Page 10 of Tripped By Love
Marco
ON ME
“When you can’t pull through, when life's hard on you
Know it ain’t no thing, know it ain’t no thing
You know what to do.”
Performed by Thomas Rhett, Kane Brown, and Ava Max
Written by Harry Edward Nilsson
Brady stormed back from the restaurantthrough the secret door on the second floor with eyes blazing, and my heart fell. Was Cassidy worse this morning than last night? Should I have insisted on her going to an urgent care for an X-ray? He’d raced from the studio to check on her when Tristan had let it slip that Cassidy had fallen the day before.
Tristan’s eyes widened at the concerned expression on his face, eyes darting from me to Hannah and back to Brady.
Hannah was at the piano, playing a piece with no music in front of her. I thought it was a new song she and Brady were writing together, but I wasn’t sure. Her blonde hair was bent toward the keys, and her flowered shawl was slipping from her shoulders. The top hat she’d worn almost daily for the first year after her great-grandmother had died had been left at home today.
“Is she okay?” Tristan finally asked.
“What? Oh, I guess,” he said distractedly. “She said she was fine. But this guy”—he shoved a business card in my direction—“was there saying he wants to buy her recipes and produce them for grocery stores. I need you and Lee to check him out.”
Tristan pulled out the paintbrush she’d stuffed into her bun and twirled it. “This is incredible news. Why are you upset?”
“I just don’t like people poaching off her. You know Cass. She’s all sunshine and rainbows. I don’t want anyone to take advantage of her.”
I barely held back my retort as I took the card. Cassidy was one of the most positive people I knew, but she was also incredibly smart. Savvy in a way her family tended to overlook. She didn’t need everyone huddling about her like she was ten instead of a grown-ass businesswoman.
It didn’t mean I wasn’t going to run this guy and his company through every background check we could find. Maybe even send it out to Nash, a former Navy SEAL who’d worked briefly for Garner. He still had ties to the military that I didn’t.
Hannah’s fingers crashed to a stop, and she looked up with golden eyes to Brady and her mom. If you didn’t know that Hannah wasn’t Brady’s child, you’d think she was. They were all golden, just like Cassidy. With hearts just as big. Just like the name of Cass’s restaurant, even though I knew that wasn’t the reason she’d chosen it. When you looked at them all together, they reeked of love. Of belonging. Of family.
Sometimes, seeing it caused an ache in me that was hard to stifle. An ache that felt large enough to swallow me whole. My parents and I had blended together that way. Completely dark to this family’s light, but still glowing with adoration. With true affection. I’d missed them every day of the last fourteen years. Losing them at fifteen and being placed into foster care?into homes where love was not on the table?had been eye-opening. It had made the love I’d found with Maliyah and her rowdy, extended family a gift. But it had still never felt the same. It had never felt like the love standing in front of me.
I suddenly needed air. I needed to escape before the black hole that had embedded itself into my soul after that last night at the fair made me implode.
“Josh is downstairs,” I said. “I’ll just run back to the office and start on this.”
I left without looking back. I heard Brady say something to Hannah. I heard the music pick back up, and I kept going.
Josh gave me a curt nod as I left the studio before crossing Main Street and heading to the stairs on the side of Sweet Lips Bakery. Since Brady had made Grand Orchard his home base, opened the studio, and invited a number of famous musicians to record here, our team in town had grown large enough that we’d needed office space to accommodate us. We rented the rooms above the bakery because it gave us line-of-sight toLa Musica de Ensueñoseven when we didn’t normally need it.
When I opened the door with my key card and thumbprint, Trevor’s head swiveled around from the nearest desk. He was blond and lithe, just like the trio across the street, except his pale-blue eyes were a contrast to the warm browns of the O’Neil family.
“What’s up?” he asked, frowning because I rarely left Brady’s side during the day unless he was tucked away at home.
“We need to create a file on this guy,” I said, handing the card to Trevor and explaining who he was.
Trevor nodded, turned to his computer, and started typing in details. He didn’t even look up as he said, “Garner wants to check in with us regarding our security plans for The Painted Daisies.”
In a few days, Brady was bringing The Painted Daisies into town to record their next album. The all-female band had burst onto the music scene in the last year and were known for causing mayhem everywhere they went. Not only because of the fans and anti-fans that followed them across the country, but because some of the members were trouble on wheels themselves. The Garner Security team that normally protected the band would be onsite as well as our team, but we were planning for the worst and hoping for the best.
Trevor’s fingers paused, and he frowned at the computer screen.
“What?” I asked, doing my damnedest to keep the panic from my voice at the thought of some schmuck trying to weasel into Cassidy’s life.
I moved behind him and looked down at the screen.
