Wright Rival (Wright)

“If she didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be down here, alone with her.”

“She has a point, Hollin,” Tori muttered.

Hollin didn’t even acknowledge her this time. He only had eyes for me.

“She messaged me at the wedding, asking me to meet her. I only came here to tell her to leave me alone. That is the only reason I came here.”

My horror dawned brighter and more lethal. “Let me get this straight. She messaged you at my sister’s wedding. You opened the message while you were standing next to me. And instead of telling me about it, you went to meet her?”

Hollin opened his mouth as I laid out the facts. Then shut it quickly.

“I don’t care if she manipulated the shit out of you,” I told him. “I trusted you, and you broke that trust.”

My voice wavered again, and I realized I was shaking. My entire body trembled from head to toe. Hollin looked like he wanted to take me in his arms, but there was no turning back from this shit.

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I should have told you. I thought I could handle it myself. That if I ignored her, she’d go away. And if I could end it here and now, we wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore.”

“That’s the thing, Hollin—we weren’t worrying about anything. You had this one all to yourself.” I shook my head. “Fuck, I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Piper, please,” he said, stepping toward me again.

“Just…leave me alone.”

Then, I turned and fled the office. I picked up my heels on the way out and just kept running. I couldn’t go back to the party. I couldn’t fake it enough for Peyton, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin her wedding day. And I didn’t want to face my dad or Chase or anyone about what had happened with the winery. If Hollin came looking for me, I didn’t want him to find me. I didn’t want anyone to find me.

There was only one place that could envelop me entirely—the vineyard. This wasn’t my winery, but my winery wasn’t mine anymore either. It never would be again. Just like Hollin. Everything I’d worked for, everything I’d opened myself up for, was gone.

So, I darted into the maze of grapevines. I lost myself in the earth. The sun setting big and orange on the horizon. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then dropped to my knees in the dirt, panting and breathless. I cracked wide open. My hands clawed into the ground, tears watering the holes I dug, and all the primal fire released until I had nothing left.

36

Hollin

“Fuck,” I raged, throwing all the paperwork off of my desk.

Tori edged past me now that Piper had left, but I’d known her long enough to see that she was pleased. Her lips tilted slightly upward. She’d gotten everything she’d wanted. I’d thought that she’d go away if I ignored her. When that didn’t work, I thought I could finally tell her to stop contacting me, stop interfering, stop trying to weasel her way in, like she always had before. And now, I’d spectacularly fucked everything up.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” I roared at her.

Tori blinked, tears coming to her eyes, like flipping a light switch. “Don’t yell at me, Hollin.”

“All I wanted was to be free of you.”

“Well, I didn’t want to be free of you,” she shouted back. “Can’t you see that?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“If you wanted to be free, then you wouldn’t be here.”

“I came to tell you to leave me alone. I told you multiple times to stop contacting me.”

“But it doesn’t work! It doesn’t work for us,” she said, reaching for my hands.

I yanked away from her. “It’s over, Tori. It’s over. I love someone else.”

“You think you love her?” Tori sneered. Her expression was of pure horror. “You don’t love her!”

“Stop.”

“You can’t love her. That’s not possible, Hollin. You still love me. You’ll always love me.”

I wrenched away from her and stormed toward the door. “I don’t love you, Tori. And you don’t love me. You just need me to crawl after you. That’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

“Hollin,” she gasped, following me out the door.

But I was done with this conversation. It had been stupid to think that I could make Tori leave me alone. That I could make her stop. That she wouldn’t twist everything up until my insides were a pretzel that I didn’t know how to disentangle. That was all she’d ever known how to do—hurt me.

“Hollin, stop,” she yelled. “Why are you doing this to us?”

I ground my teeth at the question and whirled on her. “Just stop. I spent a lot of time fucking other women to forget all the immeasurable ways you hurt me, Tori. I decided I’d never date again. That I would never put myself through what you did to me again. And then I finally—finally—found someone worth it all, and you started your same narcissistic, gaslighting behavior. Like the idiot you’d created, I fell for it…again. Fuck.” I ran a hand back through my hair.