Page 103 of How to Say I Do
“We’ll fix this. We just need to figure out what to do.” Tessa straightened her spine and lifted her chin, and she shifted into the powerhouse phenom personality that had seized hold of the music industry for two decades. I nearly took a step back, shocked at the transformation. It was like watching a phoenix spark out of cold ashes. I thought Tyler was going to burn alive, standing so close to her, but he kept his hand on her shoulder and simply asked, “What are you thinking, babe?”
“I have to fire Noël,” Tessa said. “It’s the first thing that’s got to happen. Your name is all over the contracts, Noël, and those are all going out the window. None of that”—she waved her hand over an imagined giant pile of shit—“is happening. You’re fired, and so is Harrison Ltd.”
“I, um. I don’t work for Harrison anymore.”
“I imagine you don’t.” She sighed, and then she stared up at the ceiling, one foottap-tap-tapping.Her fingers drummed along the counter top. “Fuck everyone who thinks they are entitled to my life,” she said. “Two decades of the paparazzi chasing my every move doesn’t give anyone front row seats to my life. What the fuck is it that drives this, Noël? Why do they want my wedding so badly?”
“Exclusivity. They want to sell every Jane and Karen out there a fantasy that they can be just like you, with the fairy-tale life and the success and the happiness.Theif only. But since ‘if only’ doesn’t exist for most people, they live vicariously through photographs and link clicks and Instagram. And you. Your love life was hell, but now it’s amazing. People want to believe that their lives can turn out like that, too. And if not, they’ll borrow your life through the pages ofElite.”
“So if there’s no exclusivity, then there’s nothing to sell.” She hummed, the gears inside of her churning. “Noël, tell me: what would happen if we set up our own photo feed at the wedding? What if we could outpace the frenzy? Imagine this: everyone at the wedding is able to post their own photos on an Instagram feed, curated live right then and there. The fairy tale for everyone in real time.” She looked at me, her eyebrows raised.
“If you did that? If you released photos live, during the wedding?” I tried to imagine it, the absolute balls of it. “Everyone in the world would be watching that feed. But you’d be exposed. You’re talking aboutlive, which means no filters, no editing, no careful curation of what you want to show the world. Once it’s out there, it’soutthere.”
“I’m not afraid of being real. Not anymore.”
My mind was still spinning. “If you did that, and you took charge and owned your own narrative… No one would care about any exclusive first run inElite. And they wouldn’t dare spend $10 million to own your wedding because they’d never earn that back. In fact, they’d probably think they were lucky to escape this contract by firing us.”
Tessa looked at Tyler. Tyler looked at her. “Then that’s what we’re doing.”
There were only about a thousand and one huge considerations that still needed to be addressed, and I wished the world worked as simply as that. Tessa, however, was leaping ahead, still trying to fix each and every problem in a row.
“Now, that $10 millionElitewas going to pay. Where was that going?”
“Half to Harrison,” I said, “and the other half to Wyatt. I wrote a gigantic site fee for him into the contract, but not because I was trying to funnel him money. He’s never done anything like this before. He was in way over his head. Wyatt didn’t have the infrastructure, or the expertise, or the guidance, and I thought…”
My words got stuck. “I thought that the money would help with his future. You know, Tessa. Youknowthat the biggest problem he’s going to face in all this isn’t the logistics. He’s already done amazing, and it’s going to be a beautiful wedding, Tessa, myGod—” I took a breath, shook my head. My thoughts were smashing into each other head-on. “It’s everything that’s going to comeafterthe wedding. Exposure and publicity is great, sure. But Wyatt is going to be inundated.”
It was my final piece of shame. Wyatt and I had talked so many times about ‘after the wedding.’ Oblique plans, hopes for the future, dreams of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But Wyatt was dreaming in a world that wouldn’t exist because as soon asElite’s September issue hit the newsstands, and the Gran Cielo Viñedo was named as Tessa’s big wedding site, the crowds were going to be three-miles deep trying to get to his ranch. If it wasn’t the paparazzi, it was going to be the tourists, and the lookie-loos, and then the starry-eyed hopefuls wanting the exact same wedding as Tessa.
Tessa’s jaw shot hard left. “Well. That’s just not going to happen.”
“You can’t stop it. If there was a way, I would, I would do it in an instant. Tessa, I’m fucking terrified for him—”
Five million could do a lot, but it wouldneverbe enough to make Wyatt forget that I was the one that brought the world to his ranch.What is taking this on going to bring to my home? You know what this place means to me.
“Look, I’m a global superstar, right?” Tessa fixed me with her multi-million-dollar stare. I nodded. “Then I have superstar prerogatives. Such as, I want to be the one and only wedding that Wyatteverhosts. I want to be so exclusive that I’mit, his only celebrity. In fact” —she snapped her fingers, another idea sparking red hot inside her—“I want to invest in his winery. That Baby Boy blend? It’s my new favorite wine. You said he was getting $5 million ofElite’s fee? Screw that. I’m going to write a contract with him directly and double what he was getting. $5 million in cash to host my wedding, and another $5 million that goes straight to his winery.”
“Tessa—” My mind stopped. I couldn’t drag one single thought together.
She cracked a smile, and, finally, the dam inside me broke. The day collapsed on me like a brick wall; I was crushed beneath the broken weight of it. I’d boarded the plane that morning convinced I had ruinedeverything. Tessa and Tyler’s wedding, Wyatt’s life, and his future, and his family’s future. What was worse than having $5 million and a paparazzi problem? Not having $5 million andstillhaving a paparazzi problem. I had retreated into a dark and furious scream in the center of my soul, thinking of how deeply I’d fucked upagain. The conundrum of me: how could I fuck up everything, even—or especially—when my heart was on the line?
But now, here, in Tyler’s kitchen—
“You’re unbelievable,” I whispered.
“I’m not.” Tessa shook her head. “I know what I want and I know how to get it, that’s all. Right now, from where I’m standing, my problems are solved. I can work through this.” She hooked her elbows on the kitchen counter and leaned forward, peering at me. “But what about you?”
There were two bottles of wine on Tyler’s counter, both of them with strikingly familiar labels. On one, a stylized yellow rose curled around a dove-gray cowboy hat, and Old West font proclaimed the vintage in an arc across the top.Yellow Rose. On the other, a tender, bucolic scene of rolling hills, gentle oaks, and a horse in the distance rested beneath theBaby Boyin slanted script across the upper corner.
Memories played inside me. Memories of Wyatt, memories of us. Memories of the ranch and the vines and the grapes that had gone into those two bottles. Memories that felt like they belonged to another life, and a world where Wyatt and I could—actually, finally, truly—be together.
There was one thing in my life I wouldn’t fuck up ever again.
“I know exactly what I need to do.”
CHAPTER27
Noël
