Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
RHYS
“Is everything okay?” Nicole leans forward on her stool, trying to catch my eyes. “You've been quiet today.”
“I think it’s something I ate,” I reply, the hitch in my voice betraying me. “Not feeling one hundred percent.”
Nicole isn’t buying my fake smile. Why would she? I feel numb. The darkness of Saturday was so complete, Sunday a complete drunken write-off, not even the surgical-grade lighting in Nicole’s mad scientist office could brighten my Monday mood. I’m trapped in a room full of beakers with sticky notes pasted on every inch of available wall space. Energy sapped from tossing and turning all night.
Focus is nearly impossible.
Nicole powers down her computer and swivels to face me. Francis and Rita left to get lunch, but the emptiness in my stomach couldn't be filled with food.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
For the past hour, she’s schooled me in her secret sauce system on how she grades grapes for readiness. She tracks acid, sweetness, and tannins daily, grading them on a one-to-five scale in her Moleskin notebook. When I asked how she knew the wine was ready, she offered a coy smile. “That’s why Evelyn pays me the big bucks.”
But we both know the topic has veered away from rosé production.
I meet her eyes and try to sound pulled together.“The weekend was a bit rough.”
Nicole nods, tapping one finger thoughtfully on her lower lip. Dani has dropped in every day during filming. Every time she did, we joked and played off each other, thinking we were being so discreet. But it’s like me sneaking home at midnight when I was thirteen, raiding the fridge for munchies when Mom wandered in. She sniffed the air and asked questions while I denied everything, a haze of pot smoke clinging to me.
With no sight of Dani today, Nicole puts two and two together. “I was walking the lower vineyards after lunch on Saturday,” she says.“A lot of commotion drifted down from your place.”
One dark eyebrow rises in my direction. How lawyer-like of her, giving me just enough rope to hang myself. My chest tightens uncomfortably. I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to have someone give a shit. For a tense moment, I debate if this is a line I want to cross, revealing my disappointment and frustrations.
But if not now, when?
One quivering breath later, I ask, “Have you ever felt that no matter how much you try to outrun yourself, you smack back into whatever it is you’re trying to escape?”
Nicole hums a sound of agreement, sun-bronzed biceps flexing as she crosses her arms. “Welcome to the frustration of life, kid. I worked a hundred hours a week, a slave to the system and the money I thought would make me happy. Killed vacations to take on new cases. Killed my marriage,” she says, a matter of fact, remorse in the rearview mirror. “Not that it wasn’t slowly dying anyway. Turns out all the big dick energy, dicks in general, had to go. Best decision I ever made. I’m poorer on paper, but ecstatic on every other metric.” She taps a finger on my knee. “Where are you at?”
My smile flickers, then fades. “The slowly dying part?”
Nicole digests that, smart enough not to jump to conclusions without working over the available information. “What would make you come alive?”
To stem the pain of having to rethink every life choice I’ve made until this moment? is what flashes in my mind.
What I say is, “Not being alone. Patching up the relationship with my older brother. And having the courage to face my father. Not to blame him for how things turned out.”
Nicole rolls her stool closer, eyes bright and blue and steady. “Can you tell him that?” she asks gently.
And there it is—The Question.
The silence stretches for several seconds, an abyss as deep and long as all the lost time I need to make up.
I’ve tried to imagine the scenario. Me, the black sheep, emboldened enough to crumble the Peter Trenton dynasty of arrogance and bullying? Would he allow the toxic loop to close? Let me finish a sentence for once? Or will it be business as usual? King of the shit birds picking at me, finding something to complain about.
Even my birth pissed him off.
Mom assumed her thirdborn would arrive early—stats show that is often the case. But I arrived late into the world by four days (typical slacker, Dad huffed for years)on a cold December night that coincided with the Trenton Talent Management Christmas party. With Dad stuck in the hospital waiting for my ass to show up, he missed out on signing Sarah McLaughlin. Ever since, he’s bitched to anyone who'll listen that I'm the reason he missed his own party, allowing “dirtbag opportunist” Terry McBride to snatch up Sarah over drinks.
I was a curse from day one. Can he ever see me in a different light?
“I can,” I say haltingly.
“When?”
Nicole slides my untouched glass of water in front of me. I take measured sips, feeling a deep urge to hug her. I bet she and Dad would’ve been besties back in the day—ruthless, focused, miserable even in victory.
