Page 99 of Wingwoman
“I really do like you, Vivian. And your girls. But watching all this is hard.” I gestured to the room around me and wiped at my damp cheeks, trying to pull myself together. Trying to stop crying.
“I see that now,” she said, standing slowly.
Hiccuping as I tried to inhale and get my breathing under control, I crossed to the door. With my hand on the crystal doorknob, I paused. “Don’t give up on me, Viv?”
“Never,” she whispered. “Family never gives up on each other.”
With that, I ran down the stairs heading toward the door, not bothering to say goodbye or hello to my dad and Julianne. I didn’t care that it might take an Uber another thirty minutes to get here. Or that wolves might eat me while I waited.
I couldn’t be in that house for another moment. The house where my dad had finally built a life and a family… without me. The vulnerability of what I shared weighed too heavily on me. It was crushing.
I threw open the front door and ran out of that house, plowing right into Josh, standing there waiting for me.
I didn’t even care that I’d left him with a massive group of fans in a bar half an hour ago. I didn’t care that up until that very second, he’d seemed pissed.
I ran into his open arms and sobbed.
Twenty-Seven
JOSH
The next morning,I was up before the sun.
Pulling on a worn-in pair of Levi’s and grabbing my cowboy hat, I walked by Hope’s bedroom where I’d carried her last night when we got home.
I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened at her dad’s house, but my anger completely evaporated the moment she ran into my arms, crying.
Hell, I had been in a panic when I’d realized she was gone. There’d been a tug on my sleeve as I took another selfie and Rhonda had been there, handing me a cocktail napkin with an address scribbled on it in Hope’s handwriting.
I mean, I thought we had talked about the whole celebrity thing. I thought we had come to an understanding that I wouldn’t completely ignore or forget about her, but I did have to pay fan service when in situations like that.
I thought she understood.
She told me she couldn’t handle it. Maybe I should have listened to her.
As I passed by, Hope’s bedroom door wasn’t quite shut, just cracked open a few inches. Inside the dark room, Cash slept in her bed with her.
“Traitor,” I whispered to my dog. He merely looked up, tilted his head at me, then flopped onto his side and went back to sleep.
I didn’t call Cash to come out with me like I normally would for my morning ride. Better to let him stay there and comfort Hope if she needed it.
Once out in the stables, I saddled up my mom’s favorite horse, Snapple. She was the first horse my mom ever rescued. Ten years ago, we found her tied to a fence, no owners anywhere nearby. The poor thing was emaciated, skin and bones. But mom didn’t think twice. She immediately got the trailer and brought her back to the ranch. At the time, our stable was run down and barely had a roof. But when I pointed that out to her, Mom simply looked at me and said: then we build her a better stable.
And that was literally what we did. All week, Mom and I bought wood and fixed up the stable to give this sweet horse a better home. Because of Snapple, Anita’s Hope was born.
I pulled out an apple from my bag and we both had a quick breakfast before embarking on a slow ride through the woods.
She chuffed as we reached the summit, looking out over the beautiful landscape of Texas just as the bright orange sun edged up over the horizon line.
Mom used to ride multiple times a day to give all the horses she rescued a chance to get out and live beyond the rectangles of their stables. “Is it really rescuing them if they live most of their lives in a cage?” She’d always asked.
When Mom got too sick to ride, I’d tried to take over riding the horses for her. Even though I loved to ride, it took a lot of time to give the animals the devotion they deserved and needed. Mom had been so hands-on most of her life with the rescue… so I also tried to be in her legacy. But at the end of the day, I relied on my ranch hands and the volunteers at the rescue a lot more than I probably should.
Another whinny from Snapple. Bending down, I stroked the soft fur at her neck, the sinews tight and bunched beneath my rough palm. “I miss her too, Snapple.”
When we got back to the stables, I felt raw and tight. The kind of intense feeling like my organs were too large for my body.
And when I got like this? I knew I had a song to write. A song that was literally trying to burst out of me.
