Page 42 of As They Are
“We’ll have to launch a campaign to fix this. Wherever you are, you need to come back to Nashville right now. We have work to do on your relationship.”
I jerked back, glad she couldn’t see me. “Our relationship? Do you really think I would stay with him if he cheated on me?”
“It’s not real. We can spin this to?—”
“I don’t want tospinanything. He should have done his job to lay low. I would never get back with him, and doing anything but breaking it off would be disingenuous.”
“This whole thing is disingenuous, Wren. It has been the whole time.”
But back then I thought I had a chance of being with him earnestly.
“Still,” I said. “There have to be consequences for this.”
“Ugh,if you insist, fine. You can be having a rough patch at the beginning of the season. It’ll make the viewers interested anyway.”
“I’m supposed to forgive him for cheating on me?”
“We’re signed on for another season. You have to.”
“No,”I hissed.
She let out a long sigh and the line went silent for a while. The two of us were brick walls. I wondered who would give first.
“What can I do to get you fully on board?” Madison asked.
I heard an email notification from my phone and I pulled it away for a second to check. My eyes widened when I saw the exact email I needed to see.
Application for STM Grant. Approved.I quickly opened it and saw they’d agreed to the whole ten years of funding.
I had to read it twice. They’d agreed to my massive request? In less than an hour?
There was no way.
But there it was. In writing. And they were asking where to send the money.
Both Tammy and Henry had said it was real, and now I had exactly what I needed to get the library done.
“Hello?” Madison asked in the distance. I put the phone back to my ear.
“I’m here.”
“Did you hear my question?”
“I did,” I said. “And I have an answer.”
“What is it?”
“You come to Strawberry Springs and work on this library.”
She let out another sigh, harsher this time. “But the long-term funding?—”
“I took care of that. The library has ten years of funding.”
“How?”
“A local grant. It’s legit.” Or so I thought it was. “I can send you the approval. And you can look it up too. But this is what I want. The library. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
She was silent for a long time again. “Send me the details. If this is real,then you get the library. And I get to make sure the romance happens exactly as I want it to.”
