by Zoey Derrick
“He reminds me of Dyson.” I smile at the name for the first time in weeks. Maybe Cami is right. It’s time to go home.
“I can see that. You know, they say we marry our fathers.” She laughs. “No, I take that back, Tristan is the exact opposite of my father, but maybe that’s why I’m married to him.” She winks.
“You’re a lucky bitch,” I tease her.
“So are you.” She shoulder checks me. “Come on, let’s do this together?”
I nod in agreement. “Together.”
With that, the package was opened and my past spilled out onto the breakfast bar.
Inside the envelope were all the letters my mother had sent him. Though she never reached out to him first, he always seemed to reach out, at least a few times a year, to check in on me and my mother.
Beyond those letters was a DVD. It just said ‘Ireland’ on it. Cami stopped me from watching it. She said she had a feeling it was shot recently, or around the same time as hers was. Regardless, it would tear me down in a way she couldn’t help me with. She suggested I save it for Dyson. Let him be the rock. When I asked her why, she just smiled and didn’t explain. I get the impression maybe she didn’t do that with Tristan. I don’t know their whole story, but the more we talk as we go through this stuff, the more I’m starting to better understand Cami.
There was always a connection between the two of us but we could never put our finger on it. I can’t wrap my head around the irony of small worlds. We both went to ASU, despite growing up in two different states. We live in the same neighborhood and she’s neighbors with the man I’m truly starting to miss.
Mick wasn’t kidding when he said my inheritance would make what Dyson gave me look like chump change. Though this money doesn’t come with a mountain of investments like Dyson’s did, it does come with a very large bank account. Between the money from Dyson and my inheritances, I am now pushing close to seventy-five million dollars in assets. Considering I didn’t have seventy-five hundred dollars to my name two months ago, it’s a huge pill to swallow. I can’t even begin to imagine what I’m going to do with all this money. But for now, until I can fully accept the fact I have a father after twenty-five years, the money is staying untouched.
Cami’s been in Joplin for three full days when I ask her to help me with something. “Anything.” She smiled.
“Will you help me get my heart back?”
She chuckles, “Of course, whenever you’re ready.”
I think she thought I meant going back to Phoenix. I meant walking around the corner. As we walk she asks me what we were doing so I tell her about the day Dyson finally seemed to really notice me and the events that followed. I tell her how I stood in front of his old house and talked myself into letting him go. How when I did that, I threw something at the house that was very important to me.
She laughs, “You don’t expect it to still be there do you?”
“No, but if it is, then I’ll have my answer.”
“Then let’s find it.”
We approach the house and so many memories come flooding back to me about when we were kids, including running up and down the steps until Dyson’s mother would yell at us and we’d run off laughing. It was stupid, but we were kids.
“Is this it?” she asks and I turn around, looking at what she has in her hand.
“Oh my god, that’s it.”
“It’s gorgeous. Like a tiger’s eye.”
I wink at her. “Why do you think he calls me tigress?”
“Isn’t that…” Realization dawns on her when she puts his company and me together. “Well then, can we go home now?”
I nod enthusiastically.
Chapter 66
Dyson
Four Days Later
“Closer” - The Chainsmokers ft. Halsey
“I Choose You” - Sara Bareilles
March 31, 2016…
Ten years.
It’s been ten years since the day I fell in love with the fiery fifteen year old and my life changed.
It’s been seven weeks since she left me.
I deserved it. I pushed her too hard, too fast. I was talking about her moving in, then throwing money at her like she’d always had money in her life and the reality of that situation was too much. I should have let Mick have his way with her first. Let her process that, then eventually bring her around to the idea of accepting the money she’s made through Tigress. Or vice versa. I never should have let her face both. I knew better. I knew everything I was telling her was going to drive her away.
I’m doing everything I can to respect her space, to respect her wishes by staying away from her, but each day it grows harder to concentrate on anything but going and getting her. And telling her she’s being ridiculous and we can work through this together. That’s what we're supposed to do. As a couple, as boyfriend and girlfriend, not her against me or me against her.
The bottom line is I fucked up and I’m waiting, impatiently for the woman I love to come back to me.
At eight p.m. on the nose, my doorbell rings, which means…I race down the stairs. If my doorbell is ringing at eight o’clock that means Cami is home. If Cami is home… I throw open the door and I blink like a fool. “Tristan, is everything alright?”
“Yeah, man, everything’s good.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. There’s a sense of relief in his eyes I haven’t seen in about a week. I would have gone over there to check on him and Jaden and ask how things were going in Joplin, but I got tied up the last few days so I haven’t gone over there. “Did you want to come in?”
“Nah, I gotta get back to the house.”
“Is Cami home?” Hope blooms in my stomach. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling he’s here to deliver some bad news.
