by Skye Jordan
He’d promised her that if she’d given them a chance, he’d let her make her decision. That he would abide by that decision and let her move on. He’d done it because he’d believed that they belonged together. That their rough beginnings gave them a deeper understanding of each other. But it looked like he’d been wrong. Two fucked-up wrongs didn’t make a right.
She’d made her choice.
She was gone.
He had to let her go.
But just how the fuck was he going to live without her now?
He didn’t know how long he sat there staring at the hole in the wall. Only knew when the house’s darkness and silence overwhelmed him. Until he couldn’t stay in the house alone another minute.
He dragged himself into the bedroom, more zombie than human, dropped to a seat on the bed where he and Giselle had spent four beautiful nights together, and picked up the landline on the nightstand. He dialed, leaned on his knees, and rubbed his face as he listened to the phone ring at the other end of the line.
He felt gutted. Absolutely empty. Couldn’t envision how this feeling would ever ease. Couldn’t imagine going through every day feeling like this.
He pushed those dark thoughts aside as his boss answered. “Dude,” Jax said, “you are on Ryker’s shit list.”
“Nothing new.” Troy’s voice came out gravelly, and he cleared his throat. “For Rachel’s benefit, it would be good to warn him to stay away from me right now.”
“Oooookay. Will do. No guarantee he’ll listen.”
“Never does. Look, I really need a job. Like really bad. And I don’t want to be in Vegas. Know what I mean?”
A slight hesitation, then, “Ah, shit, man. I’m sorry.” True compassion drenched his friend’s voice and brought a fresh wave of tears to Troy’s eyes. “Fuck, that bites.” A heavy sigh filled the line, then a moment of silence as Troy imagined Jax thinking. “I just wrapped my work in San Diego. Other than Vegas, I’ve only got Wes breaking in the new guy on a skyscraper run downtown.”
“Fine, great.” He already planned on sinking into a bottle of Jamison to get through the night. “I’m pulling seniority. Stunt’s mine. Tell me where to be in the morning.”
“Actually, it’s a night shoot. Gets started in about an hour.”
“Even better.” Thank God. “I’m there.”
As Troy jotted down the address, he already knew this stunt would rock on screen, because right now he didn’t give a flying fuck if he lived or died.
He was all in.
“Two hours?” Giselle tried not to whine, she really did. But when she was on the verge of dropping to her butt in the middle of the concourse, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking herself like an asylum escapee, it was difficult. “Are you sure there’s not another flight I can…?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The airline ticket agent said. “There’s nothing sooner. We can only fix a broken plane so fast.”
Giselle massaged her throbbing temple and accepted her lousy luck as she turned away from the gate attendant doling out details on the flight delay due to the plane’s mechanical issues.
She’d managed to get through security and buy a ball cap without anyone recognizing her and even found a mostly empty seating area at another gate to sit down and listen to all the voice mails on her phone, holding herself together with slow, even breaths. But now, she needed a little liquid help.
She headed into the United member’s lounge and ordered a glass of wine from the bar, then sank into a corner seat at the windows, pulled the brim of her ball cap low, and stared out at the night on the tarmac. Her mind veered toward the messages on her voice mail and Chad’s attitude. She was so over it. Over him. His messages had transitioned from irate to apologetic to annoyed to irate again.
As soon as she got to Vegas, they’d be having a chat about that attitude. They’d also be having a very serious sit-down over the four other offers Giselle’s agent, Gloria, had left messages about on her voice mail. Deals Chad hadn’t passed on, including L’Oréal upping their already generous offer. If his attitude hadn’t improved by the time she reached Vegas, she was cutting him loose.
Brook, Giselle’s one true friend and a saint for putting up with all the woman had put up with over the last seven years, had left messages telling Giselle she missed her, hoped she was feeling better, and looked forward to having her back.
But that was it. Just her manager, her agent, and her assistant. Nothing from her band members or her backup singers. She had no friends—other than Brook—no family, no one close to her who cared.
She drank deep, wishing the wine would wash all her pain away—in her heart, in her head, in her throat. Yelling at Troy hadn’t been smart.
“Bastard,” she muttered around a fresh wave of tears. Why did he always have to be right? Why did he have to know her so well? Understand her so completely? While standing so adamantly in the way of what she was meant to do? Who she was meant to be?
She shook her head and forced him from her mind. With two hours to wait, she couldn’t hold off talking to Chad until she got to Vegas like she’d planned.
Her fingers shook as she scrolled through her contacts and tapped his number. She took another long drink as she listened to his phone ring.
“Giselle?” Chad answered, guarded hope and shock in his voice. “Is that you?”
She swallowed. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Oh, thank God. I was just about to send LAPD to track down Jax Chamberlin to locate Troy. Girl, don’t do that to me again. You damn near gave me a heart attack. I thought something horrible had happened.” As if he just realized he hadn’t asked, he said, “You’re okay, right?”
She couldn’t even go there. “I’m sorry about the communication. Something went wrong with my phone, and I didn’t realize it until today. Can you catch me up on what’s going on?”
