“Oh, B…” I hadn’t told her. I hadn’t realized how they’d affected me until I’d embarked on this whole heartbreaking charade.
Swallowing the last bite of watermelon along with the tears the admission had cost me, I continued, “It hurt when he said that, but I’m just starting to realize how much. Everyone after that—Xavier, Levi—I was blind to who they really were because I wanted to prove him wrong; I wanted to prove the words wrong. Deep down, I was scared he was right. So, I jumped into relationships that I should have questioned from the start. I looked past things that should have been obvious. I was desperate, Tay, to find someone who was real.”
Looking up from the empty bowl, I saw the tears running down her face.
“And then, right in the middle of something that was designed to be fake from the start, I found him. And myself.” I handed her a tissue and then took one for myself. “I didn’t know what to expect after Christmas and after what you told me the media had been spreading. But I shouldn’t have worried. I shouldn’t have doubted myself.”
“I’m sorry—”
I waved her off because the last thing this was was her fault. “Every word. Every song. Every show… I go out there and I sing exactly what is on my mind and in my heart and my fans know that. The people who love and support me know that. They know that because they know me. The media doesn’t. And their pens may be swords, but at some point, they’ll realize their shields are only made of paper—and the truth will cut them down quick. The people who are willing to believe the fake stories that are in the news are not the people who care about me.”
I was shaking, every cell itching with the intense truth in my words. I had been lost. I wasn’t anymore.
“I am where I am for a reason.” I was no longer crying. For the first time in a week and a half, the semblance of strength flickered in my muscles. The whisper of a beat fluttered in my heart. “My fans love me for a reason. I don’t give them fake. I give them heart-wrenching real. I give them mistakes. I give them embarrassing emotions of a stupid lovesick girl who sang a song for a stupid stubborn boy. I give them me.”
I gasped in air, realizing that I must not have been breathing the entire time I climbed up onto my self-assured soapbox.
“You give them magic,” she said with a watery smile.
“No, I give them real—but in this world, sometimes being real is all it takes to be magic… which is why I have to tell them.”
The smile fell from her face faster than Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction as she let out a strangled, “What?”
“I’m going to tell them,” I repeated, knowing this was going to give her a heart attack.
“But… after everything…” she stuttered. I’d known her for long enough to see this coming. “Bruce is not going to be happy.”
“I know. But it’s not because of Bruce that my fans love me,” I replied ruefully. “And I’ve thought about it a lot. Just like I’ve thought about Zach a lot. But I need to do what is right for my soul—and that means being honest about everything. Maybe the truth will be the thing that finally frees me.”
Her eyes narrowed and she stared at me for a questionable number of seconds. This was what happened when a thought struck her—a realization—that she was working through the best way to tell me.
Maybe she was going to try to convince me against this.
I gritted my teeth, prepared to stand my ground. After Minnesota and seeing how my fans had been there for me as my heart was literally broken in two on stage in front of them (not to mention all the outpouring of love and support since), they deserved the truth from me.
“And what about being honest with yourself?” she asked with a calm insightfulness that unnerved me.
“What do you mean?”
“What about admitting to the truth that you are still in love with Zach?”
My mouth opened and shut, heat rising to my cheeks. I couldn’t deny it.
“I-I’m sure part of me will always love him.” I shrugged it off.
“No, Blay.” She shook her head. “I’m not talking about that childhood part. I’m talking about the woman who fell head over heads for the country football star-slash-singer with the horrible choice in hats. I know it’s easy to think that you kept it a secret from everyone these past few months. But I didn’t need to know the truth to be able to see it.” Her hand came up to halt me as my mouth opened again. “And I have seen you with other guys so don’t even think of trying to tell me that this is how you are with all of them.”
“It was a show…” I grumbled reluctantly; it was all I had left.
A shiver ran up my spine. “You can’t fake magic,” she replied with a low, steady voice. “Only real love shines with that.”
I stared down at the counter, knowing that I’d begun to cling to certain hard truths about this entire situation and chosen to ignore other ones.
“I sent him away, Tay,” I whispered. “I told him this was the last time I’d love him.”
Next I knew her arms were around me. “So just apologize and tell him that you are a big fat liar. That’s what he did, isn’t it?”
A thick laugh escaped me. “Yeah, but I never thought that what he said was the truth. I made him believe me because I wanted to believe me.”
“Just say you’re sorry. He loves you. He will forgive you. Heck, he probably still just wants you to forgive him!”
“Yeah… Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes.” I huffed, quickly swiping tears from my face. “Have you… heard from him?”
Ugh, I’d been doing so well with keeping my wonderings to myself.
It had taken everything in me not to ask anyone anything about him—and every time I didn’t, I almost did.
“No, I haven’t, but…” she trailed off just as the screen door opened and my brother came in.
I glared at him for a second before glancing to Tay. The way she was chewing a hole through her lip said that she’d known he was coming. I no longer had my shield.
“Can we talk?” Ash’s voice rasped into the heavy silence.
