CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

 

Aimee

 

With my Chevy still out of commission, Corbin drove me back to New Orleans to visit my mom at the hospital the next morning. Daniel had made it clear that Evangeline’s and all of Pontmaison could do without my baking for a day, and that he’d take over Beth’s shift himself if she called in sick. Corbin and I arrived to find my mother had been released from ICU and would be in a regular hospital room for a couple more days while they made sure the antibiotics were effective. I’d introduced Corbin to her, and she’d narrowed her eyes and stared at him, as if she’d been trying to figure out if she’d seen him before, before Corbin excused himself to wait out in the hallway again, out of earshot but always within reach if I needed him.

“You in love with that fine young man of yours?” my mother asked, a knowing grin on her face. It felt good to see her without the nasal cannula in, and without the IV drip and heart monitors attached to her. She was definitely on the mend, and Uncle Daniel was eager to have her back.

“He’s only in Pontmaison for a couple of months.”

“That don’ answer my question.”

“We’re going to see where things go,” I finally said.

She only nodded at that. “You given much thought to what I tol’ you ‘bout your father?” The grin faded.

I cleared my throat. “Best let sleeping dogs lie, right?”

“Mebbe. Up to you, though. You wanna go find him, tell him about me and you, ain’t no business of mine, or anyone else’s for that matter.”

Rolling my eyes, I said, “Right. And how would I go about getting in communication with a gigantic rock star? I mean, it’s not like I have his number handy. And as far as emails go? Huh. He’d have assistants and aids and whatnot responding, and I’m sure they’ve heard time and time again crazy stories about people claiming they’re his child. There’s no way he’ll ever know about me.” The choked sob that filled my throat surprised me. I had lived without a father for my whole life, and now suddenly I had some weird desire to know the man who’d given me life?

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Tears pricked my eyelids. I’d been so shocked by my mother’s revelation, surprised more by the name of the man who’d given me life instead of the fact that I now knew who he was. I’d immediately shoved any desire to see him out of my head. But these tears stated a different truth. I wanted to know my father. I just had no way of doing so.

“It’s impossible, Mom. Just forget about him. I will.”

I moved the conversation elsewhere, and soon my mother fell asleep. I tiptoed out of the room and found Corbin seated right outside the room, reading a celebrity magazine. He shoved it under the chair, fast, when I stepped into the hall. I almost laughed at how guilty he looked—like he was ashamed of being caught reading one of those paparazzi papers.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Better.”

We walked in silence toward the hospital doors that led to the parking lot.

“I think she’ll come home with me in a couple of days,” I said. “Miss Cecily can put her up, I think.”

“You don’t want her living with you above the diner when you move in? Considering Miss Cecily said she’s going to be losing her place pretty soon?”

I froze. “Losing her… What are you talking about?”

Corbin frowned. “Shit. She told me… I mean, I figured you knew. She said she owed too much on the house and since business wasn’t good, she was going to have to give it up.”

My chest clenched. “No,” I whispered. “Poor Miss Cecily. She loves that place. It’s where she and her husband lived until he passed.” He put his arm around me and we started walking again.

He pulled open the hospital door and held it open for me. “I’m so sorry, Aimee. I know it sucks but—”

“Corbin!!!!”

My head jerked up at the scream and my eyes widened in shock. There were various news vans, tons of cars, and a mob of teenage girls with posters and t-shirts in their hands. Young women were everywhere. The shrieks and screams were deafening.

“Goddamn it!” Corbin swore as he grabbed my arm.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice being lost as the crowd erupted into a shrieking din of noise. Suddenly reporters and paparazzi were thrusting cameras in our faces and blinding me with flashing lights. I stumbled and would have fallen if Corbin hadn’t brought me closer to his body.

The women shrieked almost in one organized team, a wail that even made me shudder and grabbed at my ears. They surrounded us, confusing me. Someone famous must be in the hospital, but god, you’d think the crowd would let innocent people leave.

Suddenly a leopard print bra landed on my head. In an instant, Corbin had me wrapped in his arms, protecting me. Reaching up, he pulled the bra from my face and threw it back to the crowd.

