Page 45 of Valentine Nook (The Valentine Nook Chronicles #1)

Holiday

F or the first time in five months, I step onto United States soil and fall straight into my brother’s arms.

“It’s gonna be okay, Hol . . . I promise.”

“You . . .” Sob . “Don’t know . . .” Sob . “That . . .” Sob.

“I do. And you know how I know?” he replies, squeezing me tight and rubbing my

back in that soothing way he’s always done when I’m having a crisis.

I take a big sniff. “How?”

“Because that’s what you always tell me.”

If it’s possible, Tanner’s words make me cry even more. I’m also sure I’ve never said that, and if I have, then I’m clearly a bigger idiot than I already thought I was. Because right now, I can’t imagine it ever being okay.

“And I’m all for you crying it out right here in the middle of the tarmac, but as it’s four in the morning and I’m freezing my nuts off, it would probably be a better idea to get in the car.”

Easing out of his grip, I take the edge of his sweater and use it to wipe my nose, just like we did when we were kids. Yes, it’s gross, but it always raises the tiniest smile .

“Feel better now?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“That’s the spirit.” He winks, tapping his fist to my chin. “Now, let’s . . .” He becomes distracted by something over my shoulder. “Holiday, what the fuck is that?”

I spin around, and the tears start up again.

Not that they stopped at any point over the past nine hours since I left Lando standing on the steps of the Dorchester Hotel.

I’m severely dehydrated. But along with the tears, I do manage a slight smile at the sight of the air steward wrestling Willard the bear—as I named him—down the narrow steps of the plane.

I could have left him to be packed up and sent back with the rest of my things, but as Lando gave him to me, I didn’t want to risk him being damaged.

“That’s Willard,” I wail, topping it off with a loud sniff. “The bear Lando gave me after I won the coconut shy.”

“I still don’t know what’s shy about a coconut,” Tanner mumbles with a shake of his head. “Okay, get in the car. That thing will have to go in the back seat because he won’t fit in the trunk with your bags.”

I do as I’m told because truthfully, I’m also freezing cold. Once I make sure everything’s been packed into the car, I settle into my seat while Tanner wrestles Willard into his until finally we’re ready to leave.

I turn to him as he starts the engine. “Thank you for coming to get me, Tanny.”

The smile I offer him is weak, but it’s also so grateful. I honestly couldn’t have faced landing on my own and having a car service take me to Tanner’s apartment, where I’m staying until I fly back to Los Angeles in a couple of days.

“Of course I was coming to get you. I’m not going to let my sister cry her eyes out by herself.” He tuts. “We’ll be home soon, and Brady will be awake. He’ll make his auntie Holiday feel better. Then you can get some shut-eye. ”

“What about Millie?”

“She has class this morning, so she’ll go back to sleep for a bit too I think.”

Millie, Tanner’s wife, is a student at Columbia and took a year off when she got pregnant.

She started back at school at the beginning of this semester, and now that Tanner’s in his off-season, he’s doing the bulk of the childcare, along with the help of both ours and Millie’s parents, who don’t seem to be able to stay away.

He’s also paying for a nanny, though I’m not sure what there’s left to do once the grandmothers are done for the day.

At this time of the morning, and with Tanner’s driving, we reach Manhattan in less than twenty minutes.

I spent so much of the past two years in this city, yet now it feels alien to me.

The air, the chaos, the fact that everything is on the wrong side.

Although it’s so different from Valentine Nook, it may help me move on quicker and forget faster.

I’d be a big fat liar if I said I wanted to do either. I don’t deserve to forget. The moment I begin to feel normal, my punishment should be picturing Lando’s face as I rode away. Telling myself I’ve done it for his own good is no comfort whatsoever.

Millie waits by the elevator doors the moment they open into their apartment, and of course I start crying again.

I’m too tired and too fragile to cope with her kindness at waking up to greet me, or at Brady looking impossibly cute in a little orange onesie covered in pumpkins and a hood with a brown stalk sticking from the top.

She reaches out to hug me, careful not to squash her son between us. “Oh Hol, don’t worry, we’ll talk it through, but it’ll be okay... whoa . ..that’s... big .”

“She’s cried the whole way home,” Tanner grunts from behind me as he drops Willard on the floor next to my bags, lets out a long sigh, and rests his hands on his knees. “That thing is fucking heavy.”

