Chapter Twenty
· Adriana ·
It was an unnaturally hot afternoon. Fall had crept in bit by bit, but today the sun had decided to make a comeback, bearing down on Bravetown in full force.
Thankfully, the park was equipped to handle it.
I’d grabbed two popsicles for us and perched on the top of the fence with Esra, while Noah was lunging one of his horses in circles in the round pen.
Skye bobbed up and down in the saddle, helmet on, perfectly following instructions for switching between horse gaits.
“Just out of curiosity: Why did you say yes?” Esra asked, halfway through the popsicle.
“Hmm?”
“To the proposal,” she clarified. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m head over heels for Noah. But if he asked me to marry him tonight, I’d say no. I don’t think I have my shit figured out enough to plan the rest of my life with someone.”
That came out of left field. Did she know that I hadn’t actually said yes?
That I wasn’t planning the rest of my life at all?
Should I have been telling anyone and everyone about the house he bought as if I was excited about moving in there?
But when I looked at Esra, her eyes were completely focused on Noah.
“Do you think he has a ring in his pocket?”
“No.” She shook her head and waited until Skye passed on her round before continuing, “That’s not the point.
I feel like I’m not grown-up enough for marriage.
But you’re only like a year older than me, and no offense, you don’t exactly have your life figured out yet either. But Brooks has a whole kid.”
“Opposed to half a kid?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know if I’m grown-up enough for marriage,” I admitted and twisted the ring around my finger.
“So? Why did you say yes?”
“Well, for starters, he’s a rich celebrity and hasn’t insisted on a prenup.
” He had, however, gotten me the keyboard, the Louboutins, and the espresso machine I’d looked up after our date.
A better keyboard, technically. I was holding my breath for the bouncy castle and Jeep to randomly show up in my driveway without warning.
“Very funny.” Esra playfully rolled her eyes.
“Seriously. I can see the difference in how you look at him and how the other girls stare at him when he’s at the Rattlesnake with you.
They get big, cartoony, googly heart-eyes and pretend they aren’t stretching or checking over their shoulders just to catch one more glance.
It’s like when a guy takes you to a bar and pretends not to be interested in the game playing on the corner TV. ”
“Glad to know my fiancé is such a spectacle.”
“No, but you look at him and it’s not even like you’re in the same bar and intentionally watching the game. You’re right there on the court with him. You look at him like he’s your teammate. So don’t pretend you’re just getting married because he’s rich.”
I groaned and rolled my head from side to side. “I’m not good at talking about my feelings.”
“You don’t say,” she mock-gasped.
I needled her with an icy glare, but Esra nibbled on her popsicle—crazy behavior—and kicked her feet and blinked at me with her big brown doe eyes like innocence personified. That had to be how she got her way with Noah, because that man was whipped.
“He makes me feel safe, okay?” I grunted, because I had to give her some sort of answer or look like the world’s most loveless fiancée.
Once those words were out, however, the rest just kept pouring.
“He makes me feel like it’s okay for me to let my guard down because he won’t get scared off by the difficult parts of me.
Because he won’t make me open up and then hold my feelings against me.
Because he won’t see it as a chance to take advantage.
I feel like it’s okay to be all of me around him. ”
I took a deep breath when my lungs tried to shrivel in on themselves. Wow. Unplanned word vomit. I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around my chest in a futile attempt to keep all my feelings inside.
“Good.” Esra giggled, unaware of my internal struggle. “You deserve that kind of love.”
Love? I took the ring off and rotated it between my fingertips, letting the sunlight glint off it, but my eyes were on the empty space that the ring usually occupied.
My hand looked almost too bare that way.
But even if the ring was a new addition, my feelings for Brooks hadn’t actually changed much over the years.
Brooks had become a safe harbor within weeks, if not days, of meeting him four years ago.
I had changed. I had sharper edges and shadows that followed me now, had a harder time letting anyone in.
All that trust that had felt platonic back then, it had morphed into something deeper, something that had its roots in me, because when I started building walls to protect myself, it was already in there, growing through the cracks in the stone.
I slid the ring back over my finger and fixed the bracelets covering my tattoo and scar.
I wasn’t sure if this was love. But it was a sign of life and that was worth a lot.
