Hope Unbroken (Unveiled Series Book 3) (2 page)

chapter two

Unconditional

A sliver of warmth grazed my chin and sprawled over my face. My eyes fluttered open. Despite the curtain’s valiant effort to block it, the sun found a way to sneak its rays into the room. Not that I minded. Splashed in sunlight, I breathed in the scent of Riley’s sheets and the contentment of being in his world.

Until I remembered.

The imprint left from Jaycee’s phone call stripped away the last of the dream-filled haze clouding my head. So much for a nap lessening the blow.

Trey hadn’t answered when I’d called earlier. He couldn’t run the center by himself and deal with this curveball. I needed to get back to help, but I still had the rest of the day with Riley—time I wanted to cherish. But how was I supposed to shut it out until I got home? The center was the second most important thing in my life.

Something wet rubbed against my hand. Jake’s cold nose followed my arm up the mattress. I scratched him behind his ears. “No rest for the weary, huh?”

Head angled, he panted with gusto.

“Need to go out?”

He jumped in the air and bolted through the bedroom door.

“Guess that’s a yes.” I tossed off the covers. “All right, buddy, give me a sec.”

When my eyes were convinced the walls were perpendicular with the floor, I exchanged Riley’s shorts for my jeans and stumbled into the living room. With another near backflip, Jake barked an urgent plea for me to let him out.

A chilled breeze pooled inside the second I opened the glass door. Jake cleared the stoop in a single gallop and set off on a mission to mark every inch of the backyard with his scent.
It’s all yours, boy.

I slid my feet into a pair of slippers beside the door and flipped the light switch. A bowl-shaped pendant ceiling light lit up the living room’s beige carpet. I’d been too tired when I first arrived to notice much about the place. It held a different persona than Riley’s Portland apartment.

The modern wall art’s clashing colors were a far cry from his whitewashed walls back home. Not to mention the crimson microfiber couch looked more like something from a Pier 1 Imports display room than anything Riley would ever have picked out.

How could he fit the music industry so well and yet still seem out of place as if passing through a pre-furnished hotel on a temporary visit? Maybe he hadn’t fully moved on with his life as much as I’d thought.

I sat on the piano bench and chuckled at the number of coffee cups congregated on top of the mantle. At least some things never changed.

The edge of a picture poked out from behind the sheet music above the keys. I slipped it out the rest of the way to find a worn copy of one of my favorite photos of us at Reed. I smoothed the furled corners and traced the fingerprints left by Riley’s hands. How many times had he looked at this?

“You’re up,” he said from the front door.

I swung around on the bench. “And you’re late.”

“Sorry. I stopped by the store on my way home.” He swayed two grocery bags in the air. “Frozen-meal-in-a-bag. I wanted you to feel at home.”

I strained to keep a straight face.

He laughed. “Yep, still adorable.” After putting the food in the freezer, he joined me on the bench. His hair fell into his eyes as he pressed a shoulder into mine and nodded at the picture. “You got me through a lot of nights. Even when I didn’t get to hear your voice, seeing your face was enough to keep me going.”

His gaze followed mine toward the collection of mugs above us. “Well, you and coffee.”

“Roadblock?”

“You could say that.” With one collective swoop, he bunched the pages of sheet music into a single stack. “I’ve been having a rough time on this one song. But I think I might’ve finally broken through.”

I studied him, searching for an explanation.

His eyes creased above a smile. “You have no idea, do you?”

“What?”

He shook his head, stretched his fingers over the keys, and let the piano’s rich tenor fill in for his response. It didn’t matter how many times I’d listened to his music—recorded and live, in dreams, and in person. Nothing could lessen his ability to bind my heart to his when he played.

Every question I’d asked, every trial we’d gone through, had been worth the price for him to be this close to his dreams. He couldn’t lose them now.

I angled to face him and the uncertainty before us. “What happened at the meeting?”

He lowered his hands to his lap but kept his focus on the keys.

I swallowed, waiting. Did I want to know?

He slid off the bench and handed me a coat twice my size. “C’mon, take a walk with me.”

Why was he evading the question? Nerves pulsed down my body. But once outside, snuggled next to him, I left the unanswered behind. The crisp wind intensified as we neared the lake across from his condo complex.

He covered my hand with his. “Emma, listen, about Jess—”

“You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. It was childish.”

He stopped on the trail. “I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t hurt to know you’d think I’d ever cheat on you, but I understand. Jess can be a little . . .” He lowered his chin and blew out a gruff breath. “. . . driven at times.”

Was that what he called it?

His stare bore into the ground another minute before returning to me. “I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

He started down the gravel again. I followed closely beside, torn between wanting to hear his voice and fearing what he had to say. As concerned as I was about the outcome of his meeting, talking about his relationship with Jessica might’ve been worse.

“She was a lifesaver when I first got here. Helped me get acclimated to the industry faster than I ever would’ve on my own. But after a while, it was clear she had . . . other intentions.” His self-conscious laugh held a note of frustration. “As soon as I realized it, I set her straight.”

I buried my coat cuffs under my fingers. “What’d you say?”

“That I was already engaged.” He shrugged like there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. “Told her I drew a hard, fast line she couldn’t cross if she wanted to stay my manager.”

I fell a step behind. “How’d she take it?”

“As well as she takes anything.” He rubbed the back of his hair in snappy flicks. “She kept trying to inch past that line. The day she answered my phone when you called, that was it. I had enough. It took a few days before I could even handle talking to her.”