“I’m so sorry, Aimee. I never meant for this to happen. Not like this.”

Why would he apologize for us getting caught in a horde of some famous person’s fans?

Reality set in when I realized the crowd was shouting one word: and that one word was Corbin’s name.

My stomach pitched. “No…” I moaned. Corbin wasn’t just any old bass player.

He was famous.

He was a star.

I realized he was pressing me behind his back, as if protecting me. “Aimee, go back inside. Ask for security to be sent out. I’ll get to you when I’m done here.”

A swarm of teens and young women shoved me aside before I could answer. They engulfed Corbin. It was too much of a wave to fight against, and I was swept away, thrown to the side as the mass of women rushed him. Unnoticed, I managed to slip back inside the glass doors. There was no need to ask for hospital security—they were already running down the halls and heading outside.

I stared through the glass doorway, and my mouth hung open as I watched women try and tear parts of his shirt off, but that was tame. One woman had whipped her top off and exposed her breasts. She had a Sharpie marker in one hand and it took a minute for my addled brain to realize she was actually asking him to sign her bare boob.

It was madness.

And it was over in minutes. Security body-blocked the worst of the fans and crab-walked Corbin back inside, then formed a perimeter against a throng of hysterical girls and insistent paparazzi, not allowing any of them inside. Corbin leaned against the glass door and looked at me, an expression of pain in his eyes.

“What is this?” I demanded, pointing to the mob outside. “Who are you?”

He didn’t answer, just jutted his jaw at the receptionist behind the counter, who gaped at him with a dreamy expression on her face. “Is there a back way out of here?”

Nodding mutely, she pointed to a door marked “Exit.”

“Let’s go, Aimee.” He tried to slide his fingers between mine the way he had only minutes before, but I pulled back.

“Not until you tell me who you are,” I demanded, my voice flat.

“He’s Corbin Ross. Bass player from Point Break,” the receptionist piped up. “I have their poster on my bedroom wall.”

“Point Break,” I whispered, dumbfounded. I knew the band. I’d downloaded two of their albums onto my phone one day when Evangeline’s had particularly good cell service. They were good. And insanely famous.

“I was going to tell you, Aimee, I swear. A couple of times I tried—” Corbin said, a pained expression on his face.

“They all say that,” I scoffed, but my voice was hollow. “If you’d really wanted me to know you’re a god damned rock star, you would have found a way.”

“Can we talk about this at home?”

The hospital doors rattled loudly and I glanced back over. Wrong thing to do. One woman had removed her top and had her breasts squished against the glass. I shuddered. This was his double-life, the part he’d tried to hide from me. Part of Corbin might have been an honorable guy, part of him was definitely my hero, but the rest was a world famous rock star with adoring women throwing themselves at him right in front of me.

“Aimee. Don’t look at them. Look at me. I’m still who you thought I was. I’m still the guy who wants to be with you.”

I couldn’t break my gaze away from the screaming fans. Was this what it was like every night back stage? Was this the overflow of women available for him? His words echoed in my head. “I’m still me and I’m still yours,” he said even more urgently.

But he wasn’t. He never had been my Corbin. He’d just been in hiding.

How long before I would be tossed aside?

How long before he tore me into a million pieces the way my mother had been torn apart?

I was just a simple country girl who’d never been farther than New Orleans in her life. I was a baker. A niece to a zydeco-playing fiddler. The daughter of a failure of a mother. The most you could say about me was that I was about to own a broken-down diner in a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t anything I had in common with a rock star, and there was certainly no way I could compete with all these women.

Whatever had been building between Corbin and I was never going to work.

“Take me home,” was all I could say.

 

* * *

 

Corbin

 

Aimee was silent the whole drive back to Pontmaison. She was silent when I pulled in front of Miss Cecily’s. She was silent when I turned off the engine.

Fuck, how was I going to fix this? How was I going to get her to talk to me?

“I’ve heard some of Point Break’s songs,” she said suddenly. Quietly. “You’re good.”

I shifted in my seat and turned toward her. When I tried to take her hand though, she pulled it away. I sighed. “Thank you.”

"You said you were falling in love with me. That you wanted us to be open to the possibility of something more than just a summer together.”