“Oh, Giselle, it’s amazing. I wish you’d been here to experience it, what a rush.” He rambled on and on about Pepsi influencing Bud, Bud influencing the smaller sponsors, and all the interest influencing the promoters to throw deal offers together. “…until it was like carte blanche. What does Giselle want? Where would Giselle like to see her career go? What can we do for Giselle?” His laugh was rich and satisfied. “Anyway, when all the dust settled… Are you sitting down?”
Her stomach clenched—but not in a good way. “Yes.”
“Bud is partnering with AEG Live to offer you a headlining tour throughout North America with a hundred and four stops all across America, including all the biggest venues. One hundred and four, Giselle.”
Her mouth dropped open. She thought she’d been prepared for big, judging by his excitement in the messages, but this was so big. This was…unfathomable.
“Live Nation and Pepsi,” Chad went on, “are partnering to offer you an overseas tour immediately after in eight countries, including stops at four military installations, for a total of sixty-three concerts.
“Both promotional companies have thrown out guest stars for various stops on the tours, names like Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Gretchen Wilson, Luke Bryan, Sugarland. I can’t even name them all. It still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it…”
He went on with details, but she was still grappling with the enormity of this breakthrough. This was that moment—the moment she’d always dreamed of. This was her break. This was her shattering the glass ceiling. This was her becoming a household name. This was her hitting the big time. This was…this was…
This was her biggest, deepest fantasy come true.
And she was sitting alone. In an airport bar. With a broken heart. And one friend. Miserable.
“How the hell did this happen?” She hadn’t even realized she’d thought the words, let alone said them, until they were out of her mouth.
“Hard work,” Chad answered, completely misunderstanding the meaning of her question. “Hard work, perseverance, talent, training, promotion, taking opportunities, and making opportunit
ies. That’s how this happened, Giselle. This throws you into a whole different sphere, honey. A whole different category of entertainment. You are a who’s-who now. You’re going to have more money than you ever dreamed of. There’s no limit to where you can go, what you can do.”
Chad kept talking—about ludicrous amounts of money, the things she could buy, the things she could have, the services she could employ, while the only thing rolling through Giselle’s mind were Troy’s words.
“You’ve got a ton of money, which you don’t even use. You’ve got the power of a celebrity, which you neither use nor want. You’ve got the hip and fast lifestyle of a musician on the road, which has done nothing but left you lonely and haggard.”
“Chad,” she cut into his monologue.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, I was getting a little long-winded.”
“What kind of time frame are we looking at?” She already knew it was significant. That much travel and that number of concerts could only be done—
“I’ve got it mapped out on a two-year plan,” he said. “It’s a little tight in places, but doable. When are you going to get back? We can take a few days to go over the plan.”
The throb in her head intensified and threatened to blow her skull apart. Her belly burned with anxiety, the kind that made her want to crawl out of her skin. Instead of laughing and jumping and clapping and ordering another drink—hell, ordering a round of drinks for the whole damn lounge—she inexplicably wanted to cry.
And she panicked over the bizarre reaction. “Um…you know… My head is still pretty bad. Did you get all my concerts at the Mirage covered to the end of my contract? Because…because…I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish them out.”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Had those words just come out of her mouth?
Her world was spinning on its axis.
Panic buzzed along every nerve, sizzling along her ribs, her spine, her neck…
“Oh, honey,” Chad said. “I’m sorry. Here I am going on and on… I thought… Yes, absolutely. I’ve gotten all but the last three covered. I’ll tell them you’re out. It won’t be a problem. Should I find a specialist for you there in LA? A neurologist?”
Maybe a psychiatrist.
Or a mental facility.
“Not…quite yet. Give me another few days. If it’s not better then, I’ll…”—check myself into an asylum—“go see someone. The ER doctor said concussions can take time.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts, her emotions. “On the…um…offers, can I get back to you? I need to sort some things out in my head.”
A long, tense silence stretched taut over the line. “Get back to me? What in the hell is wrong?” He sounded genuinely worried. “Giselle, do you want me to fly out there? I can catch a plane and be there in a few hours.”
She laughed and opened her eyes to the blurry image of the ticket to Vegas in her hand. “Thanks, but there’s no need. I’ve got this. I just need a little bit of quiet to square up my brain.”
She disconnected and sat there several long moments, staring at nothing. Then she pulled her legs beneath her, wrapped her arms around herself, and curled into a small package the way she had when she’d wanted to disappear as a kid.
There, she rested her head against her hand and cried silently. She didn’t care who was watching. Didn’t care if anyone recognized her. Didn’t care how messed up she looked. Didn’t even care how broken she really was. She only cared that at that moment, this was what she needed.
After half an hour of cleansing her soul with tears, Giselle dried her eyes on a bar napkin, picked up her phone, took a deep breath, and dialed Chad again.
Troy tightened the straps on his harness. The wind whipped at his hair, and at this height, after dark, with the fog rolling in off the ocean, there was nothing warm about this fucking city. Which was fine. It matched both his mood and the temperature of his heart.
He tightened his gloves. Opened and closed his hands. Took the clear glasses Ben, a crew member, handed him and slid them on. “Did you steal these from some kid’s chemistry locker?”
“Right along with his collection of Penthouse rags, meth, and bubblegum,” Tommy said.
