Page 5 of Truly (Peachwood Falls #2)

L aina

“You would think,” I say, groaning and stepping out of a pile of white fabric, “that getting out of a wedding dress would be easier than this.”

I turn slowly and face the discarded garment.

A heaviness settles in my chest, aching between my breasts.

It would be unbearable if there wasn’t an even heavier feeling of contentment in my soul.

I catch a glimpse in the full-length mirror leaning against the wall—a mirror I bought at a yard sale and put in that exact spot one summer afternoon.

My hair is swept up in the back, with tendrils framing my face.

There’s enough makeup on my skin to film a movie.

My breasts hang freely, and the white thong showcases the spray tan I didn’t want to get.

I don’t look like me. No wonder I haven’t felt like me lately.

Everything I always liked about myself—my freckles, sense of humor, boundless energy—is all gone.

I race into the en suite and find a washcloth and towel. Using a new bar of soap from beneath the sink, I scrub my face until my skin is pink. The abrasion of the cloth and sting of the soap are probably as metaphoric as they are cleansing, but when I look in the mirror over the vanity, I’m … free.

“There you are, Laina,” I say, smiling at my reflection. “Nice to see you again.”

It takes longer to settle my hair. Thanks to all the product the glam team used to make it picture-perfect and more bobby pins than was necessary, it takes my fingers and a comb I locate in a drawer to get it in some semblance of normalcy. I find a rubber band and pull it into a ponytail.

Each layer I peel away removes a cloak I knew was uncomfortable but didn’t realize how suffocating it was until now.

Tom won’t come in and see me without makeup and make a snide comment.

He won’t mention that I won’t fit into my wedding dress if I don’t get my ass to the gym this morning.

There is no chance he’ll come through the door and find a way to work a lyric from one of my songs into the conversation just so he can tease me about the juvenile language or ridiculous themes of my music.

And the look in his eyes, an arrogance that twinkled just enough to make me nervous, will no longer make my stomach tighten when we inevitably argue about one of those things.

“You’re good,” I whisper to myself. “This is not a dream.”

I wash the soles of my feet and dispose of the cloth in the bottom of the shower. I’ll get that later . Then I make my way to Luke’s closet.

“Okay, we have a shirt from the feed store, one from a power tools company, another from the feed store.” I laugh, sorting through the bin of shirts on the floor. “Oh, here’s a purple one from the feed store. Bet this was an exclusive piece of merch.”

I snort and pull the shirt over my head. The air is filled with the scent of his cologne—a warm pepperiness with a hint of apple, and the smell of his mother’s laundry detergent. The combination makes me smile from ear to ear.

Discarding my thong into the mass of tulle, the last layer of the morning to go, I throw on a pair of his boxers.

Then I breathe . Deeply. Completely. Unencumbered.

“Gosh, that feels good,” I say, closing the closet.

I turn to figure out what to do with my dress when a cordless phone catches my eye.

“He still has a landline?” I pick it up off the bedside table and press the green button. A dial tone buzzes back at me. “I didn’t know people still used these.”

I sit on the edge of the bed and wonder if I should go find Luke. But as my gaze travels to the heap of hoops on the floor, I punch Stephanie’s number into the phone instead. Surprisingly, she answers.

“Hello?” she asks, her voice full of hesitation.

“Hey, Steph. It’s me.”

“ Oh, thank God ,” she says, exhaling. “Are you okay?”

I glance around Luke’s bedroom. “I’m fine. How are you ?”

“First, please remind your security team that I am your best friend, and rules don’t apply to me. The only reason I didn’t commit murder today is because Troy is freaking gorgeous, and I’m hoping he and I can hook up at some point.”

My laughter breaks the rest of the tension in my chest. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

“Otherwise, I’m fine. I’ll admit, I did get entirely too much joy out of telling your dad that you weren’t going to show up. And , I’ll also admit that I followed your father into the groom’s room to listen to him tell Tom.”

I gasp. “ My father told Tom ?”

“He sure did. A couple of security guys trailed us because your father literally started screaming at me and that got their attention.”

“I’m so sorry, Steph.”

“Don’t be.” She snorts. “I know he’s your dad, so with all due respect, fuck that guy. This literally made my year.”

