31. Knox
Knox
“Did she respond?” Cash hovers over me as I check my emails for the hundredth time this morning.
“Nope.”
“Are you sure you got the right one?”
“Yes. I’m positive.”
Cash drops down beside me on the couch, staring at the roaring flames.
I dig into my pocket and pull out the note she left, smoothing it with my hands.
Cash’s initial reaction when we found the note this morning was to throw it on the fire and never look back. Instead, he stalked into the forest to look for deer and maybe clear his head.
He didn’t come back with one deer; he came back with three. He just walked in the door after being gone most of the day and insisted I check my phone, hoping to see a response from Sienna.
“If she says she’s coming back, then I believe her,” says Eli, getting up from the dining room table where Henry is practicing writing letters.
“She has to figure a few things out, but she’ll be back.
She needs to confront the hate and feel all of the emotions herself in order to make the right decision. ”
“Looking at your phone, reading what people are saying about you, is far less dangerous than actually being back in that place.”
“I agree with Knox,” says Cash. “You don’t know that place like I do.”
“You’re forgetting I used to work as a private chef. I’ve met my fair share of Hollywood scum.”
“That’s different. You were observing as an outsider. Sienna’s been an actress for years.
I think about her being in love with her co-star. She better not be rekindling things with that douchebag. I’ll take his head off with an axe. I don’t even care who sees me.
“It’s easy to get sucked in,” says Cash. “Trust me, I know.”
“Because of what happened to your parents?” asks Eli.
“That,” says Cash, “and because I fell in love with the wrong girl. I thought she loved me. But she only loved the idea of me. She used me to get rich.”
“What happened?” asks Eli, pulling up a chair.
“She wrote me into her book, and it became a New York Times bestseller. She acted like she was into me, but that was only because she wanted me to stick around until she had all the information she needed. She got her first advance and never spoke to me again.”
“Shit.” I raise my brows. “You’ve never told us that before. That sucks, man.”
Cash wipes a hand over his forehead. “I just hope she doesn’t get sucked back in.”
“Sienna is strong,” says Eli. “She won’t fall for those people again.”
“We don’t know that,” sighs Cash.
He sits back on the couch. I watch him carefully. Cash was starting to open himself up to love again. And now that love is back in LA, and she might never come back.
We all fall silent, listening to Henry's pencil scratching against his paper and the crackling flames of the fire.
It’s too quiet around here. And ever since I woke up to that note from Sienna, it feels like an important part of me is missing.
Cash has a valid point. We could totally lose her.
“If she isn’t back by the end of the day, I’m going down there.”
“Knox—”
“I don’t care. I can’t stand the thought of those people harassing her.”
Cash clenches his jaw, gazing at the floor.
“And don’t even get me started on that son-of-a-bitch Holden. If he puts one finger on her, I’ll slice off all ten.”
“You said that this is something she has to work through by herself.”
“As I said—seeing what people have written about you is very different from going back there. I don’t trust any of them. She’s got nobody in her corner. Nobody taking down the paparazzi for her. She’s alone, surrounded by fucking wolves. I can’t just stand by and not do anything.”
Cash nods, slowly dragging his gaze back to me. “Yeah. You’re right. If she’s not back by nightfall, we’ll take your truck and get her.”
Another charged silence falls between us.
It’s time someone addressed the big, fat elephant in the room.
“When we get her back, we stop competing against each other,” I say.
“I agree.” Eli looks at me. “Our problem isn’t with each other. It’s down there—in LA. That’s why we all came up here in the first place. We can’t tear each other to shreds because we all want the same woman. It’s stupid.”
I rub the back of my neck. I feel more strongly about Sienna, about making her happy, than I do about competing for her attention.
Working as a team last night to please her felt oddly… rewarding. Sienna likes it best when we work together. And if she’s happy, so am I.
And she’s not happy down there. I know it.
A sense of responsibility for her happiness suddenly grips me.
Sitting back and giving her space to figure things out isn’t going to work for me. I have to save her.
I spring off the couch, but before I can grab my jacket and keys from the hook, Eli is up and standing between me and the door.
“Don’t, Knox. She’ll come back on her own.”
“I can’t sit here the rest of the day wasting time when I could be down there bringing her back.”
“We have more of a chance of being successful at night… when there are fewer people around.”
“They’re surrounding her right now. I can’t stand the thought of it.”
“She needs us,” Eli says. “And you have a short fuse. If you go down there now and punch someone in broad daylight, you’re more likely to be caught. And you can’t save Sienna from a jail cell.”
“Fine. We’ll wait.”
I grab my jacket anyway, tugging it on.
Eli looks at me pointedly. “What are you doing?”
“Going for a walk to kill more deer.”
“We already have three.”
“Yes, and we can have three more.” I open the front door, feeling the crisp air on my face. “At least I won’t get arrested for killing those.”