Page 129 of Talk Nerdy To Me
She starts to turn around…and stops…and starts again.
“If you’re struggling with whether or not you can say something, you may as well just go ahead at this point, Ash,” I tell her quietly.
She groans a little as she turns around.
“She saved you a piece of cake,” she says like that’s supposed to make sense. “She was going to make sure you tried something from her event and liked it. She’s not a doormat for the Sterlings. She’s not a doormat for you. She’s not a doormat at all. Personally, I think you’re being a little too prideful. Careful. They warn you about the fall. They don’t tell you that you don’t see it coming.”
She walks in after that. I stare at the door as it shuts, not having a response ready for once.
I scrub a hand over my face and then bite down on my fist as I hold back the yell on the tip of my tongue, my chest rising and falling rapidly as I keep myself in check.
My eyes burn as I yank my truck door open, hearing my phone chime with an alert.
It’s been a while since the gossip columns have even mentioned Britt, since we’ve kept things as low key as possible.
I’m almost scared to look, but I finally click the button and voila. There’s the proof I need to see just how wrong I was.
She was steadfast and stoic today, absent of all emotion.
But in this fifteen second clip, she’s standing under the large pavilion just in front of the building. Her hair is completely soaked, along with her dress, and she’s barefoot. She’s just staring down at a piece of fucking chocolate cake and a bottle of champagne.
Champagne and cake—like what was smeared all over the interior of Harley’s car.
I barely glimpse Harley coming into the frame as her car comes into the final seconds, and then the clip starts over.
The sick feeling in my stomach forces me to bend over, and my head bumps the steering wheel as I try to think of what the fuck to do.
There is only a single line captioning the clip: It looks like our girl is single again.
Randy tries calling again, likely because my mother is still there, but I ignore it and start driving like hell away from Tag’s home and toward Britt’s office.
That’s when I flip on the radio, and my eyes go directly to it, because I hear it playing one of our newest songs, but that’s not us singing and playing it.
A horn blares, and my eyes come up in time to see I’m on the wrong side of the road, and I narrowly jerk the wheel in time to miss the black car by inches.
My heart is still pounding the base of my throat, and my hands are shaking, as I straighten my truck out on the road.
“Worst fucking day of my life,” I mutter as I juggle my phone and answer Randy’s call.
“Thank fuck,” he says like he’s panicking. “They’re playing—”
“Ralphy singing our fucking song on the radio. I know. Deal with it. I’m in the middle of something right now.”
I hang up on him and try calling Britt, but it goes straight to voicemail. I don’t even bother finding a parking spot as I pull up right in front of her office building.
Harley is walking out the doors just as I hop out of my truck, and she groans as she pinches the bridge of her nose.
“She’s not here, Base,” she tells me. “She’s at the airport.”
“Text me the information,” I say as I hurry back to my truck.
“Base, don’t—”
I slam the door and drive like hell to the airport. I’m really fucking thankful that Harley follows through with texting me the information, and at every stoplight, I pull up my phone and work on finding the cheapest ticket I can—until the entire session times out.
Then I call Randy.
He answers in a panicky tone. “Sticks is on the phone with the radio station, but they’re saying it’s our word against his. Man, have you got any proof—”
