Page 53 of Me and Mr. Just Right

“Oh, she’ll want to see you,” Rosie said. “Trust me.”

“There’s a flight heading out tomorrow,” Jules said. “It’ll take us two days to get to Nashville.”

“Us?” Haydn said. “You guys are coming with me?”

“Heck yes,” Bennett said.

“As if I’d trust you to do this on your own. We saw how well that’s been going for you,” Rosie deadpanned.

“I still have a few more days off work,” Jules said. “It’s not every day your brother falls in love with a famous singer.”

Haydn felt lighter than he had since the moment he’d walked away from Lia on the island. “Book it, then.”

“On it,” Jules said.

“I’ll work on finding us a place to stay,” Bennett said, opening his phone next.

Rosie took his arm and pulled him to sit down beside her on the couch. “And you and me … we’re going to plan the grand gesture of a lifetime.”

Haydn didn’t know what he’d do without his siblings. He’d had it backwards for so long. He’d thought he was the glue holding them together, but it was the opposite … they were the glue holding him together.

And right now, he needed them now more than ever.

Chapter 25

AlthoughLiathoughtsheknew what to expect when she arrived home, she was not prepared. To the media, she had fallen off the face of the earth, and she expected to be welcomed home with myriad headlines like “Aurelia Halifax Nurses Broken Heart in Secret.” She knew she’d have to face it eventually.

Tomorrow.

Today, she was going to collapse into bed the moment she got home.

Her driver navigated the busy Tennessee traffic, and already Lia was exhausted and ready for another trip to anywhere in the world but here.

Okay, not just anywhere.

Alaska.

With Haydn.

It had taken two days of flights to get home, which gave her a lot of time to think—and she’d come to the conclusion that Haydn hadn’t intended to use her to get ahead. The post had been deleted fromAlaska Ridges Magazine, and she knew that directive could have only come from Haydn.

She’d saved the picture to her phone and looked at it again. It really was an incredible picture. It caught the feel of the island, and he’d captured a moment when she’d been perfectly at peace.

Those two days had also given her time to write. Songs were flowing from her in a way they hadn’t since she was still a teenager and writing songs just for fun. These were deeper and fuller and more mature—better than anything she’d ever written. There were some about Haydn—she couldn’t deny that—but they were also about the island, and heartbreak, and the abandoned cabin in the woods and their love story, about friendship lost and peace and trust. It was everything she’d experienced in the last couple of months distilled into notes and melodies and lyrics.

It was her heart and soul on a page.

Her back was still feeling kinked from being stuffed in Rosie’s case. Rosie drove like the police were on her tail, and Lia still felt every bump from ricocheting from one side of the truck bed to another.

But she hadn’t been discovered. She’d made it the entire way home without being recognized. Everyone thought she was still in Petersburg, so no one expected to see her. Plus she wore sunglasses, Haydn’s baggy black hoodie—which she’d stuffed in her backpack before leaving, the first thing in her life she’d ever stolen in her life—no makeup, and her hair split into two frizzy braids.

“Ms. Halifax,” her driver said. He stood at the open SUV door. She stumbled up the stairs into her house, and he carried her bag and guitar inside with him before leaving. She locked the door and collapsed into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

An incessant ringing woke Lia up. She groaned when she saw Carmen, her label’s PR person, on the phone. It had been so wonderful to not have cell service for a week in Alaska. Her phone had been pinging nonstop since she’d landed in Seattle, but she’d been sending everyone to voicemail … and then deleting their messages un-listened to.

She had one hundred and fifty-six unread texts. Her assistant took care of her emails, so she didn’t have to tackle that, at least. But she had to start answering her phone at some point.

“Hello?” she said as pleasantly as she could muster.

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