“Soon?”
She taps my knee once more. “Commit. That’s the only way it happens. For your father, your brother. And Dani.”
With her tender smile, my breath steadies. Life is never about easy answers or a single magical fix. Nothing happens without trying.
But what should I do about Dani?
The door suddenly flies open, and Evelyn swans in, abuzz with energy. But she skids to a stop, shy of the doorway. The heaviness of our conversation lingers like sludge in the air.
“Oh, dear,” she says. “Am I interrupting anything?” Her gaze flicks to Nicole, who silently conveys with a nod that it’s cool.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
Evelyn insisted on hugs from day one, and I like the old bird, so we embrace. Decked out in an all-black Adidas tennis outfit with nails painted gold, she’s rocking the ‘tude.
“You’ll never guess who I saw at the Home Hardware,” she rolls a third stool over to start the gossip train, “with what looked like a stripper hanging on his arm! Honest to God, women these days try to get away with wearing nothing. So déclassé.”
Nicole chuckles. “Our old friend Tomas at it again?” To me, she says, “He latches onto every piece of fresh tourist meat in town. The younger the better.”
“Thank goodness he didn’t see me,” Evelyn huffs. “Too enamored with the boobs spilling off Miss Russia.”
A thought flickers at the back of my mind, the briefest thing. But I shelve it for now.
“Is he the one giving you grief?” I ask. “Dani said he was stirring up shit at the meeting the other night.”
Evelyn grumbles, “That’s him. The pride of Osoyoos. And then,” she continues, “I dropped in to visit that battle ax, Gail. She gives two hoots about Tomas and his attempts at character assassination. Droned on and on about how the community is pushing her to clamp down on Nero Vino and Divine Debauchery.” She glances at me. “Mind you, she and Dani didn’t see eye to eye the other day. About your following descending like locusts.”
“How is Dani?” I ask, trying for casual. “I haven’t seen her today.”
“Horrible!” she exclaims. “Poor thing has food poisoning but powering through the day.”
With a knowing glance in my direction, Nicole says, “Must be something in the water.”
“What?” Evelyn’s head is on a swivel, eyes darting back and forth between us. “Are you not feeling well?”
“I think it’s just a twenty-four-hour bug,” I lie.
Nicole and Evelyn share a loaded look. These ladies aren’t stupid. My mystery illness is a condition called “heartsick.”
What guts me is that Dani lied about something so basic. Half of my followers are women. I mean, fair, no need to gush on and on about me, but her lie points to one thing. She knew about Amelia. That’s what cratered my heart so completely. It left me in knots after I bailed from her place. I knew I recognized Amelia’s voice over the phone, but what were the odds of those two being related?
And if they are as close as Dani said they were, how could she not know?
Also, that look at Yvette’s called her bluff.
I suddenly feel so tired. Of pretending I have everything under control, that the baseline for normalcy is everyone dazzled by a guy who plays it cool on camera but is a flailing hot mess, terrified he’s lost the very heart of his essence with zero ideas on how to recapture it.
If there was ever the time for an existential dice roll.
I clear my throat, weirdly nervous. “Is it cool if I take off for the city next Friday?” I ask Evelyn. “I’ll be back Sunday night.”
“Of course!” she says without hesitation. “The weekends are yours. And with your fans creating chaos in town, it might be wise to escape. Can you create a fake post about a trip to Calgary? Something to dislodge them from their makeshift camp?”
“I can get an old colleague on their case,” Nicole chimes in.“Scare them off with some threats and legalese.”
“Alas,” Evelyn shakes her head, “this new generation comes pre-baked with righteousness. And determination that would put you to shame. As long as you’re here,” she says to me, “they’re here.”
The dark hum in my body accelerates. One morning I’ll find a new girl on the doorstep, acting all chill before the inevitable high-stakes drama.
I need out.
Nicole and Evelyn graciously allow me to excuse myself. I wander back to my villa, swamped with an empty kind of helplessness. The hot sun reminds me of Corfu, but my palazzo, my life, everything about Greece—it all feels disarmingly unreal. Do I want to go back? This intense bonding with Dani has opened up something in me. It's unsustainable and unhealthy to keep going at it alone. One day soon, I’ll crack, just like JC did.
