Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Delaney
Roman doesn’t just hug, he ambushes.
One second, I’m standing in the middle of the market square, still reeling from the surprise of Wild Reverie casually popping up on stage, and the next…
“Laney!”
A blur of leather jacket, chains, and turbulent frontman energy slams into me.
My feet leave the ground. I squeak as Roman spins me in a tight circle, his laugh hot against my ear while I cling to his shoulders and try not to burst into tears like a kid who just dropped her ice cream.
“You’re here,” he says, squeezing me so tight my ribs creak. “And alive. And not in jail. Ten out of ten. I need details. All of them.”
“Put me down,” I wheeze.
“No, I’m never putting you down.”
Ezra appears at Roman’s elbow like a calm, exasperated ghost. “Ro. Let the woman breathe.”
Roman reluctantly sets me back on my feet but keeps his hands on my arms, as if he thinks I’ll evaporate if he lets go. Ezra steps in and folds me into a hug that’s the exact opposite—quiet, grounding, sure.
“Hey, Del,” he murmurs.
Cedar and coffee and warmth. I didn’t realize how much I missed that until right now.
“Missed you,” I croak against his shoulder.
He squeezes once. “We missed you more.”
Creed barrels in next, sunglasses on despite the shade from the tents. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t our favorite culinary arsonist.”
“I didn’t burn anything,” I protest.
“Yet,” he laughs. “The day is young, chef.”
And then…
“Delaney Rivers.”
Sloane hits me like a glitter bomb. Arms around my neck, lilac hair in my face, perfume and sugar.
“Hey, firecracker.”
She pulls back, framing my face in her hands, scanning me, checking for damage.
“You look…” She squints. “Better. A little feral. Hot feral. Love that for you.”
I make a helpless sound that might be a laugh. “Thank you?”
“Hey.” Her voice softens. “You’re with us. I’m going to steal you for a while, okay?”
I nod as she loops her arm through mine and glares at Roman.
“You three go sign things and be adored or whatever. I need girl time before I explode.”
“I’m basically a girl,” Roman argues.
“Your primary coping mechanism is buying people cheese fries. You can join later.”
Ezra sighs, already resigned, and gently drags Roman away. Creed gets waylaid by a cluster of teenagers waving notebooks and phones.
And then, for the first time since the set ended, it’s just me and Sloane.
She steers me toward a picnic table tucked off to the side of the coffee tent, away from the main swirl of stalls and people. We grab iced coffees, she pays, glowering at me when I protest, and we sit on the same side of the bench, shoulders touching.
Sloane doesn’t ease in.
“Spill,” she says, bumping her shoulder against mine. “Those video calls and voice notes you’ve sent us are a PG13 version. I want the director’s cut.”
I stare at the condensation sliding down my cup. “I don’t… I don’t want to dump all that on you right after you played. This is supposed to be fun and—”
She pokes my thigh. “Delaney Jean Rivers—”
“That’s not my middle name.”
“It is in my heart. Listen to me. We were on tour, not sealed in a bunker. We saw the articles, we saw his statement, we saw the internet do what the internet does. We heard your half answers on the phone. I let you dodge because you sounded like you were hanging on by a thread. But I told you, when we got home, I wanted the real story.”
My throat tightens. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Anywhere,” she declares with a one-shouldered shrug. “Start with the part that hurts the most.”
That… narrows it down exactly zero.
I inhale carefully. The coffee is cold and sweet and not enough to steady me, but it’s something to hold.
“He blamed me,” I whisper. “The second it went public. I walked into his office, and he was already furious, waving his phone around. Pictures. Headlines. ‘Power imbalance,’ ‘anonymous sources,’ all of it. He kept saying I’d ruined everything.”
Sloane’s expression sharpens, bright eyes gone flint-hard. “What did you say?”
“I told him I hadn’t told anyone. That I never wanted any of this. That I loved him and we could figure it out. Which is…” I laugh weakly. “Horrifying to say out loud now.”
“It’s not horrifying,” she half whispers. “It’s human. He was older, your boss, and he knew exactly how to make you feel chosen. That doesn’t make you stupid, Laney. That makes him practiced.”
I bite my lip, hard. “He said I climbed into his bed to screw my way up the ladder. That I got ‘attached’ and misunderstood everything. That he only ever mentored me.”
Sloane’s hands clench around her coffee cup. “I’m going to set him on fire.”
I look down at my knees. “He told the owners I’d misread things. That there was no relationship. That he was ‘reflecting on boundaries,’ and I was a confused employee. Then HR called and laid out this… script.”
I can still hear the HR woman’s voice in my head.
“They said the restaurant group was protecting itself. That it was better for me if I signed the NDA—they’d give me a few months’ pay and a mutual non-disparagement clause.”