I fall back into Luke’s pillows and close my eyes. Imagining my father screaming at Stephanie over something I did makes my stomach heave. But I talk myself down with reminders of how much my best friend dislikes Dad.

As if she knows I need the reminder, she launches into a spiel I hear at least four times a year.

“He doesn’t listen to you,” she says. “You get no time off. You’ve been burned out for two years, Laina, and he works you to the bone. He may be your father, but he doesn’t have your best interests at heart. If he did, he would’ve put a stop to Tom Waverly a long damn time ago.”

“I don’t need someone to put a stop to anything. I’m a big girl.”

“Yes, you are. But you’re hiding from Tom right now for a reason.

” She steadies her tone, working to reduce the anger teeming from each word.

“I don’t know what has gone on because you won’t tell me, but I see the way he looks at you when you don’t follow his script.

If I were a betting girl, I’d say you wanted to get out of this a lot earlier than now but were afraid.

Today, you just so happened to be surrounded by security in a place you felt comfortable and at a time when it was do or die. And you chose not to die—thank God.”

My heart races. How did she know ?

“Speaking of a place you feel comfortable,” she says, “where are you?”

I sink deeper into the pillows.

I couldn’t have had this conversation before today.

There was never any privacy. Stephanie and my agent, Anjelica, are the only two people I truly trust, but I never trusted that we weren’t being spied on or listened to.

Because everyone is willing to do Tom Waverly’s bidding.

It’s a part of the charisma that makes him a box-office star.

“Troy brought me to Luke Marshall’s house,” I say.

“Wait a minute. Luke Marshall …” She hums. “The hot farrier we stalk on Social?”

“That would be the one.”

I can hear her wheels turning. “How do you know him?”

“Luke and I dated for a long time. We met when we were fifteen and started dating at seventeen.”

“ You dated the farrier ? Why am I just finding this out? I have literally sat beside you and drooled over this man’s social media posts, and you dated the guy ?”

“Pretty much.” I wince.

“How? For how long? Why have I never met him?”

I sit up and prop myself against the leather headboard.

“We dated from the time we were seventeen until I came to Nashville. It was just a few weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday. Then we … I don’t know, tried to make it work, kind of.

For a couple of years, we talked off and on, and I’d come back to see him every chance I got.

” A lump settles in my throat. “Then things really took off, and I couldn’t come back anymore, and he never came to see me. Things just kind of ended.”

My heart burns at the memories, making the cracks from my heartbreak obvious.

The worst part of my life coincided with the best time of my career.

Balancing the devastation of losing the man who I loved with every piece of me with the exhilaration of my first world tour was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

It was harder than walking out of the church today.

“And you are at his house now?” she asks, a hint of mischief in her voice.

“Stop it.”

“ What ?”

“I hear the little smirk in your voice,” I say. “This was unplanned. I haven’t spoken to Luke in years.”

“But you sure as hell have been keeping an eye on him.”

“Yes, but …” I pause, working through a thought. “You don’t think this makes me a bad person, do you?”

She laughs. “Why would I think that?”

I shift around and can’t get comfortable. The bedding is cozy. It’s my conscience that’s not.

“I was supposed to marry another man today,” I say, my voice growing louder. “And now I’m sitting in my ex-boyfriend’s house.” Not to mention in his clothes and bed, but details schmetails.

“You saved yourself from a bad situation and ran to a place you obviously feel safe. That’s supposed to make you a bad person?”

Yes. I feel safe here .

The flood of emotions that hit me nearly knock me over. I feel safe here—the first place I’ve felt safe in years.

“Sure, you could’ve done it differently,” she says. “But would it have made you a better person to have gone through with it then publicly divorced later? Is your mental health worth having the world think you’re a good person ?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

“And if you feel too guilty, let me remind you that Tom has put you in some prickly situations, too. He asked you to be his wife at the only concert of yours that he’s ever attended in the lead-up to his biggest blockbuster of all time—the one that they were pulling no punches to market.”

What a nightmare . There was no conversation after his proposal, no chance to get my bearings. We were being watched by twenty thousand people and endless cameras. All I could do was play the part and say yes.