Chapter Twenty-Four
Wes calls about an hour after I hang up with Amelia. I don’t answer. I send four more calls to voicemail before the day is over.
It’s another three days before he calls again.
I ignore that too. Hours later, long after midnight, with occasional fireworks still going off from the July Fourth holiday, I’m still at my desk.
I’m already ahead on my workload, but editing another set of client photos is a tidy way to avoid arguing with myself over listening to the last voicemail Wes left—but I’m not distracted enough to not notice when my phone lights up with a text.
I’ll back off for now, but I’m not giving up on us.
One tiny sob escapes before I ruthlessly swallow the rest and delete the voicemail without listening to it. I’m not strong enough to face that underneath the anger, underneath the hurt, I miss Wes.
Some part of me wants to forgive him. Late at night, when I’m alone in my bed, a little voice inside me whispers that maybe he deserves a second chance. He made things right with Nature Shots, just like he said he would.
But I’ve always known that everything between us was little more than a house of cards ready to collapse at the first stiff breeze.
I knew getting too close to him would turn me into collateral damage.
That when it all came down, I would be the one scraping myself up off the floor yet again.
That Wes would do what he always does and somehow skate by without a single consequence.
And for the ten days after our disastrous phone call, it sure as hell looks like that’s exactly what happens. At least until I finally text Tracy for permission to use some of her wedding photos to promote my hopeful pivot to adventure weddings.
Oh good. You ARE alive.
I deserve that. I’ve been avoiding Tracy—and everyone else—to throw myself into work. It’s not unusual for June, when she’s still out chasing, and I’m up to my eyeballs in brides, but I won’t pretend I haven’t been leaning hard into the excuse this year.
Sorry! June is always nuts.
Less than twenty seconds after I send my reply, Tracy calls. My thumb hovers over the screen as I debate sending her to voicemail. There’s no way she’s calling right this second just to talk about a handful of photos on my website.
Matt must have told her about the breakup by now.
Of course she wants to know what happened.
The worst part is, I can’t even blame her.
Any normal person would have called and unloaded the whole sad story, but her husband is the closest thing Wes has to a best friend.
Putting Tracy in the middle isn’t fair either.
But I just asked her for a favor. And I can’t avoid everyone forever, so I swallow past the lump in my throat, squeeze my eyes shut at the tears that seem to lurk just beneath the surface these days, and answer the call.
“Of course you can use the photos,” Tracy says by way of greeting.
“Great! I’ll—”
“We ran into Wes this afternoon,” she cuts in. “He looks awful. Like he hasn’t slept in a week.”
Does he feel like a part of him died too?
“You know Wes,” I say with forced cheer. “He doesn’t know when to stop chasing.”
Tracy doesn’t laugh at my pitiful attempt at humor.
“He hasn’t talked to Matt in weeks beyond trading intel.
He’s been keeping to himself. We both thought he was moping about you going home, but then earlier today…
I’m worried, Sloane. I think he’s lost weight.
He just pumped gas, went inside to grab some energy drinks, and left without so much as a wave. Is everything okay between you two?”
I blink, surprised. “He didn’t tell Matt?”
“Tell Matt what?”
It’s a struggle not to choke on the sudden knot in my throat. A wounded noise escapes despite my best effort to keep it in, and Tracy’s tone goes from frustrated to concerned in a blink. “Sloane? Hey, you okay?”
“I…We…It’s over.” I stumble over my words, but at least my voice only shakes a little. “You’ve known Wes a long time too. He’s not relationship material.”
Saying it aloud hurts more than it should.
“Once you two finally got together, Matt told me how much Wes has always talked about you,” Tracy says slowly. “He kept it to himself to avoid putting me in a weird spot with you—knowing I’d want to tell you—since he’d promised Wes he wouldn’t let it get back to you.”
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “That can’t be true.”
“Do you remember the twin tornadoes in Wyoming last year? How we all went to the bar that night?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Everyone was in such a good mood. You were in such a good mood that you hugged Wes. He brought that hug up for months. I don’t know what happened, but I saw you together.
The way you look at each other…that doesn’t come around all that often.
” She pauses, and then more gently than I deserve, she asks, “When did it end?”
