Chapter 9
9
JOSS
My phone chimed with an incoming text at the same time a tear slid down my face. The sun was leaning toward the horizon, and I kept telling myself that’s why.
That’s why my eyes kept welling with tears.
It was the sun.
Nothing more.
I swiped away the tear with the heel of my palm, then grabbed for my phone, though I didn’t want to. I only wanted to hear from one person, and I didn’t even know his number.
Cheyenne: Wait. You got married?!? What the hell!??
I’d barely had a chance to read the words on the screen when my phone was ringing in my hand.
She started speaking before I said a word. “Give me details, girl. You don’t just send your bestie a text saying you got married and not give the details!”
A laugh caught in my throat and came out sounding like a strained cry. “Well, you know me. Gotta do everything the hard way.”
“What’s his name? What’s he like? What the hell were you thinking?”
“His name is Rylan.” I had to pause, to hold onto the wheel and wipe the tears and the sun from my eyes. “He was…”
My god. He was everything.
Kind. Generous. Fun.
Handsome.
Everything a woman could want and a thousand times more.
I never dreamed I could find a man like Rylan.
Never dreamed they actually existed in this world.
But they did. He did.
“Joss? You okay, babe?”
Those pesky tears had become a river that I could no longer dam. I pulled to the side of the road and put my car in park, then tried to breathe through the pain that had clenched around my heart.
“Joss?” Cheyenne’s voice was slightly panicked, and my thoughts turned to damage control.
“I’m fine. Just allergies. It’s so dry in Vegas.”
“Don’t do that.” I shifted in my seat at her harsh tone. “Don’t pretend with me, girlie. Tell Cheyenne what happened.”
So I did. Parked alongside the highway on the road back to my house in Minnesota, I spilled my guts to my best friend. I told her what happened with JaCinda and her friends, the video Peter had sent, and the fallout after I broke up with him.
I told her about meeting Rylan and how he’d swept me off my feet. Lunch at the Strat followed by thrill rides. The whole movie montage wardrobe scene, including the beautiful flowing dress and him getting down on one knee to help me into my new shoes.
My tears were streaming down my face, tears filled with happiness and loss, when I spoke about the country bar and the crazy, costumed people that walked around on Fremont Street.
Cheyenne fell silent when I told her how Rylan proposed. How we raced to get our marriage license, then he took me to the chapel. She gasped when I told her about the ring and how it was almost an exact match to my vision board at home. Then she gasped again when I told her about the dress.
The absolutely beautiful dress he’d had shipped to the chapel directly from the boutique after he’d known me for only a couple hours.
“And the sex?” Cheyenne asked, her voice an awed whisper. “Was it good?”
“No!” My cry had to have startled her, because it certainly startled me.
“Oh.” I could just picture her chewing on the side of her lip. “Is that why you left?”
“No, Cheyenne.” I wiped the snot from my nose. “The sex wasn’t just good. It was phenomenal. It was mind-blowing. It was the most amazing thing in the entire world. He had me shaking before he even touched me. I came so hard, I’m pretty sure I blacked out. If I’d known that this was possible, that a man like this existed in the world?—”
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stifle the sob that ripped through me. I clutched at my mouth with one hand, clutched at my chest with the other.
It hurt.
Everything hurt without Rylan.
Cheyenne gave me a moment, but she wasn’t that kind of friend. She wasn’t the one who’d sit back and tell me I was right when I’d made the worst mistake of my life.
“Why’d you leave him?” she asked, right on cue. “If he’s this magical unicorn of a man, why the hell did you run away?”
“I don’t know.” I’d been asking myself that very question since my plane took off that morning.
I’d woken next to Rylan, his arm draped over me, his big, naked body pressed against my back.
And I panicked.
For one horrible moment, I convinced myself it wasn’t okay.
I’d slipped out from under him, gathered my clothes and dressed. Then I took off my perfect diamond ring and left it where he’d see it.
It wasn’t meant to be. I wasn’t the kind of person who married a man she’d just met. Who’d give up her entire life for a man who’d swept her off her feet.
You couldn’t take Vegas home with you. Isn’t that what they said? It had to stay out there in the desert. All the fun and dreams couldn’t come home with you.
Which meant I couldn’t keep Rylan.
“Is this because of Peter?”
“What?” I choked on a gasp as I tried to spit out the word and ended up coughing up a lung. I reached for my water bottle and chugged the last few ounces until there was nothing left. Then I asked in a shaky voice, “What do you mean?”
“Joslyn Michelle Ward, do not treat me like I’m an idiot.”