This sense of uncertainty amplifies once I’m inside the villa. The maid has spit-shined every surface to perfection, and something about the dustless, lifeless ocean of greige depresses me. I escape to my safe space and swing in the hammock, mind in overdrive.
Nicole was right. Nothing will change on the outside if I don’t change on the inside.I need to commit. With everything, starting with my family. Dad needs to hear me out—every regret, every moment of yearning for a connection that never came.
No more running, no more avoiding.
My resolve slowly gathers. Later tonight, I’ll write a heartfelt speech. Practice it every day before I leave. Deliver it with an ice-cold calm.
If Dad still refuses me, so be it.
At least I tried.
The answer always comes to you at night.
And it hits me at the lake like a cold, swift punch to the gut.
I’m out on the raft, the water black and calm, the sky cloudless and starlit. I sigh and wonder how much longer I can tolerate being haunted by thoughts of me and Dani. Our textervations have dwindled to nothing. Last night I drank myself into oblivion to stop the hurt. I tried to fall asleep early tonight but stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, the walls starting to close in.
That’s when I came down here.
To think.
About life, Dani, the speech I have yet to write.
I silently rearrange the words in my mind and curse myself for not having the foresight to grab my journal.
And that's when the world around me dimmed, or maybe it was just my vision tunneling—everything outside that single, awful realization blurred and faded into the background.
My journal.
I bolt upright, breath stripped from my lungs, throat thick with dread. In the darkness, everything is still except for my brain. It stumbles over itself, reaching for recall.
When did I see it last?
The morning after with Dani. I remember thinking I should shove it in a drawer. (Not that she would snoop, but on the off chance, what would she say to all the lustful positions and details? My feeble attempt at erotic prose?) But then the Sawyer and Myla show came to town and blew the morning wide open. Have I seen the journal since? What I do recall, with sudden bone-chilling accuracy, is Myla walking out of the bedroom with a towel bunched in her hand.
My temples pound as the buried visual floats back to the surface.
She stuffed the towel into her suitcase, her back facing me. She had to put muscle on it like her bag was too full.
Or something other than terry cloth was bundled within it.
My mouth goes dry as dust.
I stagger to my feet and try to convince myself this is all a terrible dream I will soon wake up from.
How could I not suspect something fishy with her?
Because I was preoccupied with Dani and why she wasn't replying to my texts. Who cared about a towel if it meant Myla out of my life? I would have handed off the goddamned bed had she asked.
Fuck!
I slice into the water, swimming hard and fast toward shore. I charge up the stairs, taking two at a time, my chest on fire when I blow past Dani’s place and the parking lot. My villa is shrouded in shadows, nothing but blackness upon darkness. I rush inside to the bedroom and snap the light on.
Nothing.
My palms go humid, the knob to the bedside table door slippery under my fingers.
Maybe…please.
I yank it open. Empty.
A wave of nausea makes me flush with sweat. My head suddenly feels too heavy for my body, and I sink onto the bed, face cradled in both hands. Listen, I’m no serial killer creepily cataloging my victims, but I have an active imagination. And my drawing skills are decent . Not that Van Gogh will be rolling over in his grave or anything, but the pages and pages of excruciating details reflect my Dani-obsessed brain.
To calm the fuck down, I tell myself Myla won’t do anything stupid. Maybe she gets red with fury and rips it all to shreds. Or chucks it into the Mediterranean with a feral scream. Lights it on fire in a parking lot, muttering an incantation. I project all of those scenarios into the universe without a shred of hope . Wishful thinking only takes one so far.
Because I saw it in her eyes.
That unhinged sheen of someone with nothing to lose.
All the air in the bedroom contracts around me like a vise. How does that saying go?“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?”
I blocked Myla on Instagram so she can’t post on my account, but if she rage-blasts on her socials, the pick-up will spread faster than a code red virus.
I’m spiraling into full-blown panic when my phone chimes from the kitchen. A terrible, sinking feeling hits—like Myla somehow knows I know— and I brace myself to face the damage. But when I check the screen, it’s See Saw lighting up, with stacks of unread messages from both JC and Sawyer beneath it.
Urgent. Call me. 911.
I feel untethered, light as air, as a different kind of horror takes over.
The phone keeps shrieking in the dark.
Every cell in my body screams, Don’t answer.