“And I meant that Aimee. It is what I want.”

She smiled sadly. “Point Break, Corbin. You’re in Point Break. That’s as big as it gets. Even if you truly want more with me, you had to know it would be impossible. That when I found out…”

“That’s why I didn’t want you to find out. Not until you trusted me. Not until you loved me, Aimee. The way I love you.” There. I’d said it. And I didn’t regret it.

I felt it.

I wasn’t just falling in love with Aimee.

I loved her. And I didn’t want to lose her.

I couldn’t lose her.

She just stared at me, and despite the circumstances, I couldn’t imagine a hotter girl on Earth—her creamy olive-toned skin, her grey-green eyes that held so much depth, and that pert, cupid’s bow mouth of hers. I wanted to kiss her—every inch of her—and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else ever. I longed for her and it was more than about sex. For the first time in my whole damn life, I was in love with a woman—a real woman, and with real love—and, while the sex was great, it wasn’t the thing that drove any of it.

“Please don’t give up on us, Aimee. Not without talking things out with me. Please.”

“I can’t talk about this right now,” she finally said. “It’s all too much.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

She nodded.

So there it was. Tomorrow, my fate would be decided.

 

* * *

 

Aimee

 

I was lying next to Corbin in his bed, my back to him, knowing I should get up and go back to my room. But something was stopping me. The fear that when we talked tomorrow, that talk wouldn’t be enough to keep us together. The fear that this was my last night with Corbin.

In my mind, I already saw the writing on the wall. Whenever I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help but replay that mob scene at the hospital. And I hated it.

I wanted things to go back to the way they’d been before. When he was just my Corbin. A musician yes, but a man within my reach. A man whose touch lit me on fire and made me feel alive. A man who said he was falling in love with me, something I could believe and hold onto, unlike the idea of a bona fide rock star claiming he loved me. That I couldn’t seem to swallow, even as I had to admit what was in my heart.

I loved him.

I hadn’t told him so, I’d barely just admitted it to myself, but I loved Corbin.

And I was going to lose him.

Which is why I was going to have one more night with him before the sun came up.

Slowly, I turned around and placed my hand on Corbin’s chest.

He immediately exhaled, took my hands, and pulled me close to him.

We didn’t speak a word. Instead, we made love, using our bodies to express our feelings. Our passion was urgent while at the same time tender. Hungry while at the same time bittersweet. And when we both reached our peak, and Corbin cradled me in his arms, and whispered, “I love you, Aimee. Everything’s going to be okay,” I just lay there, hot tears falling from my eyes and making trails down his bicep as he cradled me.

In the morning, I blinked my eyes open and automatically reached for him, but he wasn’t there. His side of the bed was still warm, though, and I got up like a robot, wondering if he’d sensed my decision last night and had decided to get a jump on me in breaking things off. I went through the motions of brushing my teeth and getting dressed, then headed downstairs. I ate my breakfast with the same grim determination as a pirate who knew that soon they’d be walking the plank.

My mother had loved a man who had left her high and dry, more interested in the wild life of a rock star, and the rejection had nearly destroyed her. She’d spent over twenty years looking for respite in the arms of whichever bad boy musician she found. I wasn’t like her, and I knew that. I was the responsible girl because I’d always had to be. Still, even if Corbin had been honest about it, he had a whole different side to his life that I wasn’t a part of and that I could never understand. And Corbin wasn’t just any rocker. He was the rocker from the hottest band on the planet.

He was my father, twenty-two years before.

Corbin might care about me now, but his feelings were running away with him. It was probably the first time in years he hadn’t slept with a groupie. That was something that had to be confusing him. He’d probably not had more than one night with a woman in forever. He couldn’t really love me.

Shuddering, I toyed with my soggy cereal, unable to eat and trying to think of anything else besides my father or Corbin.

Miss Cecily came and sat beside me, her hand patting my shoulder. “Child, I know that look.”

Sighing, I refused to look up at her. “Do you?”

“I’ve seen it before. If you do what you plan to do, then you’re going to break two hearts.”

“If I don’t do it, then mine will get shattered. Broken I can fix, but I can’t end up like my mother.”