I cringed in my seat, as if she’d caught me in my lie when I hadn’t even told her.
Ward.
I’d lied to Rylan. I was so sure I’d never see him again that I gave him a fake last name. It had come to me as quick as the gust of wind at the Strat that had me feeling like Marilyn. By the time I’d agreed to marry him, I couldn’t find a way to tell him the truth.
“Are you even listening to me? Or is this your way of telling me you really do think I’m an idiot?”
I cringed again. Cheyenne may have been a tiny little thing, but when she used that voice, it never failed to make me think of those big, angry grandmas who ran a tight ship of their household and demanded truth and excellence.
“I don’t think you’re an idiot, Chey.”
“Well, you must! You’re sitting there trying to convince me that you don’t know why you left Rylan the Unicorn Dick when I can hear you shaking in your seat at the thought of what Peter will say when he finds out.”
That panic that gripped me earlier took a firm hold on my throat.
It wasn’t what Peter would say that I worried about. It was what he would do .
“Cheyenne.” I could barely squeeze her name through my throat and the tight sound only made it worse.
“Joss, babe, I love you, but I’ve gotta say it. I told you so. I told you to get away from that asshole. Peter is nothing but a piece of shit. He’s been preying off you for years, taking your hard-earned money and your good heart, and using it against you.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. But it bears repeating. Joss, he beats you. Do you not remember? Do you not remember the bruises you’ve been trying to hide for years? That asshole beats you. He turned my strong, beautiful friend into a shell of herself. He doesn’t deserve you, and you do deserve a magical unicorn who cares about you and takes care of you and makes you black out from the amazing orgasms.”
A burst of laughter shot through me, coming out on a cry.
No matter how much it hurt to hear it, Cheyenne was right. I’d left the best thing that ever happened to me because I was afraid of the man who had beat me into submission and made me believe what he’d taught me: that I was nothing.
I would always be nothing.
“What am I going to do?”
“Oh, sweetie.” What I wouldn’t have given to have my friend by my side at that moment. To have her wrap her arms around me and tell me it would be okay. “You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to do what we’ve been planning on for years. Remember?”
Nodding, I wiped the heel of my palm over my eyes. “Yeah.”
“I’m going to meet you at Peter’s place—because it’s not yours anymore, so don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise—and I’m going to help you get your shit. Then you’re going to come live with me until we can hunt down your unicorn?—”
“Chey—”
“And then you’ll ride his magical dick off into the sunset.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my face with my hands, trying to hold in the laughter so I wouldn’t egg her on. “You’re horrible, you know that?”
“But that’s why you love me.”
“Yeah, it is. I don’t understand it, but it is.” I reached for my water bottle, only to find it empty. I tossed it in the back seat and let out a sigh. “I’m scared, Chey.”
For a beat, there was nothing but silence. My friend knew me. That’s what happened when you’d grown up together and gone through all the crazy shit we had. She’d seen the truth about Peter even though I’d been unwilling to admit it to myself. She’d stayed by me even when Peter had turned everyone else in my life against me in order to keep me by his side.
My friend may have been small, but you’d never know it by her tenacity and her heart.
“I’m bringing Dakota.”
“What?” My hands shot to the sides, nearly tossing my phone from the center console as I tried to hold on to something firm.
Dakota was Cheyenne’s brother, and one of the people Peter hated most. His father had had Dakota thrown in jail more than once, not because of any criminal activity, but because of who he was. Peter used Dakota’s record as a reason for me to stay away from him, and he’d been vicious to me any time I’d even mentioned him.
Peter may have scared me, but what Peter would do to me if I associated with Dakota was what put the fear of God into me.
“I don’t think?—”
“It’s already done, Joss,” Cheyenne interrupted. “I texted him. He’s on his way to Peter’s now and asking me if we want him to bring friends.”
“No!” I grabbed my phone, bringing it close to my face, as if my whispering into the speaker could somehow keep the words from reaching Dakota’s ears. “Don’t let him bring his friends. Chey, he doesn’t need to come. We’ll be fine.”
“Will we, though?”
I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to contemplate what I was about to do.
I was leaving the man who I’d been dating since I was a teen.
The same man who had beaten me down, both mentally and physically, for over five years.
The fear that coursed through me threatened to consume me, and if it weren’t for one thing, I would have been overwhelmed.
That one thing: thoughts of Rylan.
I snagged our marriage license off the passenger seat and pressed it to my chest.
Maybe, just maybe, if I could move on from this, if I could get out from under Peter’s hold and take control of my life…
Maybe, one day, I might be able to find Rylan again.
Maybe then, my heart could be whole.