Page 16 of This Much Is True
“You dated the farrier? Why am I just finding this out? I have literally sat beside you and drooled over this man’s social media posts,and you dated the guy?”
“Pretty much.” I wince.
“How? For how long? Why have I never met him?”
I sit up and prop myself against the leather headboard. “We dated from the time we were seventeen until I came to Nashville. It was just a few weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday. Then we … I don’t know, tried to make it work, kind of. For a couple of years, we talked off and on, and I’d come back to see him every chance I got.” A lump settles in my throat. “Then things really took off, and I couldn’t come back anymore, and he never came to see me. Things just kind of ended.”
My heart burns at the memories, making the cracks from my heartbreak obvious. The worst part of my life coincided with the best time of my career. Balancing the devastation of losing the man who I loved with every piece of me with the exhilaration of my first world tour was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
It was harder than walking out of the church today.
“And you are at his house now?” she asks, a hint of mischief in her voice.
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“I hear the little smirk in your voice,” I say. “This was unplanned. I haven’t spoken to Luke in years.”
“But you sure as hell have been keeping an eye on him.”
“Yes, but …” I pause, working through a thought. “You don’t think this makes me a bad person, do you?”
She laughs. “Why would I think that?”
I shift around and can’t get comfortable. The bedding is cozy. It’s my conscience that’s not.
“I was supposed to marry another man today,” I say, my voice growing louder. “And now I’m sitting in my ex-boyfriend’s house.”Not to mention in his clothes and bed, but details schmetails.
“You saved yourself from a bad situation and ran to a place you obviously feel safe. That’s supposed to make you a bad person?”
Yes. I feel safe here.
The flood of emotions that hit me nearly knock me over.I feel safe here—the first place I’ve felt safe in years.
“Sure, you could’ve done it differently,” she says. “But would it have made you a better person to have gone through with it then publicly divorced later? Is your mental health worth having the world think you’re agood person?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“And if you feel too guilty, let me remind you that Tom has put you in some prickly situations, too. He asked you to be his wife at the only concert of yours that he’s ever attended in the lead-up to his biggest blockbuster of all time—the one that they were pulling no punches to market.”
What a nightmare. There was no conversation after his proposal, no chance to get my bearings. We were being watched by twenty thousand people and endless cameras. All I could do was play the part and say yes.
“He could’ve chosen another week to have those pictures of him leaked—the term used loosely because you know damn good and well that he was behind that. Instead, he chose the week you were on the cover ofTimelessmagazine so he could steal your moment. He hated that you were chosen as Prettiest Person in the World and got more attention than he did.”
I squeeze my eyes shut … because down deep, I know she’s right.
“He could’ve supported your career just like you supported his,” she says. “And please don’t forget the rumors about Tom in Paris six months ago.”
Multiple women. A penthouse. Pictures that he swears were doctored were splashed across covers of all the rag magazines.
My jaw sets.
And my father made excuses for him. Looking back, I numbed myself to the situation—dove harder into work and chose not to pay attention. Survival at its very best. But the true betrayal from the Paris situation wasn’t from Tom. It was from my dad.
How could Dad continue to push me to marry Tom? Why did he get me to try to smooth over Tom’s abhorrent behavior? Why didn’t he see the red flags waving in the sky or, if he did—and I think he did—why did he blow them off?
