“But the ability might still be there,” Liv pushed. “I mean, I get the fear. When I decided to pursue photography again, it was kind of terrifying. Like, what if I wasn’t good at it anymore? What if I’d lost my creative spark? But it was still there, waiting for me to get my head out of my ass and come back to it. Maybe your spark would still be there for you, too.”
Taryn frowned. “Did you just tell me to get my head out of my ass, Olivia Arias?”
“Of course not,” Rebecca interjected, ever the level-headed lawyer. “I think what Liv is trying to say is that it can’t hurt to try. I think Kincaid’s right. It could be a really effective tool. Like those ASPCA commercials with the break-your-heart photos of animals in need and that Sarah McLachlan song.”
“Oh gawd,” Kincaid groaned, collapsing back in her chair as if she were going to melt out of it. “Those are the
worst.” She dragged her fingers down her cheeks. “Tears down my face every damn time. Here, just take all of my money, ASPCA.” She motioned throwing money. “All of it.”
Rivers chuckled behind her. “Yep. I’ve totally donated. Most depressing but most effective charity commercial ever. I’ve heard it earned like thirty million dollars in the first two years.”
Everyone turned to look at Taryn.
She was sweating in front of all the expectant gazes. Normally, she didn’t mind taking on big responsibilities, doing whatever was necessary, but they had no idea what they were asking. Write a song? She hadn’t written one note or lyric since she was seventeen. That creativity wasn’t hiding. It was gunned down. “Y’all…”
“Maybe just try?” Rebecca said gently. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”
Taryn glanced back at Shaw, who’d remained silent after his original suggestion. He shrugged. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I just know you have the voice for it.”
Taryn sighed, her shoulders sagging. “Fine. I will agree to consider it.” She lifted a finger. “But we need to have a solid, quickly executable backup plan for when all I come up with is ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb and It Was Awesome.’”
Her friends beamed at her as if she were Oprah and had just told them they were all getting new puppies. You get a puppy! You get a puppy!
Taryn shook her head, but her lips twitched with a smile. “You bitches are pushy.”
Kincaid reached across the table and patted her hand. “We love you, too, sugar. Now…let’s talk marketing plan for this event.”
Her friends rolled on to the next topic, even though Taryn was busy having an internal hair-on-fire panic at the thought of attempting a song. Not just a song but an emotional one about the hardest thing she’d gone through in her life. Yeah, okay, no problem. I’ll just whip that right up. She took a long sip from her water bottle and decided right there that she wasn’t going to do it. She wanted to make her friends happy and for the video to be successful, but there were better ways to do it. There were amazing songs already out there. Her friends were giving her juvenile songwriting skills more credit than they deserved.
They were asking more than she was capable of.
She wasn’t that person anymore. She couldn’t be.
Chapter
Twenty-One
A few weeks later, Shaw sat on the top of Wally, his feet hanging off the platform as Taryn faced him from the bottom. She’d been working out of an office at the gym that they were letting her use to coordinate the fund-raiser, but after work each day, she dutifully put on her workout clothes and had been tackling the obstacles with him.
She complained about it most of the time, giving him a hard time about being the most sadistic trainer ever, but he could see the look of satisfaction on her face with each notch of progress she made. This gave her relief from the intense work she was doing to coordinate so many things on her own. All that responsibility took a toll on a person, but Shaw could tell she was determined to both keep going and not to end up in the hospital again. So every night, she stopped working around five and often spent the night with him, at the gym for a little while and then back at his place for much longer.
They were developing a routine that felt oddly domestic even though it’d only been a few weeks since the first night she’d slept over. Something about their shared history and the circumstances had made the relationship deepen at a staggering rate. There were no games, no should-I-call-her-today-or-wait-a-day bullshit. It was as if they both sensed that this relationship had a definite time limit and they were determined to eke out every drop of enjoyment while they had each other around.
He probably should’ve been more worried about how much time they were spending together and how easily they’d fallen into a relationship, but he couldn’t help how much he enjoyed having her there every day. Everything inside him felt lighter. His life felt shockingly…normal. He had a girlfriend, even though they hadn’t put names on their relationship. He laughed during the day and got to do a job he loved. Rivers got to tease him about never getting any sleep anymore because his neighbors were so loud.
With all that going on, Shaw could ignore the stuff he didn’t want to think about—that he’d never gone to her place because he couldn’t bear the thought of going to Long Acre, that she kept canceling dinner plans with her parents because she couldn’t invite him along, and that he was putting her in a position to lie to the people she cared about most.
Those things would keep him up at night. He shoved the thoughts away and peered over the edge of the wall. “You gonna get up here, Landry, or just admire the view from down there?”
She stepped forward, giving him an unencumbered view of her cleavage, and looked up. “I think maybe I need to accept that this wall is just not for me. Maybe I’m anatomically unable to do this.”
“Maybe,” he said, not buying that for a minute. “Or maybe you’re overthinking it.”
“Overthinking it?” she asked, affronted. “What’s there to overthink? It’s a twelve-foot wall and I am not an elite athlete.”
“Be careful. Do you want me to throw annoying inspirational quotes I found on the internet at you?” He grinned, swinging his legs and gripping the edge of the platform. “Because you sound like you need them.”
“Oh Lord, please don’t.”