I lay there and thought about Lucas and what I’d given up. And then I thought about how it had ultimately been the right choice. No matter how badly it hurt.
Sitting up in bed, I pulled my laptop over to me, quickly opening a blank Word doc before I lost my train of thought.
“As I write this today, the person I am is…” I began. My fingers began typing furiously. “Loyal and unique, although sometimes it takes seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes to see that. And above all, I am strong. And I didn’t realize it until I had to give up the thing I loved the most.”
The damn thing nearly wrote itself, and I had to edit quite a bit to get it down to the assigned three thousand words.
Chapter27
Jane
“Lily?It’s kind of late to be calling—are you okay?” Grayson Spaulding said when I called him using Lily’s phone. Syd wasn’t around, which was just as well. I sat on the forgotten Megan’s bed.
“Mr. Spaulding. This isn’t Lily. This is…Jaybird Winters,” I said, using the name I gave up in seventh grade, demanding everyone call me Jane. I had it legally changed to Jane at fifteen.
“Jaybird? Jane?” Yep, that got his attention. “Is Lily okay?”
“Lily’s fine. I just borrowed her phone.”
A pause, then: “To what end, Jane?”
No wonder my dipshit of a father kept Spaulding close…he was one shrewd SOB. Emphasis on SOB.
“I’m aware of the deal you and Lily made a couple of weeks ago.”
Nothing.
“And I’d like to make a deal of my own with you.”
“I’m listening,” he said after a moment’s pause.
“I want you to let Lily out of her deal and allow her to see Lucas.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Isn’t your daughter’s happiness reason enough?”
“No.” No pause or anything. Suddenly, growing up with an absentee father didn’t seem so bad.
“Okay. If her happiness means nothing to you—”
“Which is not what I said, and you know it.”
I smiled. I kind of liked talking to the man who had always held my father’s strings. “Well, if Lily being miserable, and Lucas actually being a pretty decent guy who loves your daughter, won’t change your mind, then how about…” I waited for emphasis. I hadn’t been raised by the ultimate drama queen for nothing.
“Yes?”
“How about if I agree to stand in Betsy’s wedding?” Ooh, that had him thinking.
“You would do that? Lily said there was no way she could talk you into doing it.”
“She was right. She couldn’t have. But let’s just say I have recently seen…how much Lucas and Lily belong together. And I feel strongly enough about it to make this call and offer myself up as the sacrificial lamb.”
“Standing in a wedding is hardly a huge sacrifice.”
“Don’t kid yourself. It’s going to be hell, and not just on that day, but in the photos that will live on forever.”
There was a pause, and then a deep exhale. I could almost hear his political mind weighing the pros and cons at lightning speed. “If I agree, you have to actually…behaveat the wedding. No all-day pouting, no dramatics. You need to act like you’re happy to be there.”
