“You already said that.”
“It’s still true,” she shot back, frustration tightening her throat and sending a pang through my chest. It sucked to feel at odds with her. Especially after the annulment meeting, the veil of uncertainty it cast over our relationship.
“You should have told him the second you found out,” I told her, feeling tired.
She shot me a look of panic. “If you tell him, Luca?—”
“I don’t want to,” I cut in. “But if you don’t do it yourself soon, I will. He has a right to know, and I can’t lie to his face.”
She stared at me, stunned. Then her expression hardened. “You don’t understand.”
“Maybe not,” I said bitterly. “But I know how it feels to care about Daphne. About both of you, and Gavin and Cade. Hiding the truth isn’t fair to any of them.”
Her lip trembled. Then she grabbed her bag and got out of the car without another word.
I sat there for a few minutes, stunned. Angry. Hurting. And I drove off with the image of her walking away like she might never come back burned into my brain.
31
ALLIE
Iwas on my way into work, having just dropped Daphne off at her grandparents’ house for the day, when my phone started ringing. I wasn’t fancy enough to have the kind of car that would connect to my phone, so it was lucky that I was stopped at a light and had a second to fumble through my purse to get it.
I didn’t recognize the number, and normally I’d reject the call on those grounds. More often than not, it’d just be spam calls, or debt collectors when it got to the desperate times between paychecks and I had to pay my water, electric, or Wi-Fi bills a little late. But I was caught up at the moment, and something told me I should hit the green accept button, so I answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Allie Tate?”
“Yes, who is this?” I said, and the reply had my heart skipping a beat in my chest.
“Allie! It’s Delia Nance from Ratliff Records. How are you?”
Oh, fuck. I hadn’t expected that. At least the rush of excitement I felt was a nice change from the more negative anxiety I’d been feeling since Luca found out about Daphne’sfather and threatened to tell Cade before I could muster up the courage. I paused just a second longer than was probably acceptable.
“I’m good!” I said, my voice too bright. It was a little phony, but considering she’d only met me once when I was pretty tipsy, I didn’t think she’d notice. “How are you?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Look, I’m calling because I wanted to set up a meeting. How soon can you come to LA?”
I was having heart palpitations. The urge to squeal was strong. “Um, I’ll need to get some stuff arranged, but next week, maybe? What would we be meeting about?”
“Making your dreams come true,” she said flippantly, and I heard the smile in it. “We can talk about it more at the meeting, but I thought you might like to try and cut a few tracks with us and see how they do. It’s not a guarantee that I’ll be your representation going forward, or that you’ll get a full record deal. But with your talent, I think you’ve got a good shot of going far.”
Oh. My. God.I wished Kara was with me, or Brandon, or my mom, who had always been a huge fan even as she’d shown some skepticism about the idea of me having a career in the arts. I also really, really wished I wasn’t driving, especially since I started to feel the twinge of nausea that had been plaguing me for days. Blessedly, another red light showed up.
I’d never had that thought before. First time for everything.
“That…sounds great,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Yeah, I’d love to meet.”
By the time I got to work, the buzz of my excitement had turned to full-on birds of prey flapping around in my stomach. The prospect of my career maybe taking off at last felt too uncertain for me to commit to telling Kara, but I wanted to as I got started on an otherwise normal day at work. We were a little too busy to have time for gossip anyway, which was honestly for the best. Any obstacles to blabbing were welcome.
The only interaction Kara and I had for my whole shift, I forgot all about the call from Delia Nance of Ratliff Records. Kara looked a little panicked, lingering in the hallway by the back room of Marv’s. Before I could even ask her what the deal was, why her face looked like that, she ambushed me, grabbing my arm in a vise grip.
“Allie, do you have a tampon? I think I’m about to have a period emergency.”
Suddenly, there was a ringing in my ears. Something was dawning on me. Something big and scary enough that the thought wouldn’t fully solidify in my brain. I took Kara with me to where I’d stowed my purse for my shift, fishing out a pink plastic wrapper for her. She took it gratefully, running off to deal with her potential crisis before she could use her best-friend senses to get that I was in the start of a crisis of my own.
I’d had no reason to be diligent about tracking my periods since Daphne was born, since I’d been celibate before the guys came into town. I’d always been pretty regular anyway, so it didn’t seem like something I had time to worry about. But I knew enough about my usual cycle to know that I should’ve had it already this month. And we were nearing the end, just a couple of days out from the last little square on the calendar, and no bleeding.