“If you keep shoving people away, then you’ll be as lonely as she is, just in a different way, sugar, and that’s not gonna help either of you.”

“I can’t do this,” I said, and my voice was breaking.

“If I told you that Miss Cecily could see into his heart, and that he’s a good man, would that help?”

“Maybe, but even good men falter.” I told her about the mob outside the hospital, and how Corbin was in actuality a bona fide rock star. I told her too, about my birth father. How he’d left my mom without even knowing about me.

“What scares you the most about this here Corbin bein’ a rock star? That he won’t be in Pontmaison much?”

“I don’t know how he could be. Point Break is huge. They literally just came back from a world tour. He’d be on the road a lot.”

“So you go with him.”

I scoffed. “I’ve worked too hard to get Aimee’s Decadent Desserts up and running. Besides, I love what I do. I won’t give that up for a man.”

“Didn’t say you’d give up your dreams of cookin’. You got smarts, Aimee Bodine. You love makin’ them sweets, an’ you’d find a way to make those desserts of yours a financial success.”

Miss Cecily’s words settled around me, calming me down. She was right. I’d set up part of my marketing plan for Aimee’s Decadent Desserts to include online sales. So long as I had a professional kitchen available—and all major cities had those to rent out—I could cook to my heart’s content.

“You know I’m right, child. But your long face tells me there’s more.”

I suddenly felt exhausted. “He’s a rock star. Beautiful women are always and will always be after him. You should have seen the crazy mob yesterday outside the hospital. One nurse recognizes him and boom—everywhere he goes, screaming fans are trying to get his autograph. To touch him. Offering themselves up to him. I can’t compete with that.”

“Hey,” Corbin said, walking into the kitchen, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers. There was hope in his eyes, but I noticed it slip away as he took in my expression. “Oh,” he said quietly.

He knew.

Miss Cecily shook her head but didn’t say anything else as she left the kitchen. I appreciated that. I knew that she cared for me, had become that grandmotherly figure I’d yearned for. But for right now, I knew what I needed, knew what I could actually survive and what I couldn’t.

Cautiously, Corbin eyed me and pulled out his chair. “You make your decision about our fate?”

“I just…I don’t think we’re going to work out.” The words were lame, but it was all I had to offer.

He clenched his jaw but took a few minutes before he gestured to the flowers he’d laid on the table. “I guess these won’t sway you.”

“I’m sorry, Corbin,” was all I could get out.

“We made love last night. And yeah, it wasn’t sex or fucking. It was making love. At least, that’s what it was for me. It was exactly what it felt like for me.”

I dropped my head into my hands, silent sobs shaking my body. “I know,” I managed to get out.

“Aimee, this has all been sudden. Like, there’s no way a week ago anyone could have told me I’d fall in love with a woman in just a few days. But I did. I want you and I love you. I won’t let you pull away without making that perfectly clear.”

“We’re just too different. I’m just a small town girl. You’re world famous. Thousands of people flocking to every concert, women throwing themselves at you.” I gave a mirthless laugh. “Like, literally.”

He reached out and stroked my cheek. “You love me, though.”

“I can’t let myself love you.”

“Can you let yourself love anyone?” he asked, a tendon in his neck still strained, even as he seemed to be pushing other frustrations away. “Love is messy, love is hard, and if you’re waiting for a guarantee, you can’t get it.”

“My mom thought…” I started, then looked away. “I’ve seen it end badly so many times that I can’t trust it will end well here. I’ll be here baking profiteroles at Aimee’s Decadent Desserts and you’ll be in Milan or New York or Tokyo.”

“You could come with me.”

“I know. But I won’t. I can’t handle another encounter with your—” I shuddered “—your fans.”

“And you think I’ll succumb to temptation and sleep with those groupies.”

I couldn’t answer.

“Then you are making assumptions about me. Just like women before you have. I won’t beg you. I can’t make you see something that’s right in front of you, not if you’re basically shoving a mask over your eyes and refusing to.” He stood then and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I guess there’s nothing left to say.” He clenched his jaw once more and headed to the doorway. “And there’s no reason left to stay.”

In under ten minutes, he was gone. So was my heart.