“A little over a week ago,” I mumble, like I don’t know that it was June 30th at 1:57 p.m. when everything fell apart.
There’s a beat of silence. “And you’ve kept this to yourself this whole time? You could have called me, Sloane.”
I deserve the reproach in her voice. I open my mouth to explain that I didn’t want to put her in the middle of it.
The words die on my tongue. It’s what I’ve been telling myself, but the truth is, I’m used to handling my problems on my own.
I’m used to not having help, to having to rely only on me, myself, and I at all times.
It’s part of why this all hurts so much. Wes dangled the possibility of something better in front of me for weeks—and then snatched it all away.
“It’s just been a lot,” I say. “I was going to tell you. I…needed to get my head on straight about it first.”
“What the hell happened?”
Tracy groans when I finish telling her the whole ugly story.
“Goddammit, Wes.” She mutters something else under her breath too low for me to hear, and then I catch a muffled They broke up followed by the faint sound of Matt’s swearing.
“Did you tell Nature Shots what happened?” Tracy asks, her voice clear again.
“I can’t believe he did that to you. I’m so sorry. ”
“He called them. They were gracious about it, but…” I blink away the fresh burn of tears that I don’t have the energy for. “I can’t get past it. That he went behind my back like that.”
“What did he say when you talked to him?”
That photo is stunning. The concept, the composition, the technical pieces. It belongs on that cover. You belong on that cover. I was trying to help.
When Wes first said those things to me, they sounded like nothing but excuses. Even his apologies sounded like excuses.
Except rather than using those words as an opening salvo in the manipulation Olympics, he quietly backed off. No lavish gifts designed to blind me to his crimes. No endless phone calls and texts to wear me down. No overblown promises. No volatile flip-flopping from nasty name-calling to begging.
In short, none of the standard behavior I’ve come to associate with the words I’m sorry.
“He said he was trying to help,” I tell Tracy. “It’s all just words.”
“That sounds very…final.”
“It doesn’t really matter anymore. I’m going to put my energy into this adventure wedding thing and try not to think about it,” I say firmly.
Tracy’s silence is loud as the seconds tick by, but eventually she must decide not to push me. She tells me about her shot, and eventually, our conversation turns toward our usual topics without any further discussion of the Wes-shaped elephant lurking on the line with us.
The first half of July melts away in a frenzy of weddings and arranging bookings for my new business model. As exhausting as it can be, I’m grateful to fall into bed too tired to do much more than pass out.
My social media does respectable numbers most days—everyone loves a glamorous wedding—but when I put up a shot of Tracy and Matt, along with details on my pivot to smaller, more intimate ceremonies in nontraditional locations, my DMs and inbox explode.
Wes was right. There’s an enormous market for this sort of thing.
Except I’m not thinking about Wes anymore. A two-week pity party is more than enough.
If only my heart would listen.
The morning in late July when the winners are set to be announced via a live-stream presentation, I take out my frustration and anxiety on some poor, hapless chicken breasts, pounding them into thin cutlets and then tossing them into a homemade marinade.
My brothers are coming over for dinner tonight.
It may not be the best move with the contest announcement, but things have gotten better between us.
The very long talk we had after I finally lost it on Mom helped. She’s not speaking to any of us at the moment, which is just as well. I think we all need the break. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop feeling somewhat parental toward Eric and Sam, but we’re trying to figure it out.
Besides, Sam always brings the strong microbrews he likes. I can drown my disappointment in expensive beer.
Still, I can’t help wondering if I even have a real shot at winning. Amelia’s words have dogged my steps for the last three weeks, rattling around in my thoughts on late-night drives back from venues.
I want to win. Badly. Not just for the money. Not just to prove myself to the chasing community. Not even for the bragging rights of being the first woman on the Nature Shots cover.
I want to win for me. To prove to myself that I’m the woman in the photo. Brave. Capable. A force of nature.
Unable to sit still, I pace my office like a caged beast while Carter Walsh starts the video call and runs through the preliminaries.
Just to torture everyone a little more, the sponsors take turns expressing their appreciation for our art and the unique challenges that go into photographing storms, blah, blah, blah.