It wasn’t until the cameras were no longer rolling and everyone was heading home for the night that Hadley and Max once again said real words to each other.
“Sorry again,” Max said as Hadley climbed into her car to be taken home.
“Forget about it,” she said in response. “See you tomorrow.”
That was it, but every word and every tone was coated in more actual human emotion than anything else that had been said in all of the filmed moments prior.
Max slumped into his hotel room. He was a head-to-toe amalgamation of relief and regret.
He’d left New York in a state of shock that Leo had been managing Hadley’s career, and he’d had the entire drive to think through what that meant. By the time he arrived in Nashville, he thought he understood exactly what it meant: that Hadley and Leo had been collaborating to, at the very least, use Max’s in-motion career disasters to Hadley’s advantage; at most, they’d been conspiring to bring Max down, to rocket Hadley to the top. He’d been sure of it, and he’d been ready to confront her, but then he saw her.
She looked so unlike the image she usually put forth. She was always so put together. Simple but meticulous. Not a lot of makeup, but what she wore was always flawless. Flawless hair. Carefully chosen wardrobe. To see her step out of the car with that new hairdo, in that red flannel shirt with the torn hem and the button missing at the bottom . . . he hadn’t been prepared for that. It had thrown him completely off his game.
“Stop it,” he lectured himself as he collapsed onto his room’s king-sized bed and lay back with a sigh. Every guy had a thing for cute girls in flannel.
Except that wasn’t true at all, he knew. At least not for him. But now, apparently, he just had a thing for Hadley Beckett. No matter what she wore and no matter what she did. He’d known he had to pull himself together, though. He had to put all that aside and get to the bottom of everything, once and for all.
Unfortunately, he’d realized just a little too late that regardless of what Leo was up to, Hadley wasn’t part of it.
With a groan he rolled off the edge of the bed and rubbed his face in his hands. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to clear away the memory of the suffering in her eyes as he accused her of hypocrisy. As he attacked her with words and emotions she’d done nothing to deserve. It hadn’t even taken much effort to get her primed for the onslaught of pain. In his presence, she was no longer the fierce, tenacious competitor she’d been every other time they’d gone to war. And seeing that was what made him realize he’d been wrong. So very wrong.
In his presence, she was trusting. Protective—of him, not herself. She was sincere, as she had always been. Even the different versions of herself that she presented in different situations, they were all her. And not a single one of those versions was out to get him.
Over and over she laid her soul out for him to see—and her soul was the truest, most genuine thing he’d ever known.
“What do I do now?” he asked himself aloud.
He couldn’t very well show up at her house again, and he didn’t figure there was much chance she’d reply to a text from him. But at least maybe she’d read it. He looked around for a comfortable place to settle in and take a seat. It wasn’t that there weren’t comfortable chairs in the room. There were. But they all looked so formal. Instead he leaned up against the wall and slid down to the floor and began typing with his thumbs.
And then he stopped. Suddenly. Midword.
What could he say? How could he explain? If he explained to her the assumptions he had made regarding her dealings with Leo, would he give her cause to mistrust his dealings with Leo? And why shouldn’t she mistrust him? The truth was he and Leo had discussed ways to manipulate the situation—no, manipulate her—from the very beginning. That’s why he’d driven from New York to Nashville the first time. That was Leo’s idea, not his. But he’d had no idea Leo was maneuvering the chess pieces on both sides of the board. Did that matter?
Would any of it even matter? How many times would she be willing to overlook his flaws and mistakes before she wrote him off once and for all?
He switched gears, pushed a couple buttons on his phone, and listened in nervous anticipation as it began ringing, and again as Hadley’s voice instructed him to leave his number and a brief message.
“Hadley, it’s me. Max. Hopefully you’ll get this. Look, I said some things . . .” He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers as his eyes clenched as tightly shut as they could. “I’ve probably said lots of things, but the things I said tonight were just about the worst things I’ve said. I was . . . well, I was stupid. And wrong. And I feel like half our time together is me apologizing, and the other half is me refusing to apologize, when I really should. And it would be so easy for me to sit here and say we bring out the worst in each other because, let’s face it, that seems to be the truth. But the fact is, you bring out the best in me, Chef Beckett. I’m just really sorry that my best isn’t . . . better.” He leaned his head up against the wall and sighed. “There are some things we need to talk about. Please. Let’s talk.”
He ended the call and threw his phone onto the bed—but he immediately thought better of it and hurried to pick it up and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to chance not hearing it ring. He grabbed his backpack and pulled out his Discovery Journal. So many options for the day.
Today, in my ongoing adventure of discovering who I truly am—the parts I like and should celebrate, as well as the parts I hope to improve—I discovered:
I’m the biggest jerk in the world.
I’m a pompous, condescending egotist.
I really hate country music.
None of that felt quite right, no matter how true it all was.
He set the journal down in response to the knock at the door and walked across the room with unrealistic hopes and dreams that room service had instinctively known he needed food. He didn’t have any more appetite than he’d had at dinner, but his growling stomach had apparently not gotten the memo.
“Hadley,” he breathed when he saw her standing there, still in that red flannel.
“Hi, Max.”
They stared at each other, and Max felt a combination of joy and misery that he was pretty sure he’d never understand.
“Um, sorry,” he finally said as he scooted over and opened the door wider. “Come in.”
She shook her head adamantly. “No. Thanks, but I won’t take up much of your time. I just . . . well, I got your message, and I was nearby. I was in the lobby, truthfully. I’ve been debating whether or not to come up, but I just couldn’t say what I need to say on the phone. And, well, we need to deal with this now, so that it’s not still hanging over our heads in the morning.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” he asked nervously.
“I’m sure.”
“Look, Hadley, if you’re worried we won’t be able to keep our hands off of each other—”
“I’m not worried about that.” Her gaze was resolute and unmoving. “Not at all.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Well. Okay, then. He scratched the coarse hair on his chin and bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could without drawing blood.