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“What if it’s an emergency or something?” The woman digs her hand into the bag of crackers once more, this time coming out with a bigger handful than before. “You want some?”
“No, thank you.”
Digging into my pocket, I pull out my AirPods, hoping this well-meaning but nosy woman gets the hint. I’m not one of those fellow passengers who will sit and chat for a full two hours and twenty-one minutes. I’m a close-my-eyes-put-some-music-on-and-bide-my-time kind of passenger.
Waking my screen, I pull up my music app and tap the shuffle option. It’s been the longest day of my life, and I’m too tired to make decisions of any kind right now, so I’ll let the universe decide for me.
But before I have a chance to darken my phone, another text from Nicola fills the screen.
NICOLA: SERIOUSLY CALL ME RIGHT NOW—IT’S ABOUT BRIAR.
Rolling my eyes, I sniff a laugh. If she wants to talk shit about Burke’s fiancée or wax poetic with another one of her crazy theories, she’s going to have to bark up Dash’s tree, not mine.
NICOLA: WHERE ARE YOU??
NICOLA: IT WAS FAKE. I WAS RIGHT THE WHOLE TIME. IT WAS FAKE!!!
NICOLA: DORIAN! HELLO?
NICOLA: I KNOW BRIAR’S THE WOMAN YOU MET LAST SUMMER!
My stomach drops. How would she know that? I made damn sure no one knew.
The line in the center aisle grows smaller and smaller, and the flight attendants are closing all the full overhead bins. A few minutes from now, we’ll be taxiing to the runway. But I’m too curious not to engage in this conversation, so I call her in the interest of saving time.
“What are you talking about?” I ask when she answers.
“Oh my god. Where are you?”
“On a flight. About to leave. What’s going on?”
“You have to get off that plane.” She’s breathless, more insistent than ever. Then again, Nicola has always had a penchant for being dramatic. She once threw a funeral for a dead plant and petitioned our father to let her skip a day of school so she could mourn it properly, arguing that she’d nursed it from a seedling to a fully grown spider plant. Never mind that her neglect of the very plant she claimed to love was the reason for its demise. “It was fake. The engagement. All of it. He paid her to pretend to be his fiancée! He wanted Dad to think he was engaged so he’d get his inheritance. A million dollars, can you believe that?”
“Wait, wait, wait . . .”
I’m attempting to wrap my head around this when the woman beside me nudges me with her elbow and mouths, “Is everything okay?”
“How do you know this?” I ask Nic.
“Because I heard their conversation. All of it,” she says. “And I heard her say that she was the woman you met last summer, the one you still love.”
I have to admit, I didn’t expect Nicola to want anything to do with me after today, on account of me “stealing” the inheritance she was anticipating.
I’m not sure what’s more shocking here . . . that or learning Burke and Briar’s engagement was a ruse.
“You have to get off that plane,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you should go to her. You should be with her. She told Burke she didn’t want the money. She begged him to let her out of some NDA he made her sign,” Nic says.
A flight attendant’s voice plays over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, as we begin . . .”
“She chose you over money,” Nicola says. “Briar loves you. You’d be an idiot to walk away now.”
Dragging in a long, hard breath, I eye the front of the plane before unfastening my seat belt and heading to the jet bridge.
Nashville’s show will go on without me.
But I can’t go on without her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
BRIAR
Present Day
I was going to take the afternoon off after the whole incident in the lobby with Burke—until I decided to quit.
If I ever see that man’s face again, it’ll be too soon. And as far as I’m concerned, I fulfilled my part of the contract that he refuses to cancel, so I’m looking at a bit of a financial windfall (relatively speaking) next month.
Until then, I can subsist on my paltry savings and little orange packets of ramen while I figure out my next move.
I unfasten my bra, toss it in a hamper, and change into the softest T-shirt and shorts I can find in my pajama drawer. Never mind that it’s only one o’clock in the afternoon—this day is over.
After Nicola heard everything, she and Burke had words, and when their little spat grew too private, he insisted they take it outside.
I sat on the ledge of the lobby water fountain as I watched them argue outside. It was like watching a TV show on mute. I had no idea what they were saying, but their animated gestures and beet-red expressions kept me glued.