“I thought you said everything that you needed to before we left Minnesota.” I tried to keep my tone level but I couldn’t help the words. He’d hurt me. Almost as much as Zach had.
His jaw ticked and I waited for the sharp rebuttal, but he looked to Taylor who sent him a hard, unwavering stare almost like she was reining in his anger.
“I didn’t. I’d like to talk to you.” Interesting. “Please.”
How had he’d managed to convince her of that?
“B, I’m going to run to the store and grab some more tea. If that’s ok…” Typical Taylor wouldn’t actually leave if I didn’t want her to.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s fine.”
“You need anything?” She hopped down from the stool and I answered in the negative; I probably could have used something, but I was more interested in the way that Ash was watching her than anything.
“How about you, Ash?” she asked him with the hint of a quiver in her voice that only a lifelong friend could detect.
His head jerked in a no and then that steely stare remained locked on her until the front door clicked shut.
“Blake,” he addressed me with steady, concerned eyes.
“Ash.”
The sibling stare-down was going strong. But then my brother uncharacteristically broke, running a hand through his hair and nodding over to the family room that sat attached to the kitchen, separated by a round morning room table.
“Can we sit?”
He took the loveseat and I took the chair—the same seats that we’d chosen since we were kids. Usually Zach sat beside him on the couch. And then they’d toss pillows at me in the middle of a scary movie to make me scream.
I blinked back the memories.
“Why are you here, Ash?”
“To make things right,” he answered hoarsely and on his face, I saw the kid who realized that his loyalty and protectiveness had gone too far.
I paused, debating what to say, what to offer. Pulling my knees up under me, I let out a long sigh and said, “I know… you were trying to look out for me.”
“Fuck, Blay, it’s more than that. God, I don’t even know where to begin. I should have come to you. I was just… so fucking livid… when I saw the two of you sucking face in the car. I even looked for the fucking cameras.” He paused to let out a hard laugh. “I looked because I thought that there had to be a good reason. Turns out there was a good reason, just not one good enough for me.”
I winced, chewing on the inside of my cheek because I was craving gum for my nervous tick.
“Sorry.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m just… having a hard time with this. Obviously.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry any more. Zach and I are over,” I offered, hoping it would ease some of the demons he was wrestling with.
“That’s not… what I want for you,” he said tightly, pinning my gaze. “Unless it’s really what you want. I know that you probably know, but dad would kill me if I just sat here and blankly apologized for everything instead of acknowledging exactly what the apology is for.”
It was one of the house rules growing up—if you were going to apologize, you couldn’t just mumble off an ‘I’m sorry’; admitting to what you’d done wrong was part of the process of doing what’s right.
“I’m sorry because I led Bruce and Zach to believe that there was a threat that the press was going to find out about the charade. I’m sorry because I suggested to Bruce that the cleanest way to handle it was to have you break up. I insisted that the only way it was going to look real was without you knowing ahead of time because you had a crush on Zach…” He trailed off, not needing to elaborate any more on that.
“Ash…” I said softly, groaning as Muffin, who’d just realized that Tay had left, trotted over and hopped up onto my lap.
“Just let me finish, Blay,” he begged, pulling at his hair so hard I thought he was going to rip a chunk out. “That’s not even the fucking worst of it. I mean maybe for you it is, but for me, I’m such an fucking asshole for what I said to you.”
My throat felt like someone was blowing a balloon up inside of it.
“I just… I don’t know. I don’t even know what the fuck my problem is. I guess because Zach has been like a brother to me… and you’re my sister. I remember when you had a crush on him in high school and I was so pissed because I thought it was going to ruin everything; I thought it was going to ruin our friendship. And you are my baby sister… I couldn’t stomach him touching my baby sister.”
“Ash,” I chuckled, “you know I’ve dated people. It is what got me into this whole mess.”
“I know but even though it’s all over the news, that’s what makes it seem not real. It makes it seem like it’s not you. But when I saw you and Zach together, it was too real for comfort and I… Well, I went about it the wrong fucking way.”
“You were right though, I do have a tendency to forget about everything else when all I can see is him. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, good or bad, but my love for him makes me crazy,” I admitted softly, refusing to put that sentence in the past tense.
He gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah, well, if it doesn’t, you aren’t doing it right.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, wondering exactly how and why he could be speaking from experience.
Shaking my head, I spoke, “It’s ok, Ash. I should have told you. I should have… Zach wanted to… I just thought everything with the tour and then because things were so delicate between him and me. I don’t know… I guess I just wanted to hold onto it for a little while longer before I shared.”
“I’m sorry, Blay.”
Lifting Muffin and putting him on the floor, I plopped down onto the couch next to him. Sinking into the well-worn leather, I wrapped my arms around him.
“It’s ok.” Forgiveness was freeing. “It doesn’t really matter anymore anyway.”
He pulled back from me. “It should.”
“No. And I just heard it from Tay, I don’t want to hear it from you, too. It’s just not meant to be between Zach and me.”