He kicked a loose rock into the lake. “I told her I’d honor the work she’s contributed to the album, but after it’s released, we’re done.”

A mixture of pride and respect for him collided with my own feelings of deficiency and failure for not drawing clearer lines with A. J. I stopped again, this time lagging several paces behind. “I just want you to know that nothing ever happened between A. J. and me. We got too close emotionally, but it was never more than that.”

Riley enclosed me in his arms. If he held any resentment, he didn’t show it. He laced his fingers through mine. “Can I take you somewhere?”

He barely waited for me to nod before whisking me off the trail. He pointed to street vendors and corner shops while narrating parts of his daily routine—favorite sandwich joints, cafés with the best teas he’d tried out just for me, notorious spots to hear live music.

The fiercer the wind blew, the tighter I nestled against Riley’s woolen coat. But getting to share in these little moments with him kept me warmer than anything else.

He slowed in front of a two-story brick building. The unwavering smile that’d led us here expanded as he unlocked the frosted glass door. “Ready?”

I crossed the threshold into a space that looked much like the entryway of any office building, minus the records framed on the walls.

He grabbed my hand and tugged me toward a staircase. “This way.”

On the second floor, he strolled over to a metal desk beside a window facing the street and withdrew a set of keys from the middle drawer. “You’re gonna love—”

Riley jerked a glance toward the sound of someone’s footsteps funneling up the narrow stairway.

Jess rounded the corner, looking like she’d just stepped off the set of some provocative legal drama. Her moment’s surprise at seeing us melded into a smirk as she traipsed toward us.

I lifted my chin but gripped the desk at the same time.

She was everything I wasn’t. A walking personification of all my insecurities. Sleek and shiny, her calves glistened in the light. She’d traded her capris and baby tee for a black pencil skirt that accentuated her nonexistent waistline and a satiny dress shirt that appeared to be missing the two most important buttons.

Though her gaze never retracted from Riley, the rest of her movement flowed with the graceful poise of a runway model. A foot away, she hurled a blatant once-over down my body from head to toe.

Riley draped an arm around me. “I don’t believe you’ve officially met Emma. My fiancée,” he added with a note of satisfaction.

The introduction probably called for a customary handshake, but neither of us breached the impasse.

Her scrutiny burned through me with calculated force before she dismissed my presence altogether. Again. A flick of her lashes returned her focus to Riley. “I was just coming in to grab some paperwork.” She brushed against Riley’s body as she leaned over to pick up a stack of papers on the desk. “See you Monday.”

Her perfectly straight blonde hair fanned over her shoulders as she turned. “Oh,” she said a few feet away. “Have you told her yet?”

I looked at Riley. “Told me what?”

Jess flaunted a devilish grin, obviously relishing my response. “Guess not.”

A tendon on Riley’s neck twitched. “Nick wants me to start touring in February.”

“So soon?”

“He’s working on landing me an opening slot for another artist. He’s pushing to get some singles out there.”

“For how long?”

His chin followed his stare to the floor. “A year.”

A year? I tried to restrain the disappointment clawing up my chest before it reached my face. It’d be okay. These last four months apart had been painful, but I had to believe we’d come out stronger. We’d figure this out too. Somehow.

Riley turned toward me, barricading Jess out of view. “Don’t worry. I already told Nick it’s going to have to wait until after you graduate and we get married.”

“What? Riley, no—”

Jess clicked her tongue. “Aw, you’re leaving out the best part.”

It took everything in me not to choke her little singsong voice.

Riley clenched his jaw. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Come to think of it, I have a road trip to plan.” Her smug tone flittered across the room and joined another overhauling glare right before she vanished down the stairs.

He shook his head. “Sorry about that. Just ignore her. I do.”

I rubbed out the mark left on my hand from the desk’s metal edge. Ignore her? Right. “What’s she talking about, the best part? What’s going on?”

He loosened his grip around the keys and headed toward a side room. “She likes to exaggerate. It’s just some fine print stuff I’m working out with Nick. It’s nothing.” He flipped on the lights to the studio. “C’mon, I want to show you where I’ve been recording all semester.”

One step through a door shouldn’t have been able to neutralize the nervous energy still surging on the other side of it, but something about the studio swept me into Riley’s dreams and overrode everything else. From the soundboards lining the walls to the single stool behind a microphone in the middle of the curved room, this was where he thrived.

I turned, not knowing what to say. Closer than I expected, he met my eyes right before my lips. My back pressed into the doorframe.

His grin toppled sideways when he finally released me. “Just in case you were starting to doubt my feelings for you.”

As if his smile would ever let me. Jess might’ve gotten away with causing me to question Riley’s commitment once. Not again.

He motioned inside. “C’mon.”

At the stool, he strapped on his guitar and began a song as if it were a live recording. He pulled me next to him. “Your turn.”

My blank stare drifted from him to the microphone. “You kidding me?”

“Hang on.” He jogged out and reappeared behind the window separating the studio and the control room. After fiddling with the equipment for a minute, he pointed at a headset resting on top of the music stand.

He
was
serious. I lugged on the headphones, and background music filled my ears.

Riley materialized beside me again. He lifted one side of the headset and handed me sheet music so I could follow along as he sang.

I picked up the chorus, singing in a whisper until Riley caught me. He angled the microphone closer to my mouth.

“Riley . . .”

He cocked his head. “I’m not making you nervous, am I?”

I pinched my lips together and shook my head. “Only until I close my eyes.”