Troy would have laughed if he’d been capable. He would have laughed and kept the banter going to reduce the anxiety of waiting to climb along the side of a building a thousand feet above the city, but his heart wasn’t in it. His heart wasn’t in anything but forgetting.
He looked down at himself, checking everything on his body—black tee and pants, both clinging like skin, black shoes. The makeup artist had gelled his hair back with what felt like cement and secured it at his nape with an elastic tie.
For a split second, Troy’s mind slipped from his grip, and he pictured Giselle. Pain—knifing, how-will-I-ever-get-through-this agony—ripped him open. He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled hard.
Go numb. He had to just let it eat at him until he went numb.
But that would take so long. So fucking long.
He opened his eyes to the night, the fog, and glanced over his shoulder at the crew. Wes was explaining different aspects of the stunt to the new guy they’d brought on board, Cameron, a successful actor following in Jax’s shoes and jumping the fame-and-fortune ship, seeking a better overall quality of life in stunts.
And Troy thought of Giselle again, hating himself for not being able to convince her to do the same.
“Could really use some tunes right now,” Troy yelled to the room at large. “Anyone got something to get my buzz going?”
Tommy dragged his phone from his back pocket and plugged it into some speakers nearby. While the camera and sound crew messed with technicalities and a chopper hovered outside, Troy walked to the open space in the side of the building where they’d removed a giant pane of glass from one of the skyscraper’s top floors. He gripped a steel beam and gazed out over the city, his focus drawn to the airport and the constant, steady landing and takeoff of aircraft.
It made him realize just how quickly, how easily, Giselle had swept into his life, turned it upside down, and swept out again.
“Hey.” Wes’s voice drew Troy’s attention and spiked alarm.
Without thought, he turned, gripped Wes’s arm hard, and shoved him back and away from the opening. When they were both a safe distance, he said, “Dude, what the fuck? You don’t have a harness on.”
Wes’s brow pulled in confusion. His gaze darted toward the window, then back. And when Troy’s gaze followed, he realized Wes hadn’t been as close to the opening as Troy had first thought.
“Do you know of some secret plot among the crew to pick me up and carry me close enough to the ledge to shove me to my death?” Wes asked easily. “’Cause I wasn’t close enough to fall, even if I tripped over my own stupid feet, and yours, and Cam’s, and Susie’s, and John’s, and—”
“Shut up.” He cut Wes off before he named every member of the crew, but he breathed easier. “You don’t know what you don’t know. You know?”
“I think you missed your calling. You should have been a philosopher.”
He glanced out over the open space again. “Maybe then I’d be able to figure out why life turns upside down on a dime sometimes.”
Wes leaned against a bare steel beam of the unfinished commercial space and crossed his arms. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, and a headset hung around his neck. “Rubi says it’s the universe giving us a kick in the ass. Says that most people get in a groove and keep living life one way because it’s easy or familiar or whatever. And when the greater powers get sick and tired of waiting for us to take the next right step, it spins us like a top to get our attention. To make us think.”
There was a lot of wisdom there. More than Troy had the ability to absorb in his current state of mind-fucked. “Rubi is one smart woman.”
“Me,” Wes continued in that easy way of his, “I just think it’s karma giving us a kick in the ass.”
Troy bark
ed a laugh.
“Ready in five, Troy,” the director called.
“Rubi told me things went south with Giselle?” Wes half asked, half stated.
Troy’s head swung from the director to Wes. “It hasn’t even been two hours. I haven’t told anyone. How in the hell?”
“Ah, you know. You called Jax, Jax told Lexi, Lexi told Rubi—”
“Rubi told you. Criminy, you people.”
“We care, bro. Could be worse. We could loosen the hooks on your harness, let you splat all over Wilshire Boulevard.” He paused and sobered. “But seriously, I’m really sorry, man. Believe me, I know how crazy these women can make you. Took me and Rubi a long time, quite a few fights, and more than a few tears to find our groove.” He paused, then added, “Even Rubi cried once.”
Troy huffed a laugh past the pain expanding inside him until it felt like it filled every cell.
“But it’s so worth it, brother,” Wes said, slapping a hand to his shoulder. “So worth it.”
In the distance, a 747 raced down the LAX runway before angling into the sky, and Troy wondered which plane Giselle was on. Wished he hadn’t been so stubborn, so stupid, so set in his goddamned groove when she’d insisted on going back to Vegas.
He’d been wrong. He’d known it. Why hadn’t he offered to go with her?
Whoa.
Good fucking question.
Why the hell hadn’t he just offered to go with her?
“Goddamn.” He bit out the word, unable to believe he’d been that stupid. Unable to believe the answer had been right there in front of him the whole time. “Could it be that simple?”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Wes said, “but my answer would be: probably not.”
That telescoped Troy’s mind out again, giving him a wider view, and Wes was right—it wasn’t that simple. She could have done the same—simply asked him to come with her.
Yet neither of them had seen it as an option.
They were so busy pulling away from each other out of fear, they hadn’t even seen the simple answers right in front of them. At least he hadn’t. Maybe Giselle had, and she hadn’t offered because she didn’t want him with her.