“Why does he call you Addie?”
“That’s how I introduced myself.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I laughed, “I was twenty, meeting all these people in the entertainment industry and the conversation usually went like this: Hi, I’m Adriana—Oh, like the supermodel?
—Yes, exactly like the supermodel because my mother was a Y2K teen mom watching the Victoria’s Secret runway when she went into labor.
I was almost called Heidi. My baby pics are me in angel wings and a pink velour onesie that she hand-bedazzled with the word ‘Juicy’ because that seemed like peak fashion to her—That was usually followed by awkward silence. ”
“To be fair, those probably are some iconic baby pictures.” She laughed so hard she snorted bright blue popsicle out through her nose.
I laughed too, all the worries about my walls forgotten. I held my own popsicle away from me and hid my face behind my hand just in case I started snorting popsicle, too. “It was easier to go by Addie,” I wheezed through the giggle fit.
“What are you two laughing about? And you better make it age appropriate for a twelve-year-old.” Noah had jogged over.
He didn’t hesitate to step in between Esra’s knees, his hands gripping the fence on either side of her hips.
For a couple that had been very secretive when they first started hooking up, they were now all over each other any chance they got.
Skye followed close behind, helmet swinging back and forth. “Can I please get a popsicle, too?”
“I don’t know. Depends.” I jumped off the fence. “Did you finish all your…horse-sitting?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have to clean the horse or something?” Yeah, for a small-town girl who grew up in the vicinity of horses, I knew jack shit.
“No,” she said, but shot a quick look at Noah. Oh, sneaky liar.
I raised my brows at her and propped my free hand on my hip, doing my best to look serious while still holding a bright blue popsicle.
Skye groaned.
“It’s fine. I’ll take care of it today, but in exchange you have to bring me a popsicle next time,” Noah said.
“Deal,” she beamed.
I wasn’t sure if this was good babysitting, but I had thrown my hair into a high ponytail and my neck was still sticky with sweat—who was I to deny a girl her popsicle?
I hadn’t even paid by the time Skye had run off to get in one last ride on Journey Downstream before the park closed for the day.
I could have paid with my employee badge, but Brooks had grabbed my phone and programmed his card into my contactless payments against my protests.
I just wanted to try it. And buying his daughter a popsicle on a hot day seemed like the kind of purchase that wouldn’t get awkward later.
Even though my name wasn’t on the card, the payment went through without a hitch.
“Oh, by the way,” Katie said, swiping away the print-receipt option, “I really liked the new version of the song. I haven’t heard it in a hot second, but I’ve had the video on loop all morning.”
“Huh?”
“ ‘Dreams.’ ”
I still must have looked lost, because she pulled her phone from her pocket—a fireable offense in a historical theme park—with a video already queued up.
My face was on her phone. In close-up. HD enough to show every fucking pore on my nose.
I only needed that one freeze-frame to know when and where that video was taken.
I hadn’t stood behind a microphone in years—and that dress was a brand-new addition to my closet.
“Thanks, I’m so glad you liked it,” I said with a well-trained smile, then took off toward the ride Skye had hopped on.
I sat on the bench at the exit of the boat ride, so she’d find me without much searching, and opened my socials.
The notifications were muted for good reason, but that meant I had missed a bunch of tags.
I followed a rabbit hole of comments and tags to a video posted yesterday on an otherwise empty account.
Brooks Monroe and Adriana Banks—Dreams—new—Rock’n & Roll’n live performance
It had over two million views. My throat closed up at that number alone.
I let the video play on mute, and felt every muscle lock up.
It wasn’t just a grainy zoomed-in kind of video taken by someone in the audience.
Someone must have been in there with a professional camera or something.
There were slow and steady zooms. Sharp close-ups of the way Brooks and I smiled at each other as we sang the chorus into the same microphone, our noses touching.
It would have been a great video—if I had consented to that night being filmed.
My stomach soured.
It was supposed to be my choice.
Had I let myself be manipulated into performing? Was that why Brooks had taken me to an open mic night only to harp on about his new house? So I would feel compelled to make my own moves and get up on stage? And then reward me with orgasms like a Pavlovian singer?