Sloane makes a disgusted noise. “Of course they did.”
“If I talked to the press,” I go on, the words starting to tumble faster now that they’re moving at all, “or contradicted his statement, they said they’d ‘have to reevaluate my severance package’ and could ‘refute defamatory claims.’ Which is HR for ‘we will ruin you back.’”
Her hand lands on my knee. “And you signed.”
“I signed.” Shame spikes hot behind my eyes. “I needed the money. My rent was due. No one else was going to hire the sous chef in the scandal article. I chose survival over pride.” My laugh comes out jagged. “I’m so mad at myself for trading my voice for that.”
Sloane’s eyes fill. “Honey, you were drowning, and they threw you a lifeline tied to an anchor. You did what you had to do not to sink. That’s not shameful. That’s… math.”
I blink hard. “It doesn’t feel noble. It just feels like I let him own my story.”
She leans her shoulder into mine. “Maybe publicly, for now. But privately? With people who matter? You still get to tell the truth. And you just did.”
The lump in my throat gets bigger. “Nobody would look at me. Not really. Except Rosa. Everyone else just pretended I wasn’t there.”
Sloane’s jaw flexes. “You worked your ass off for that place.”
“I lived in that kitchen,” I whisper. “I missed birthdays and holidays and sleep for that kitchen. And they shoved me out the back door like I was a health code violation.”
Her hand slides up to squeeze my arm. “I hate them.”
“I wish I did,” I say quietly. “I miss the work. I miss service. I miss yelling ‘behind’ and actually knowing I belonged there.”
“And your mother?”
I let out a strangled sound. “She sent me an article with no subject line and one sentence: ‘I warned you about men like that.’ So. That was fun.”
“Oh, good,” Sloane bites back tightly. “When we’re done setting Marcus on fire, we’ll move on to your mother.”
A shaky laugh escapes me. “One of the reasons I came here was because there’s no one left to really disappoint. Not like that. I couldn’t bear another ‘I told you so.’”
She tips her head, studying me. “So you came to my safe haven.”
That pulls a wet laugh out of me.
She nudges my side. “Okay, so that’s the ‘why you left.’ Tell me about Sunridge.”
I stare out at the square where Sadie is trying to balance three mini pumpkins on Micah’s head while Caleb pretends not to notice and Boone negotiates with a vendor over hay prices.
“It’s good. The work is… I love it.”
“And the men?” she presses, eyes dancing a little now. “Because last time we talked, you were very adamant about ‘no more messy boss situations.’ And yet, rumors have already reached my ears, Rivers.”
Heat rushes into my cheeks. “What rumors?”
She slips into an absolutely terrible imitation of Silas’s drawl. “‘Sunshine’s got a mouth that could ruin a man.’”
“Oh no.” I cover my face. “He did not say that.”
“He did,” she announces cheerfully. “Or that’s what I heard anyway.”
I groan into my hands. “Terribly. It’s going terribly.”
“Define terribly,” she says.
I peek at her through my fingers. “I met Silas the first night I was in town. At The Hollow. I didn’t know who he was. He flirted, I… needed to not feel like a scandal headline for five minutes, and one thing led to another.”
Her eyes go wide. “You had a one-night stand with your future housemate.”
“I didn’t know he lived there,” I hiss. “I didn’t know he was Boone’s best friend, or Caleb’s cousin, or that he would stroll into the kitchen in the morning and find me covered in flour.”
She slaps the table, delighted. “Oh wow, that’s incredible. Horrible. But incredible.”
“He took it well,” I admit grudgingly. “Too well. He thinks this is hilarious. I think this is a cosmic joke.”
“And Boone?” she asks, sobering a little. “The boss boss?”
I stare down at my coffee. “He’s… intense. Very controlled. Very ‘there is a plan, and you will not deviate from it.’ But he’s good with Sadie. Really good. He looks at her like she’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the planet.”
Sloane hums. “Grumpy single dad cowboy with a martyr complex. Got it. And Caleb?”
My stomach does that fluttery swoop it did in the barn. “He’s quiet. Soft spoken. He’s the one who makes sure everyone eats and the horses are okay and Silas doesn’t accidentally die. He feels… safe. Which is dangerous, because—”
“Because you’re attracted to all three of them,” she finishes, not unkindly. “At the same time.”
I close my eyes. “I hate everything.”
“Do you?” she asks softly.
I think about Silas’s hands on my waist, Boone’s eyes on me in the kitchen this morning, Caleb’s careful, earnest questions over dishwater.
“No,” I admit. “That’s the problem. I don’t hate any of it. But I also can’t… I cannot survive another Marcus situation. Another workplace implosion. Another round of people whispering that I slept my way into a job.”
She nods slowly. “So you’re stuck between wanting and self-preservation.”