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“You’re welcome, Brooke.” His response is a soft chuckle and one of my favorite Chase smiles. “Now, how about we get inside and see it?”
Putting Dolly Parton before sex without argument?
It’s official. He really is the perfect man.
Everything feels like magic tonight. The air is somehow thick but translucent, and it makes me feel like I’m riding a cloud with a view of the city. My family is here, along with a few publishing friends I’ve made over the years, and Dolly’s huge bust sits in the corner of the rooftop and pink umbrellas festoon every third foot. White tassels hang from the edges, and women in cowboy boots deliver frilly drinks to people in their finest rhinestones.
I look down at my own outfit of fringe and festivus—the very cowgirl-esque outfit Chase encouraged me to wear—and I can hardly believe where life has brought me. A rooftop Dolly-themed bar like this was something I dreamed about back in the sterile classrooms of my high school in Podunk, Ohio. A launch party for a creation of mine with people swirling their well-wishes and good times around me while the show based on my books plays on TVs in the background is beyond anything I could fathom.
If I could talk to the young girl inside me and make her see what was truly possible, maybe I wouldn’t have struggled so much with my anxiety. Maybe I would have seen the value in myself enough to know that I deserved this moment and, more than that, that I would think myself worthy of the dreamboat of a man at my side.
Maybe Chase wouldn’t feel unattainable at all. Maybe he’d just feel like my destiny.
Sammy bumps me from behind, getting my attention before pulling me into the hug of a lifetime. I can feel both her own joy and her happiness for me radiating through her, and it brings comfort on a level I can’t describe.
“Hey, SissySam,” I say with a rock and a tease, pulling her hair from her shoulder and draping it down the center of her back. “Thanks so much for making the trip all the way here for this. I can’t believe he put all this together!”
Sam’s smile is bright and easy and just a touch knowing. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have missed it! My sister is a rock star with her very own groupie,” she says with a waggle of her eyebrows and a jerk of her chin toward Chase.
“Oh, come on.”
“You come on, Brookie. You can’t be that slow on the uptake on this one. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to find here after the last time we spoke, but that’s a man in loveeee. Okay?”
“Shhh,” I hush her, embarrassed. “Don’t talk so loud, someone might—”
“Hear me?” she interrupts on a laugh. “Brooke, look around you, would you? I don’t think anyone needs to hear me say it to understand that this whole party is written like one giant love letter. He had to use Mo to get a lot of this shit done because he was with you the entire time, but trust me, this whole thing is designed and approved by Chase Dawson himself.”
“Okay, Sammy, stop. Really. Before I freak out.”
She eyes me closely before narrowing her gaze and hitting me with some honesty. I don’t know that I’m ready for it, but I’m pretty sure I need it. “Maybe you need to take a closer look at why you’re freaking out. Like, what’s holding you back at this point, Brooke? You’ve got the success, you’ve got the talent, you’ve got the personality, and the looks… Why wouldn’t a man, any man, but especially that man over there looking fine as hell, want you? Reality check, baby, you guys are a match made in heaven, okay? Why do you think the book you wrote about the two of you reads so good? It’s because you really are the real-life Clive and River.”
She nods as everything she’s saying plays out across my face.
“Mm-hmm. Maybe, just maybe, you need to set aside the freaking out for a night and take a little trip to reality. He’d be a fool not to love you, babe. And you’d be a fool not to tell him you feel the same.”
Tears hit my eyes, and she hushes them away. “Now, come on. Don’t start crying. Get yourself together, and then get over there and tell that man that you’ve very clearly been having a taste of that you’re in love with him, would you?”
Sammy leaves me with a bump and a nod, and I watch the biggest TV in the back of the bar for a long moment as my Shadow Brothers pester and tease each other with ease. The life that I breathed into that series? It’s there and then some. I know sometimes seeing your work transition to another medium can be scary and worrisome, but the job they’ve done with this show—the success I’m certain it’ll have—brings me the most all-encompassing good feeling.
