Page 14 of I Do With You

“Go, go, go!” she shouts. But she’s grinning like a loon, like this is fun for her too. After seeing her question herself last night; the noisy, restless middle-of-the-night “sleep” that had me checking on her; and her nervousness this morning, the brightness in her eyes is a welcome sight. Maybe it’s all from just losing herself in the ridiculous fantasy of acting like we’re in someReacher-esque spy drama, but it’s good to see on her.

Especially that smile. I would do dangerous things to keep it on her face.

I pull out of the resort parking lot on spinning tires that throw up tiny pebbles behind us. “We clear?” I ask, and she jerks around to look back. You’d think we just robbed a bank or something.

“I think so. Turn right at the stop sign.”

She directs me into town, again telling me places to go, and I follow her every instruction—driving where she tells me to; looking at storefronts; and, once, turning into an alley to avoid a police car she sees ahead.

We pull up to a bland, beige building with reflective windows. “You wanna wait here?” she offers, then bites her lip. She’s nervous about going in, and maybe about seeing her sister too.

“Nah, gotta see this through. Make sure you don’t get forced back to the altar with a shotgun.” I know shotgun weddings aren’t exactly the norm anymore, and certainly not in this situation, but I’m also not leaving her to go inside alone. I’m too curious, too invested.

In the situation. In Hope.

She texts Joy from my phone, and less than a minute later, the door opens and a near-carbon copy of Hope, just one that’s been given a professional-looking makeover, leans out the door and waves us inside. We exit the car and hustle across the lot. Joy scans her sister, looking for obvious signs of damage or harm, but then quickly turns her attention to me. I can feel the threat she’s sending my way with the death-ray laser beams in her eyes. “Who the fuck’re you?”

“Ben. Nice to meet you, Joy.” I’m on alert. Hope might trust her sister enough to come here, but my experience with the press is decidedly different, and I’m treating her like the enemy until proven otherwise.

So far, our onstage disguises have held, and no one’s discovered who me, Sean, or our third bandmate, Trent, are in real life. But we’ve been escorted out the back door of hotels when the paparazzi have gathered at the front, refused interviews because we don’t trust anyone with something to gain by outing us, and had people try to grab our masks, either for a souvenir or to see our faces. Safe to say, me and the press are not friends. Yet here I am, walking into the lion’s den.

“That’s yet to be determined,” she answers, still eyeing me up and down with a curl to her lip. In some ways it’s admirable—she clearly loves and is protective of her sister.

“Joy, be nice,” Hope admonishes her as we walk down a hallway with office doors on either side. It sounds like something she’s said countless times before and she doesn’t expect it to work any better this time than it has all those times in the past. “Ben helped me in a major way yesterday, and I’ve basically commandeered his vacation, sobe nice.Please.” She emphasizes the repeated order with a pleading tone, which seems to do the trick, because Joy turns her attention back to her sister.

“Are you wearing his clothes?” Joy’s eyes go wide as she takes her in; Hope is indeed wearing the clothes I gave her, plus her wedding-themed cowgirl boots, in what amounts to auniquelook. “Oh my God! Did you fuck him? Holy shit! What’re you doing?”

Hope wraps her arms around her middle, visibly shrinking into herself, as Joy very nearly shouts her business to the world.

Yeah, I hate the press. And my grudging respect for Joy is dropping, too, if she’s not able to see how she’s browbeating and hurting her sister right now.

I step in front of Hope, putting myself in the line of fire and taking the full brunt of Joy’s glare. “Is there someplace private we can go?” Everything is quiet and empty, and I wonder where the workers are, but this is too personal a conversation to have in an office hallway, regardless of who is or isn’t around.

She meets me toe to toe with a narrowed gaze for a long second, her sister all but forgotten, before finally twirling on her heel. “This way.”

It feels like I just faced a firing squad and somehow got away hole-free.

Joy leads us to a small conference room, closing the door behind us. “I think I’m entitled to some answers here. I nearly had to set myself on fire yesterday for some relief from the awkwardness of you sprinting for the woods midceremony. If I’d had a lighter, I’d be a flaming tiki torch right about now. And by the way, sis ... you are not a runner; I don’t care what the Couch to 5K program says. It was like that slo-moAce Venturascene—boots and tutu and all.”

Hope flinches, a frown turning her full lips downward. “I hadn’t really thought about what happened there after I left. I was zoned in, focused on getting away. Sorry.” Her voice goes hard. “And I run; therefore, I am a runner. You don’t have to be good at it for it to count.”

The sisters meet eyes, an entire conversation happening in the silence, and then Joy sighs. “Yesterday was pandemonium, to be honest.Mom and Dad wanted to go after you, but Sheriff Laurier got in Dad’s face. They werethis closeto throwing hands—which I honestly would have enjoyed watching. People were chattering, coming up with all sorts of theories. Most common one seems to be that you’re pregnant and needed to puke but then got too embarrassed to come back.”

“I’m not pregnant!” Hope’s jaw drops in horror, as if it’s the worst thing in the world that people might think that.

“I know,” Joy answers, rolling her eyes. “But that was better than the folks saying you probably had nervous bubble guts and went to shit in the woods. Besides, I was alittletoo busy to squash rumors in the moment because Shepherd squared up at Roy, figuring he must’ve done something to scare the snot outta you. And that’s a fight I wouldn’t have stopped.”

There’s a question in the statement—a plea for Hope to share, but mostly a question of if she’s okay.

“He didn’t do anything. He just didn’t ... I wasn’t ...” Hope is shrinking again, fidgeting with her shirt and her eyes downcast as she stumbles to find the words she’s looking for.

Joy rolls her hand expectantly, prompting Hope to spit it out. “He didn’t what? You weren’t what?”

Hope blinks, and tears start to trail down her cheeks. I grab a tissue from a side table and hand it over. She smiles sadly as she dabs at her face, but Joy is looking at me like I’m a new puzzle to solve. I don’t like it, and it takes everything I have not to flinch away from it.

“Sis, you gotta give me something here because we’re thinking the actual, literal worst. Did he lay a hand on you? Did he fuck someone else? Did he—”

I’m not sure where else Joy’s imagination was going to take her, because Hope interrupts her. “I have everything planned. I always have. I’ve known exactly what my life would be like since the day I turned sixteen.”

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