Chapter 55
Shay
I sat in Raine’s recliner with baby Jameson in my arms, staring at the television screen.
Recently, things had started to look up for me.
I’d applied for a job at a university to teach screenwriting as an adjunct professor, and I’d been called back for a second interview.
If it weren’t for Karla, I would’ve never considered teaching, but it turned out I had a passion for educating people on the written word.
Sure, it wasn’t Hollywood, but it felt like a huge opportunity for me to receive.
I wanted to celebrate the news with Landon, but he was off in New York City doing promo with Sarah for their upcoming film. Raine and Hank invited me over for some morning cocktails—and I think, secretly, so I could hold Jameson and allow them to get a break.
I didn’t mind at all—Jameson was a little saint.
The television was turned on to Good Morning America, and we all excitedly sat planted around the screen, waiting to watch Landon’s interview.
When he appeared on the screen, my heart began racing faster just from the sight of him. He looked so handsome sitting on the stage.
“Yes, filming this movie has been a thrill for me,” Landon expressed. “Working with Sarah was a dream come true,” he exclaimed, and I laughed at the comment. He made me well aware of the bullshit lies he had to say on camera thanks to the production company.
I could see how he turned up his acting persona when he was on camera. He stood a little taller and smiled wider, but those eyes? They were still his, and I could see the real Landon whenever I looked into them.
“Yes,” Sarah agreed, placing her hand against his knee.
“That bitch,” Raine blurted out.
I couldn’t agree more.
Landon patted her hand playfully and removed it from his leg and went on with the conversation as if Sarah wasn’t a factor at all.
That’s my boy.
“So it seems you two enjoy working together,” the interviewer observed. “This is the second time you’ve worked together after all, right?”
“Yes—” Landon started to answer, but Sarah cut him off.
“It’s been beyond amazing, and I’m excited to share with you that we are going to be working together on another film this year called Easton. It’s a beautiful film about two lovers who went through the biggest of storms with one another,” Sarah said, making my mouth drop open.
She went on and on about the screenplay, spoiling the whole plot without a care in the world. The whole plot of my script.
What in the world? How did she know about my story? She’d spoiled the whole thing with a smile on her face on national television, and I saw the shock that sat in Landon’s eyes.
“What just happened? It looks like Landon’s about to have a panic attack. He normally has a better poker face,” Raine remarked. She turned to see me and raised an eyebrow after seeing my expression. “Seriously. What’s going on?”
“That’s my story,” I choked out.
“Wait, what? That’s your plot?” Hank asked, stunned.
“Yes. I’ve been working on that for the longest time. It’s my best piece yet. And Sarah Sims just spoiled it to the world.”
“Holy shit,” Raine breathed out. “What a bitch!”
The only way Sarah could’ve known anything about my script was if Landon told her, and I couldn’t figure out why he’d do that. Why would he take something so important to me and ruin it? That script was my baby, my star, and he handed it over to another woman. A woman who fired me.
I left Raine’s house and hurried home. I tore my place apart, searching for my words. Searching for my manuscript that should’ve been sitting in the stack with the others. But it was gone.
* * *
“I can explain,” Landon said as he stood at my apartment door a day later. I didn’t even know why I opened the door for him. I figured he’d find his way to me after the interview took place, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what kind of excuse he was going to try to feed me.
My eyes were swollen from spending the previous night crying into my pillow. I knew there was no way he could come back from what he’d done, from the way he’d betrayed me and my words. Still, I wanted to hear what he was going to say.
“Go ahead. Try.”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rounded his shoulders forward.
“Sarah must’ve stolen the script from my trailer while I was doing a scene.
It was the only way she could’ve gotten it.
After I told her to piss off the other day, she must’ve felt as if she needed to get revenge on me or something.
So she took something from me in order to hurt you. ”
“I knew that already,” I said.
He looked up to me with hope in his eyes. “You did?”
“Yes. After working with Sarah for a while, I learned what kind of person she was. I’m not surprised by that at all. What I am surprised at is the fact that you had my script in the first place.”
His mouth parted to speak, but no words came out.
I nodded. “Exactly. You betrayed me.”
“No, Shay. It’s not like that. I wanted to try to help you after you got fired, but—”
“You didn’t believe I could figure something out on my own. I get it.”
“That’s not it at all. Of course I believed you could find something. That’s why I changed my mind and decided to not show anyone your work. I took the script without thinking it through, and I made a huge mistake.”
“You took something that was mine without my permission. I can’t trust you anymore, Landon. I’ve dealt with enough liars in my life. I can’t do it again with you.”
“Shay . . . please . . .”
“You should go,” I said, placing my hands against the door. I began closing it, closing him out of my life, because it was the only thing I could think to do.
“Please, Shay. We can figure this out. I know there’s a way we can work around this. We’ve been through so much together. We can’t let this break us,” he pleaded, his eyes filled with emotions.
“Exactly, Landon. We’ve been through so much, and I’m tired. I don’t want to do this game where every few years I get disappointed and hurt. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“But I love you,” he whispered, his voice soaked in pain. “I love you so fucking much, Shay. And we were so close. We were so damn close to our forever.”
“Maybe forever was just a dream. Not something that would ever be our reality.”
“You don’t mean that. I know you, and you know me. You know we’re supposed to be together. We’ve been through fucking wars, Shay. Don’t let this put an end to us. Don’t close me out.”
I had to close him out. It was the only way we’d put an end to the painful story that we’d been living for way too long. It started when we were teenagers, and it grew too big. It was now time to close our novel. It was time to write our final words.
“I’m sorry, Landon. This is it. We’re over.”
I shut my door and listened to him hammer on it from the other side, but I couldn’t reopen it. I couldn’t let him back in—no matter how much my heart longed for his love.
