“They’re not exactly happy about it.” Hope tapped on her second sister’s name and scrolled those texts.
Lydia
You’re a lesbian!
That’s a mortal sin, you know. I can’t believe this.
Is this why Rex divorced you?
Hope’s heart sank with each passing text. This was worse than when she’d told them about the divorce, that was for certain. They hadn’t attacked her then. They’d simply withdrawn. Cadence put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly.
“Now probably isn’t a good time to tell them about the ENM thing.” Cadence sniffled and tensed.
“The what?” Hope furrowed her brow and turned her head to look into Cadence’s eyes.
“Ethical non-monogamy. Don’t worry, we’ll educate you on all the lingo the deeper you get into our community.” Chuckling, Cadence clapped her on the back with enough force that Hope’s body jerked. “Come on, we’ve got to get some filming done.”
“Yeah, right, we do.” Hope sighed again, tapping her mother’s name.
Mom
I want to love you, I really do, but you make it so hard sometimes, and I’m not sure how I can love you through this. The cheating and the divorce was bad enough, but now you’re with her?
Hope paused.With her. Had her mother known this entire time? Lifting her hand, Hope rubbed the back of her thumb in the center of her forehead where the headache was hitting the hardest. God, this was a nightmare, and Rachel was right, sheprobably should have done a little more background work with her family before this hit the press.
But she hadn’t thought about that.
All she’d wanted was to stop hiding.
“Hope!”
Vaguely aware of her name being called, Hope still focused on her phone in her hand, scrolling through the abundance of texts until she got to the only one from her father.
Daddy
I love you, stinker. Don’t forget that. Just give them time.
Her heart melted a little more. She closed her eyes as tears brimmed. He always did have a way with the few words that he said. But at least she had one person still on her side in her family. Well, two, if she counted Rachel, which seemed more and more likely by the texts that kept coming in.
“Chef!” Cadence’s voice charged through the room.
“Uh, yeah, right.” Hope straightened up her back, put her phone inDo Not Disturbmode and slipped it back into her pocket. She had a whole day’s worth of work she needed to get done and now wasn’t the time to be pining away over something that she couldn’t actually fix right this very moment.
Even though she wished she could.
Looking around the kitchen, Hope worked to still her mind and focus on what needed to get done. The marketing team was already working its magic outside to get people into the restaurant that day. They paid them, so that should get at least a good chunk of the seats filled for a couple hours. And there was no way that she and Elsie were prepared for that.
Hope had stuck someone on training the servers, though Cadence would film a scene with both her and Elsie working ontraining, so it looked like they were doing it together. Probably easier that way since Elsie seemed to hate her guts. It was so rare that she came into a situation like this and couldn’t break through the walls of the other person to be at least a little liked. But Elsie seemed to just create more walls each passing day rather than breaking any down.
She decided to start with the chopping. That would be enough to get her hands and body moving and give her time to spin through the what-ifs of all those texts and missed phone calls.
Hope was halfway through the mid-morning prep when her phone rang again. Furrowing her brow, she stopped what she was doing and slid it out. There were only a handful of people who were on her approved list that could call through theDo Not Disturb.And even Angelica wasn’t one of them yet. She really should change that.
Her heart dropped at the name on her screen.
Mary.
“Perfect,” Hope mumbled. “Cadence, I need to take this.”
