, freshly washed, I pulled my hair into a messy bun on the top of my head. I changed into jean shorts and a tank top, grabbed my keys, and headed over to Abuelita’s.

  She couldn’t possibly say anything that would make me feel better about the catastrophe that was my life. But maybe she’d make me her secret family recipe pozole, and that would help.