“She is, got home day before yesterday. She wanted me to come over, but she’s loving on Jaden, she missed him.” He smiles a genuine smile that I hadn’t seen yet. I got the impression being away from Cami was just as hard on him as it’s been on me being away from Ireland. “I came to let you know that we’re having a big get together at Blu tomorrow.” I scrunch my nose. Social events are not at the top of my list of things to do right now. “I know, trust me, I was you once, remember?” I nod. “But if you want to make things work with Ireland when she comes home, then getting together tomorrow is with our very closest friends, Cami’s family. Would be good for Ireland if you’re a part of that too.”
“I don’t know,” I say with hesitation.
“Think about it. Oh, and I was told to deliver this to you,” Tristan says as he hands me an envelope and I look at the writing of my name. It’s the same script that was on the envelope left in my door when she left. I cringe, but take it from him. I don’t need a kiss off letter. The least she can do is tell me to go to hell in person.
“The party starts at seven. The bar is closed to the public tomorrow. You don’t have to stay all night, but I would love to have you there.”
I nod. “Alright.”
He smiles. “Good. Oh, and do me a favor?”
“Uh sure?” I say with hesitation.
“Clean yourself up. You look like hell,” he says with a laugh.
I don’t know why or where it comes from but I burst out laughing for the first time in weeks and he smiles as he walks away from my door. I close it and lean against it, holding the weight of the envelope in my hands before locking up and climbing all the way up to my bedroom. I sit on the bed before sliding my finger under the seal and opening up the folded pages.
Dearest Dyson,
I know a letter, on this day, is not what you want from me, but there are a few things I need to explain to you.
First of all, why I left.
I left because I couldn’t handle everything being thrown at me at once. As you probably already know, I’ve come to accept the money you’ve given me for Tigress’s business plan work I did all those years ago. It’s too much, but I guess there really is no arguing with you on this matter an
d Mick won’t let me donate it to charity. But I cannot accept this money if you cannot accept my terms. You see, I lost my job a few weeks ago and during the time of my self-imposed seclusion I’ve come to the realization I’m not going to be a very good housewife, then again, in an effort to hide my whereabouts, I’ve been living strictly on cash and it hasn’t been much fun. So, I need a job.
But in my isolated state, I’ve learned more about myself than I could have ever learned without giving myself a chance away from everything. Including the fact that I was angry with my mother. You see, she left me out of her will. She handed over all her money, life insurance and the insurance payout from the accident to my brother because he needed it, and I couldn’t understand why, until now. I went home, back to Joplin, back to my mother’s house and back to her room because I had to find my answers and find them I did. At the end of a very long, trying day, I found it in my heart to forgive my mother for never telling me about my father. After countless days and years’ worth of letters between my father and my mother, I realized that, in his own way, my father loved me too.
It wasn’t until Cami showed up on my mother’s door step that I learned a woman I considered a true friend, was really my sister and our connection was always there. We both knew, somewhere along the lines there was some type of deeper meaning for why we so easily became friends. Cami also told me about my father, about growing up with him. The reality of what he did to my mother and me is minor in comparison. But at the end of the day and that discussion, I realized while it was a fucked up way of going about it, Bobby did what he had to do to protect me and Cami. I also learned Cami’s brother isn’t someone I will likely ever meet. He’s pulled himself away from the family because Cami insisted on taking over Bold and he wants nothing to do with her or with the company. Apart from that, I also learned I have an even younger half-brother that was born after my father was forced into hiding. This news was surprising, but once Cami told me about his mother, I see things differently.
You see, his mother is his perfect half. There is so much love between the two of them that I think he may have finally found happiness with someone. And for that, I will accept my younger brother, just as I intend to accept the fact I have a father I’ve never known.
I’ve also learned that Bold International, Inc. is part mine. Though it’s not exactly the profit kind of mine like Tigress is, I can choose to make it mine at any time. So maybe I don’t need to work. I could stay at home, spend money while still making money, raise some babies and be with my one and only.
Speaking of my one and only. You see, there’s this guy. He’s complete and total sex on legs, with gorgeous light brown hair, blue-violet eyes that burrow deep into my soul and capture me wholly and completely. I think you’d really like him. He owns this company he named after a fiery redhead he met when he was a kid because he fell in love with her on the floor of a barn and he never let her go.
She fell in love with him the day she gave him her heart in the form of a tiger’s eye rock. Then she fell in love with him again the same day he did, on the floor of that dingy barn. Somewhere along the line, she lost her heart, threw it at a door, hoping that doing so would push him away from her. But it only made her miss her heart that much more.
Then, in the middle of a lobby, nervous and a complete and total wreck, she spilled coffee all over him because he was in too much of a hurry to slow down. She apologized as best she could, but in the end, he was still mad at her. She thought her heart was gone forever until the night, in a bar, when he made a move on her roommate and she realized, unequivocally, that no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, she was falling in love with him all over again.
He was a stuck-up three-thousand dollar suit wearing pencil dick, a cocky-bastard, a prickweed, asshat, manwhore, fuckwad, and all he begged for her to do was say his name.
Dyson!
P.S. If you look in the envelope, you will find my heart. I am giving it to you again to hold precious and dear until you can give it back to me, whole and complete.