“Bullshit,” he snorted.
“Excuse me?” I reared back. “A week ago, you literally sabotaged our relationship and now you’re telling me that I should be fighting for it?” I laughed at the irony even though he didn’t seem to find it amusing; sometimes, you have to laugh just so that you don’t cry.
“Blay, he fucking broke up with you because I made him—because I told him your career would go down the fucking tubes if he didn’t.”
“I know that! But he didn’t come to me. He didn’t talk to me. After every stupid and foolish thing I’ve done to show him how much I care about him, he still thinks it’s not enough to be worth the fight.” I hugged myself, really not wanting to argue with my brother over this.
“He fucked up. It’s what we do. And then we grovel and fix that shit. It’s the fucking circle of life, sis.”
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, hating and loving the hope he gave me.
I kept telling myself that the truth was finally going to free me. The truth was that freedom was nothing but missing him.
“This is my life, Ash. The lights, the people, the real stories, and the fake news… Sometimes it’s a fantasy; sometimes, it’s a fight. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who might be more concerned about what the world wants of me than what I want. At the end of the day, I’d rather go to sleep at night with the man I love and our future in front of me than with the world and their whims behind me.”
“He’s not going to let you go,” he grumbled. “As much as I’m still not too fucking pleased about it.”
I patted his arm. “I didn’t give him much of a choice.”
Laughing, he stood, waking Muffin from his nap. “He may love you, but you’re still Baby Blake; one way or another, you still do what we want you to.” His tease was laced with truth as I stuck my tongue out at him playfully.
“I’m going to head out,” he said over his shoulder, strolling towards the back door.
“You don’t want to wait for Tay to get back? We’re just going to hang and watch a movie.”
A shadow crossed over his face. “Nah. Maybe next time.”
I WAS DETERMINED. PERSISTENT. RELENTLESS.
I wasn’t going to let Blake go and I didn’t give two fucks what she had to say about it. I knew she loved me. I knew she wanted to be with me, too. I could fucking taste it on her.
So, I was going to persist until she was fucking mine.
I’d been knocked down and knocked out in football plenty of times. I knew that mind-numbing sense of shock and confusion and head-splitting pain. This was nothing like that. After that night in the treehouse when she left me, I felt like I was being plowed into by a linebacker with every goddamn beat of my heart—knocked down again and again.
But if she thought I’d been stubborn and determined to not want her all those years ago, she had a whole other thing coming now—now that I knew what could be.
My head jerked towards the door to my studio apartment in Nashville as someone banged loudly on the door. Probably Ron or Alex.
I’d hardly talked to the band after we’d dropped everything and disappeared from Minnesota. I think they knew that some shit had gone down. They didn’t ask. And truthfully, they had every right to know that ZPP had hit a slight dip in popularity from my cruel break-up with the world’s pop princess.
I should have looked before I yanked open the door, seeing familiar blond hair and blue eyes staring back. Too bad it wasn’t the sibling that I cared about getting forgiveness from.
“What do you want?” I asked Ash tightly, preparing myself for a fight.
“Can I come in?” he asked casually, leaning against the doorframe.
“Depends.” My eyes narrowed on my former friend. “I think you can punch me just as well from out here. Not in the mood to have to cle
an blood up off the carpet.”
His mouth tipped up just a fraction in a smirk. “I’m not here to punch you. I’m over that phase.”
I stepped back. “I’m surprised I made it through unscathed…”
“Someone had to tie me down,” he quipped.
“Oh yeah? And who was that?” I asked as Ash walked into my place like this was any other day before I fucked his sister and he’d forced me to break her heart.
“Doesn’t matter.” He strolled over to my Ikea dining table, sprawling into one of the chairs. “I’m here to talk about Blay, not me.”
My body immediately tensed. “Then you’ve come for nothing because I don’t give a shit anymore what you think. I did what you said and I have never regretted anything more in my entire life. Your sister means the world to me—and instead of showing her that, instead of giving her what she deserves—I told her that what the world thought was more important than how I felt. And it was my fucking choice to listen to you, but if you think I’m going to do it again, you are a fucking moron.”
He gave me a blank, bored stare and I almost wished he was here to punch me so I could swing one back at him.
“You done?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, intrigued. “Yeah.”
“Good. Because I’m not here to do any of that shit. I’m here because I wanted to tell you that I was wrong.”
“Seriously? Ashton Tyler admitting fault?”
“Yeah,” he sneered at me. “Go call your fucking paparazzi and let them take a photo so it will last longer.”
I laughed as I walked into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Want one?”
“I think I need something a little stronger.” He eyed my Glenfiddich on the counter.
I filled a glass with ice and poured him two fingers, setting it on the table next to him, and waited for him to explain himself.
He took his time taking a sip and savoring it before he spoke again. “I’m here to help you fix our mistakes.” I continued to stare, unsure and unwilling to believe him. “I’m here to help you fucking fix shit with Blake.”
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