“I’m so fucking sorry, baby. I wish I could go back and change it all for you. If I had the power to do that, I would.” My words are rusty and harsh, coming from a place deep inside me never touched before Holly.
Her body relaxes into me for a beat before she straightens. “It’s something I have to live with. The best tribute I can give her is to succeed, to make her proud.”
She turns to face me, and I can almost see her pulling the layers of her armor back over herself. As much as I hate seeing her raw like this, there’s something almost heart-stopping about having a window into her soul. When her dark brown eyes shutter, I hate that even more.
“I better go fix my face if we’re going to make it on time.”
“We don’t have to go.” I’m not willing to skip the event to indulge myself, but when it comes to Holly, I’m willing to break all my own rules.
She twists out of my hold, shaking her head. “I’ll be fine. Besides, it won’t be the last time I lose it over this. It’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life. We all have to make choices; I just didn’t know that I’d be losing the only person who will ever care about me that much. Life’s a bitch that way.”
The whole time she’s speaking, she’s walking backward across the room, and with her final declaration, she disappears from my sight, down the hallway toward the master suite.
But her words still hang in the air, haunting me and taunting me in equal measure. I have more money than I can spend in five lifetimes, but I can’t give Holly the one thing she desperately wants. It’s a forcefully humbling reality.
The next thought that flashes through my brain is equally sobering.
She’s wrong.
Her gran is not the only person who will ever care about her that much.
I sip my glass of champagne and survey the moneyed crowd filling the Museum of Modern Art. After my breakdown earlier, I had to completely redo my makeup. Nothing like a couple of swipes of foundation and concealer to cover the layers of grief and guilt.
Too bad it can’t hide my country girl awkwardness at attending an event that’s so far out of my league. The last thing I want to do tonight is screw up and make some social blunder that will embarrass Creighton and end up in the papers.
I skim over the crowd, taking in the dark-hued designer dresses and diamonds that aren’t as flashy as the ones around my neck. I wasn’t sure what to expect of this thing, but now that we’ve been here for ten minutes, I’ve recognized more faces than I ever would have expected.
There must be at least a hundred people here who are more famous than me, not that I consider myself actually famous at all. The number of them who probably knew who I was—before Creighton married me? I’m guessing that number is in the single digits.
Not too many good ole boys who are used to sitting on tailgates with a beer in one hand and a spit bottle in the other, that’s for sure. I think it’s also safe to say there is no overlap in this crowd with the Country Dreams target demographic.
In other words, I’m completely out of my depth. Even after being in the public eye for months, this kind of situation unnerves me. I’m much more at home on a stage in front of my kind of people. People who want to listen to music that tells stories about people just like them. Instead, I’m standing at an event that costs about the same as a brand-new S-10 pickup to attend.
It doesn’t help that I can’t get Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” out of my head. At least I made it past the cameras outside the entrance without incident. That was something.
The walkway was covered with a fine dusting of snow, and I was positive that I’d bite it if I didn’t cling to Creighton’s arm like a drunk monkey. So cling, I did.
And then I nabbed a glass of champagne from a passing server’s tray at the first opportunity. Liquid courage. I need a lot more of it in order to get through tonight.
For the first time since I married Creighton, I feel like arm candy. That’s not to say that Creighton has given me any reason to feel like that, but I can’t help it. He introduced me and tried to include me in conversation, but my answers were awkward and short.
I need to get my shit together so I can fool them and make him proud. Maybe I can hire one of those acting coaches and learn to bluff my way through things like this? It’s never going to come naturally to me. I just don’t belong in this crowd.
And from the stares of the women that dart away as soon as I accidentally make eye contact, it’s clear they know I don’t belong either. I can just imagine what they’re whispering as they tilt their heads toward one another.
Yes, she’s the girl he married after a one-night stand. Do you think he had any idea she would be so out of place?
Or I bet he’s wishing he’d stuck to his own kind.
Or maybe even, I’ll be ready to swoop in once he’s bored with her.
In their black dresses, they look like a flock of crows just waiting to swoop in on the carnage they expect my marriage with Creighton to become.
On any other day, I’d like to think this would strengthen my resolve to prove them wrong, but tonight, I’m feeling too raw, and it’s a fight just to conceal my weaknesses.
Creighton shakes hands and talks business with several more people, and I keep clinging and smiling. I don’t understand what the hell they’re talking about, and my cheeks already hurt. We’ve only been here for twenty minutes, and already I can’t wait to leave.
I force my anxieties away. I’m here because this is important to Creighton. I listen with half an ear as the conversation turns to some new investment that a close-talking guy in a tux and red plaid bowtie thinks Creighton should invest in.