P.P.S. I love you!
Always yours,
Your VeeVee
I flip the envelope over, spilling an identical rock to the one she gave me all those years ago, only this one is more weather worn where mine is more smooth and polished. Looking at the rocks in my hand, I see the difference.
I went on to be the polished, refined business man, with little in my past to harm me. My father’s death wasn’t a tragedy, it was a blessing. My choices in life were never really mine. Sure, I could have gone back to her in Joplin but if I had done I’d have never known what could have happened. Or whether or not I’d ever be able to have her as my own again. Because I’m selfish, I wanted to be sure that the woman I loved needed me as much as I needed her.
She lived a tougher life. Never knowing her father, having secrets held from her for years by the one person she was supposed to trust the most. Then going to college in an attempt to move on with her life, only to be brought back there when her mother died. Then, in a sick twist of fate, she runs into me, literally. And from that moment, she was pulled on a ride unlike anything she’d ever experienced only to be thrown into a brick wall and forced to face her past, face all the emotions she never thought she was going to have to face. Those emotions threatened her spirit and she needed to find it in herself, somewhere, to process all of that.
She’s finally done exactly that.
Chapter 67
Ireland
“This Love” - Maroon 5
“Oh my god, you guys are fussing like I’m about to walk down the aisle.”
“Dex is an ordained minister, you totally could.”
“Oh my god, Raine, don’t scare the poor girl,” Cami scolds her friend.
My stomach rolls. “I’ve already thrown up like ten times today, don’t push it,” I tell them all.
Cami introduced me to an entire entourage of friends. Raine, Jolene, Naomi, and one I haven’t stopped fangirling over, Addison Carver-Black. Raine is with Dex Harris, drummer for 69 Bottles, Beau is married to Mick; I’ve known Beau since I met Cami in college and compliments of going to Blu, but I didn’t know she was married to Mick. Oh god, that meeting was awkward as all get out. But the woman is gorgeous with an amazing head on her shoulders. She holds no ill will toward me for what Mick went through, but Bobby is another story. Jolene is with Tyson, Tristan’s wing man and head of security, and Naomi is with Travis Jackson. I mean, seriously? Next to Tristan, Travis is like the hottest fucking man in Hollywood right now and I envy her a little. Addison is married to two men, Talon Carver, lead singer of 69 Bottles and Kyle Black, the band’s manager. I hear they have quite the story to tell when it comes to how they met, and I’m anxious to hear all about it. Best of all, I can’t imagine having two men in my life and in my bed. Addison positively glows because of it.
All of us girls are holed up in Cami’s house while we wait for our transport to the party. I feel like I’ve fallen into the kind of high society I can live with. Jolene and Naomi I’ve seen countless times at Blu. Apparently they, along with Beau, are all part owners of Blu Phoenix. They bought it when the owner decided to sell the old place after it sat empty for a long time. They’ve turned it into quite the hangout. It’s always been my favorite place to be when I go out because you just never know who’s going to show up.
Having owners like Cami and Tristan means their connections in the celebrity world run deep. Tonight, despite the club being closed to the public, is no exception.
“Are you ready?” Cami asks me. My stomach’s doing flip-flops again and I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with morning sickness.
I nod and look myself over in the mirror.
My hair is swept up into a high knot on top of my head with the length cascading down my back. I’m wearing an emerald green, strapless cocktail dress that has a lace overlay decorating the bodice and a little bit on the short, barely knee length skirt. It’s capped off with matching peep-toe pumps
, black and silver bangles on my wrists and large silver hoops in my ears. Cami’s fault. She took me shopping today. The dress and the shoes, coupled with the jewelry, cost more than a single paycheck I would have received from Wellington.
It’s April first.
Its ten years after the day Dyson left me in Joplin and tonight, I go back to him. Only this time, I tell him everything I wanted to say that day. But first, I have to get there and get through the rolling stomach.
“The car’s here,” someone calls, I think it’s one of Addison’s crew because she’s pretty attached to her.
“You look fabulous,” Addison tells me and I blush. She leans in close to my ear and says, “At the end of the day, I’m a friend. I know that’s hard to see, but you’ll understand, eventually.” She winks at me. She totally gets me and I smile at her.
“I’m trying.”
“Good, that’s all I can ask for.”
“Cotah, oh my god,” Raine squeals. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
The blonde girl laughs. “We just landed a little while ago.” She beams, looking around and saying hi to Cami, then the rest of the girls.
“Oh, shit,” Cami says. “Dacotah, this is Ireland. Ireland, this is Cotah, she’s married to Derek Hunter.” Cami winks at me. “You two have more in common than you realize.”
Cotah extends her hand to me. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, though I’m not sure what Cami is talking about,” I say pointedly at Cami.
“Oh, Cotah fell in love with a millionaire too.” She winks and runs off down the stairs, the rest of the girls follow behind her.
“Really?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s like a walking, talking romance novel.” She beams.