“I didn’t cry the whole way,” I grumble. “I stopped when we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“Sorry, I stand corrected.”

I watch as my brother kisses his wife and takes his son from her arms. My heart aches acutely from that one simple gesture.

Up to this point in my life, marriage and children have never been an aspiration.

I have enough nieces and nephews to suffice for the moment, but witnessing it now, it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever find that type of love with someone when I’ve blown it with the one person I could see myself growing old with.

My face crumples all over again.

“Oh, Hol?—”

“I’m fine.” I wave Millie off and hold my hands out for Brady.

He’s got my brother’s blue eyes, which I guess are mine too. His chubby little cheeks bulge as he smiles at me.

“Hey, buddy, you got big, huh? Do you remember Auntie Holiday?”

“Mmm, sure did,” Millie replies. “It’s like walking around with a kettlebell all day.”

I laugh. “If kettlebells looked like you, I’d be in the gym more often.”

Brady raises his palm and rests it on my face. His sweet baby scent fills the air, and it’s calming enough that waves of tiredness begin crashing over me.

“Hey, I think I’m going to catch some sleep before my meetings this morning.”

Millie takes Brady back. “The guest room is all set up for you. Sleep as long as you want. I’m going to do the same. Tanner will be here all day if you want to hang out with him, and I finish class after lunch. ”

“Thank you.”

I pick up my bags, and before I head down the hallway to my room, Tanner hugs me tightly, whispering, “I promise it’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out when you wake up.”

I can’t quite bring myself to believe him, so instead of answering, I just smile. The moment I close the bedroom door behind me, I drop everything on the floor and power up my phone.

I hadn’t wanted to check it at all during the flight—some fucked-up form of delayed gratification—because it was easier to hold on to a tiny sliver of hope that I might have a message from Lando when I land, than listen to the louder voice saying I’m too stupid for even thinking he’d ever speak to me again after I left.

CLEMMIE: Miss you already.

CLEMMIE: How was your flight?

MARCY: My call’s been canceled, so we can meet earlier. Eleven a.m.? My office?

MOM: Welcome home, sweetie. See you at Tanner’s tomorrow. Have you got tickets to Late Night for your dad and me?

CLEMMIE: Miles’s after-party sucks. I’m going to bed. Still miss you.

A fter triple-checking that there’s nothing from the one person I want to hear from, I collapse into bed with a fresh onslaught of tears.

I give up on trying to sleep, and when I see myself in the bathroom mirror, I decide the time would be better spent praying for a miracle to make me look human. Because that’s what it’s going to take.

Last night’s makeup is streaked down my cheeks, and my eyes are completely bloodshot and the puffiest I’ve ever seen them.

Two attempts at washing my face don’t improve much, so I text Ashley and ask her to have a spa service come around this afternoon to give me the full works before I appear on national television.

Because there’s no way I can step outside looking the way I do, now I’m back in the US, where my face is displayed on every other billboard.

I’m reluctant to even leave the bedroom, but the sound of Brady’s gurgling while Tanner talks to him is too tempting to stay. But it’s the second voice I hear that has me stopping short, because it’s not Millie.

Sure enough, my agent is sitting at the breakfast counter drinking coffee while Brady stares at her from his bouncer as she spins the balls on the mobile in front of him. If it wasn’t so weird, it would be comical, because Marcy—as she’s told me many times—is not a baby person.

“Hey.” It comes out as a croak, and I’m sure I see Marcy wince the moment she spots me, but it could just be from my eyes being fuzzy.

“Welcome back.” She smiles.

She definitely winced. Her smile is far too big and cheery to be genuine.

“What are you doing here? I thought we were meeting later? Did I get the time wrong?”

Marcy shakes her head. “No, doll. I just thought I’d pop by, haven’t seen little Tanner since he became a daddy. We can do our meeting here instead.”

That suits me. The longer I have to fix my face, the better. But I frown.

Along with not being a baby person, Marcy is also not the type of person to “pop by.” Everything about this situation I’ve walked into immediately makes me suspicious. I’m guessing it’s because the past few weeks I’ve been too pissed to talk to her.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I wanted to see you before the craziness begins. It’s going to be a busy end of the year,” she adds, like she thinks I’m not aware of how busy my life will become.