* * *
“You’re afraid of love,” Mima explained at Sunday dinner after hearing about the fallout between Landon and me. She was so concrete in her statement, as if she didn’t see the flaw in her words.
I shook my head, shocked by my grandmother’s comment. Did she not hear how Landon betrayed me? How he took my work without my permission and allowed it to fall into the wrong hands? What did that have to do with me being afraid of love?
“That has nothing to do with this issue,” I said. “My love for Landon has nothing to do with me breaking things off with him. He betrayed me.”
Just like every other man in my life. That was what men did—they let women down.
“No. He made a mistake, and you are using that mistake as a reason to run. Truth is, you would’ve found any slipup he made and used it as an excuse to run the other way, because you are afraid of love.”
“I’m not afraid of love,” I said through gritted teeth. A knot sat in the pit of my stomach as those words floated in my head.
“Sweetheart, she’s right,” Mom agreed, reaching out to take my hand into hers.
“I see so much of me in you, and I blame myself for that. You don’t trust men.
You have this idea that no matter what, they will always let you down, and I know I instilled that into your system.
I helped build that fear, and I am so sorry for that, because it’s not true. Not all men are evil.”
“But they all let us down,” I whispered, allowing that deep, embedded truth to slip from between my lips.
“That’s not true,” Mima said. “Do men mess up from time to time? Of course, but so do women. We are humans—perfectly imperfect. We make mistakes. We go right when we should’ve gone left.
We fall into bad habits. We sometimes hurt the ones we love the most. We try and we fail, but we also learn from our mistakes and try to do the right thing moving forward.
I know Landon, and I know you. I know how you both love one another with a love that is bigger than this world.
Don’t run from that love out of fear, mi amor.
Don’t let fear drive you forever. If you do, you’ll end up living in a story that you weren’t meant to be a part of.
Don’t throw away your story before you reach your happily ever after. ”
“Maybe I don’t get the happy ending,” I said, lowering my head. “Maybe Mom was the one meant to break the family curse, not me.”
“No. It’s both of us,” Mom said, still holding my hand.
“We get the happy ending. Just because you’re sitting in the middle of your story with Landon doesn’t mean the rest of your pages are doomed.
The ending is going to be worth it, Shay.
No happily ever after was ever made from a perfectly knit story.
See this one through. Don’t give up on him just yet. ”
I heard their words, I listened to their encouragement, too, but the fear of it all was too loud in my head to drown out.
They were right. I was afraid of love. I was terrified of being hurt time and time again, and I didn’t know how to get past my greatest fear.
* * *
I tried to shake the heaviness of ending things with Landon. I tried to distract myself. My body felt exhausted by the emotions I’d released over the past few weeks. My mind was still spinning at full speed ahead, but going shopping seemed to be the only way I could distract myself slightly.
As I walked through a farmers’ market in Chicago, I was surprised when someone began to call out my name.
“Shay? Shay Gable?” the voice said, making me turn around on my heels as I held my hot cocoa in my hands.
It took me a second to register who I was looking at, but once it clicked, it clicked hard. “Monica?” There she was, the girl from high school who used to be madly in love with Landon. I couldn’t blame her for that. I understood how easy it was to love a man like him.
Monica looked different than she had back when we were kids. She looked so remarkably healthy. There was a glow to her that I’d never seen before. She was also at least eight months pregnant as she waddled over toward me.
“Oh my gosh! I thought that was you,” Monica exclaimed. She walked over and gave me a hug. I didn’t know that Monica and I were the type to hug, but I allowed it. I was still stunned by how good she appeared. “Geez, what has it been . . . fifteen, sixteen years?”
“Something like that.” I smiled. “You look amazing, Monica.”
She smiled softly and combed her dark-brown hair behind her ears.
“Thank you. I’m exhausted, clearly,” she said, gesturing toward her stomach.
“But I am good. It’s so funny, I was just telling my husband about you.
I saw articles about you and Landon being together. Talk about a blast from the past.”
A bubble of anxiety hit my stomach. “Yeah. It’s a pretty wild life Landon lives.”
“He handles it well, though,” she told me. “You know, I always knew if he ended up with someone, it would be you,” Monica said.
“Oh, no, I—”
She cut me off and continued talking. “He was so in love with you in high school. I think that’s what drove me wild as a kid.
I wanted someone to look at me the way Landon looked at you.
And he was always looking at you. Even before that silly bet.
I told him a few years ago that he should’ve reached out to you, but he said it was too late.
I told him to try, though. Because he deserved to love someone like you. ”
“You two stayed in contact after high school?”
Monica gave a shy grin and nodded. Her hands rested against her stomach.
“He saved my life. Time and time again. I struggled a lot with my mental health, but Landon was always there, checking in on me. After his career took off, he even paid for me to stay a full year at one of the top rehab centers in Arizona. I got the best treatment of my life because of him. He’s the godfather to my oldest daughter, and he’s also the one who introduced me to my husband, Stephen.
Stephen was a sound technician on one of Landon’s films.” She looked over toward the man who was standing at a dessert booth.
When he glanced over toward Monica, I saw the sparkle in his eyes.
There was such a softness to his stare, an indescribable amount of love.
Monica turned back toward me. “He’s the love of my life,” she swore. The way those words rolled off her tongue made my broken heart beat a little faster. Because my heart felt the same way about a certain man.
Monica grinned. “And to think it’s all because of Landon Harrison. Funny how things work out. I owe Landon, well, my life.”
I was starting to think a lot of people owed Landon their lives. Greyson. Karla. Monica.
Me.
Monica and I exchanged a few more words before giving one another a goodbye hug. As I wandered around the holiday market, I couldn’t help but think about how I sent away the one person who was there for, well . . . everyone.
All because of my own stupid issues.
Me and my stupid heart.