Page 36 of Broken Heart

The moment they got to work on doing as she requested, I stepped forward and called out to her. “Hey, Ivy.”

My sister spun around, immediately spotting me moving in her direction with a bit of surprise written on her face. “Hi, Cooper. What’s going on? I thought you were off today.”

I shook my head. “No. I took some time this afternoon to do something, but I have too much work to get done here to be able to take a full day off right now.” My eyes scanned the space, and I asked, “Is this for the charity event on Friday, or do you have something else happening before then?”

“This is preparation for Friday,” she said. “Most people aren’t booking large events in the middle of the week, and nobody is going to ask for this ballroom for a small event. They’ll usually grab one of the conference rooms or one of the smaller ballrooms in those instances.”

“That makes sense. Are you planning to be here on Friday during this event?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

She offered a slight nod. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll be here for the entire thing, since I’ll be in early to make sure everything is prepped and ready to go for the event. Why do you ask?”

“I was hoping you could do me a favor,” I revealed.

Her brows shot up. “Really? What do you need?”

“I’m going to be attending this event with someone, and I was hoping I could introduce her to you,” I explained.

Confusion washed over her. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I met a girl. I really like her. And I’m going to be escorting her to this event,” I said. “Skye’s particularly shy, but she’s incredibly sweet. Since I’ve invited her to celebrate my birthday on Saturday, too, I thought it might help her to have met at least one member of my family ahead of time.”

“I had no idea you were dating anyone,” Ivy replied.

“That part of it is a little complicated, as we’re not officially together or anything like that,” I shared. “But I’d like for that to change, and I’m hoping my family can help me out with that.”

A look I couldn’t ever recall seeing before formed on my sister’s face. But it was gone so quickly, I thought I’d imagined it. “Of course, I’ll help you. Tell me about this girl. Where did you meet her, and what else should I know about her?”

The corners of my mouth tipped up with a smile. This felt like one more small victory, even if it shouldn’t have. I knew the kind of family I had. We would always do whatever we could to help one another out, so it didn’t surprise me that Ivy was willing.

And while I didn’t necessarily want to go blabbing the details of Skye’s personal life to everyone around me, there were parts of it that I believed were important for them to know, especially when it came to helping in this situation.

So, I spent the next fifteen minutes giving Ivy the important details. To say she was horrified to learn what Skye had been through with her ex-boyfriend and former best friend would have been an understatement.

Though she hadn’t been averse to meeting Skye, after Ivy was given those details, she was even more willing to help. She was fully on board and promised to stick around to meet Skye, so she could make her feel welcome. Plus, if there was any chance that Simon and Maria were around, it would only strengthen the believability of our relationship.

With any luck, all that I was doing would help Skye to realize this was more than just a means to prove to those that had betrayed her that Skye had officially moved on. Hopefully, she’d understand that I liked her and wanted to do what I could to make sure she was surrounded by people who cared about her. If I succeeded in doing that, maybe I’d be able to prove to myself that my instincts about her being someone special were correct from the beginning.

10

SKYE

When I heard the doorbell ring, I gave myself one last look in the mirror and let out a deep sigh in a vain attempt to settle my nerves.

I had always been the kind of girl who worried more than was probably necessary in most situations. For the most part, I’d learned to live with it, often being able to recognize when it made sense and was justified and when I was merely overthinking things and needed to take a step back to look at the situation again from a different angle.

Usually, I found if I did that in an instance where nerves were mostly unwarranted, I could gain some perspective and calm my mind.

Sadly, that had been virtually impossible to accomplish today, no matter how hard I’d tried. Because even though I’d gone to work in the morning and had some distraction there, it wasn’t nearly enough to make me forget or even allow me to pretend that what I was facing tonight wasn’t fast approaching.

No matter how much I tried to ignore it or wish it wouldn’t be the case, I was going to be seeing Maria for the first time since she’d shown up at The Next Chapter two weeks ago. It would be the first time since before I learned the truth about his infidelity that I’d be seeing Simon.

That was months ago.

Months.

The logical part of my brain recognized I wasn’t the one who needed to be nervous about tonight. If anything, Simon was the one who should have been concerned. He had been the coward. He couldn’t face me months ago to tell me the truth; I didn’t understand how he would manage seeing me tonight.

Maybe I’d get lucky.

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