I’m about to jump back onto the Hollywood juggernaut.

Taking a deep breath through my nose, I blow it out in one long puff.

“D’you want another coffee?”

“Sure.”

I flick on the machine, wondering if it would be easier for me to have it administered intravenously.

Marcy and Tanner are talking about the World Series, which Tanner’s team crashed out of in the third round of the playoffs, and I zone out while they discuss trades for next year and who’s likely to win the title this season.

When I’m done, I place a coffee on the counter in front of her. “Here you go.”

Her eyes roll down to the cup and back to me. “Well, this is worse than I thought.”

I frown because she hasn’t even tried it. “What does that mean?”

“Holly, sweetheart, you look like you haven’t slept in a month, and that you’ve done ten rounds with Mike Tyson”—she waves her hand around dismissively—“or whoever’s boxing these days.”

I guess we’re not talking about the coffee.

“I know I look like shit, but why d’you think that is?” I snap. “I told you I didn’t want to come back early.”

She calmly picks it up and sips. “You’re under contract, Holiday. There’s nothing I could have done. ”

Her voice is softer than I’ve ever known it to be, empathetic almost, and it nearly pushes me over the edge.

I can’t cope with Marcy being sweet to me right now. I need her to be the bullish badass agent she always has been.

I need someone to shout at who’ll take it without getting offended, and I need someone to blame for getting me into this situation, for having to take a break in the first place because I’d worked too fucking hard for too fucking long and was about to fucking collapse.

If that hadn’t been the case, then I wouldn’t have been in England.

And we all know what happened in England.

Most of all, I need someone to blame for falling in love with Lando when I had no business doing anything of the sort.

My eyes burn, and the heaviness in my chest presses down until I almost can’t breathe.

“But,” Marcy begins, “I do have some news you might be interested in.”

I swipe away the moisture and assess her through narrowed eyes. “Go on.”

“The paperwork hasn’t been signed yet on Hot Tin Roof , so it’s my duty to tell you another request has come in. The budget isn’t as big, and it’s for two months instead of three?—”

Using the heel of my palms, I rub against my temples. I thought she was going to tell me something good. But two months is still two months, add in rehearsal time on top of that, and it may as well be a lifetime. It doesn’t solve anything.

“The director is Hamish McTaggart. He won the Tony last year for that play on Broadway about R.B.G. He’s super hot right now.”

I nod. I saw that play, and it was good. But I still don’t see what the point of her telling me is.

“And it’s playing at the Donmar Warehouse.”

My ears prick, though I’m still too focused on my own self- pity and broken heart to immediately realize what she’s saying or its implications.

“Holiday, are you listening to what I’m saying? The Donmar Warehouse is in London.”

Oh my god. She’s right. “Are you saying there’s a play in London that wants me?”

“Yes.”

“When is it starting?”

“Rehearsals in April, again. Same timeframe.”

“I’ll take it.”

Marcy’s lips purse. “I haven’t even told you what it is.”

I don’t tell her that I don’t care. It could be a revival of Barney with me dressed as a purple dinosaur dancing on stage every night, and I’d take it. Because London.

“What is it?”

“Shakespeare, Twelfth Night .”

It feels like forever since I laughed, but I can’t help myself.

I’m transported back to The One True Love and the little table in the corner where Shakespeare may or may not have written one of his plays—maybe it was this one.

The other thing that flashes in my brain is Agatha Chase telling me she’ll see me soon.

Perhaps she was onto something.

“Shakespeare is perfect.”

“I had a feeling it might be, and after that, there’s a potential movie to begin filming next November. A legal drama, location Europe but predominantly London, which I trust will also be suitable.”

That’s nearly a year of being in England. Yes, more than suitable.

Rounding the counter, I wrap my arms around Marcy and hug her tight. The pressure in my chest has vanished, and my tears have finally dried up, replaced by the biggest smile.

“Give me a pen and I’ll sign right now. ”

The next few weeks of press suddenly seem like a breeze to get through, and I’m already coming up with a plan to beg Lando for two things—his forgiveness at leaving and to be my date again.

I can’t even find any nerves swirling at the possibility he might say no. I don’t care.

All that matters is that I’m going to see Lando again.