Chapter 10
Rose
The drive back down from the Hollywood Hills was a slow crawl through a nightmare.
Rose steered with one hand, the other hovering near her phone as it spasmed against the center console.
Every time the screen lit up, it felt like a fresh blow: a new headline, a jagged notification from a gossip app, or another frantic check-in from Kayla.
She’d just dropped Daisy off at daycare when the first notification had come. She didn’t know how many there were now.
She reached the bottom of the canyon and pulled the car into a dirt turnout near a row of mailboxes. The noise was too much to process while moving. She tapped the notification from the L.A. Gazette, her pulse loud in her ears.
brEAKING: KATRINA HOLMES SPOTTED LEAVING SHARED HOME WITH CONNORS. SOURCES SAY WEDDING IS OFFICIALLY CANCELED.
The words were like a gut punch, pinning her to the driver’s seat. Her phone shrieked again. Quinn.
“Tell me you’re watching!” Quinn’s voice was high, vibrating with an adrenaline that made Rose’s stomach turn.
“Rose, it’s a bloodbath. Trina and Marcus Lance—there’s video from a club in West Hollywood.
They’re coming out of a side exit like they’ve been married for a decade.
And the best part? Marcus Lance! The guy whose birthday party you planned.
You practically choreographed the affair! ”
Rose leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. The plastic was scorching from the afternoon sun, but she didn’t pull away. “Quinn, stop.”
“Everyone is losing it. The blogs say it’s been going on since March. Eight months, Rose. It’s brutal.”
“I know,” Rose said. “I just dropped off Daisy and was on my way there. There was no point driving up the hill, there are cars everywhere. News vans. It’s a mess.”
“Well, yeah, the house is a fortress. But man, the Wedding of the year is a smoking crater. Holy shit!”
“The wedding is off, Quinn.” She forced the words out, trying to anchor herself to the reality of her bank account. “Which means I’m out of a job. The biggest contract of my life just evaporated.”
The line went quiet. She could hear the shift in his breathing as the gossip-high finally cooled. “Oh. Right. I... I didn’t think of it that way. Rose, I’m sorry. I got caught up in the drama.”
“Other people’s drama. I have to go.”
She sat in the silence of the car long after she hung up.
Her mind drifted back to the vineyard. The look of hurt when Trina had left and the way Trina hadn’t been interested in anything much.
She wasn’t sure if she should feel sorry for her or not.
Had she been clueless? Or was this some sort of deal?
Hope sparked. Maybe this was an arrangement that wasn’t meant to go public. Maybe there would be a wedding after all. Celebrities weathered worse storms than this. Plus, they hadn’t caught Trina and Marcus actually making out. The affair wasn’t confirmed.
Was it?
Rose put the car in gear and drove toward her apartment. The streets of Los Angeles remained stubbornly normal. People walked dogs; they sat at cafes; they waited for buses. It felt wrong that the sun was still shining when her future had just been erased.
The air in her apartment felt stale, heavy with the scent of unwashed dishes and old popcorn. She sat at the small desk in the corner of the living room and flipped open her laptop.
The numbers on her business banking portal were the only thing that didn’t lie.
Her contract with Pat was ironclad: a 20% non-refundable deposit.
That money was already there—more than she had seen in one place in years.
But it would only make a small dent in the debt she owed to Meridian and her credit cards.
She pulled out her phone and texted Pat.
Do I assume the wedding is canceled?
There was no answer. Irritated, she turned on the TV. The entertainment channels were full of the news. The more she watched, the more the glimmer of hope she’d felt evaporated.
There was footage of Trina coming out of some apartment in Beverly Hills and then…the questions:
Are you still getting married in three weeks?
Rose held her breath. Trina had seen Lizanne. Maybe they had sorted it out?
Trina turned, lifted her sunglasses and shrugged. “Not a chance.”
Not. A. Chance.
Shit.
It really was over.
She looked around the room. A crack snaked across the ceiling near the window, a leak waiting for the next rain. The carpet was stained and thinning. In the corner, a pile of Daisy’s toys looked like a colorful mountain. Daisy was getting too big for this small apartment. She needed more room.
Rose opened her email and found the thread with the realtor Lizanne had recommended during one of her earlier meetings.
I am writing to cancel our viewing for this afternoon, she typed, her fingers feeling like lead. My professional circumstances have changed unexpectedly and I am no longer in a position to sign a new lease.
She hit send. It felt like hearing a door slam shut in the dark. She called the bakery to let them know she was waiting for a status update. To hold everything. They’d already heard the news.
Before she had a chance to call anyone else, the calls came to her. The florist. The Vineyard. The table and chair rental company… All asking if the wedding was off. And the only thing she could say was that she didn’t know but she thought so.
Pat hadn’t replied. So she was stuck in limbo with an 80% chance that everything was off. Who was she kidding? 80%... 95%. And that was generous.
When the calls were finished, she sat in the deepening shadows of the apartment. She thought about Lizanne trapped in that house while the world laughed at her.
A sharp, hot flash of guilt hit her. She remembered the drive home from the vineyard—the way she’d let herself imagine the weight of Lizanne’s hand or the sound of her voice when the cameras weren’t running.
And then she’d gone to bed and let the fantasy continue.
She had been fantasizing about a woman whose life was a beautiful lie.
She picked up her phone and opened the thread with Lizanne. It was a long string of Pinterest boards and arrival times.
I am so sorry for what you are going through, she typed. She deleted it. Too fan-girly. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help with the press. She deleted that, too. Pat had a whole team for that.
She settled on six words. She didn’t let herself overthink them.
I’m here if you need me.
She set the phone down, not expecting a reply. She wasn’t even sure if Lizanne still had the phone with her.
At 2:45 PM, the reality of motherhood overrode the tragedy of her career. She grabbed her keys and walked out, leaving the laptop open on her desk—the screen still showing the credit card balance she could pay off, and the life she could no longer afford.
As she drove toward the daycare, a digital billboard over the 405 caught her eye. It was a photo of Lizanne and Trina from a red carpet, radiant and smiling. The headline in neon yellow read: WEDDING OF THE YEAR: CANCELED?
Rose looked away, keeping her eyes fixed on the road. She had twenty percent of the money, but none of the future she’d started to build in her head. As she pulled into the pick-up line, she watched the other parents scrolling through their phones, knowing exactly what they were reading.
The silence in her car felt heavier than the Los Angeles traffic. She had done her job. She had planned Lizanne’s dream wedding. She had put it on hold. There was nothing else to do. She was just another person watching the wreckage from a distance.