Tears clouded Lily’s vision as she looked up at her sister. “I’m trying to,” she said, “I swear I am. I was talking to Mom and Dad today at the cemetery and I finally saw how I’ve been hiding behind my fear all these years. Fear of not being pretty enough, for starters.”
“You’re beautiful!” Janica protested.
Lily smiled fondly at her. “Thank you, honey, but I always thought I needed to look like a magazine cover to matter to anyone.” Janica was shaking her head in passionate disagreement, but Lily barreled on with the words she needed to say aloud. “After they died I was so worried about anything happening to you. I could never stand to lose anyone else. It was so much easier to hide away from everyone. That way no one would want me. It’d just be you and me until you found someone else.”
“I’ll never find someone else,” Janica vowed.
“Yes, you will. And he’ll be everything to you… Like Travis is to me.” Lily’s eyes blazed with purpose.
“I’m finally ready for life with Travis in the real world, Jan, even if the real world has ex-girlfriends and arguments and size-sixteen dresses. Even if it isn’t always the perfect fairy-tale world that I want it to be.
I want my husband back,” she said, “but I need your help if I’m going to do it right.”
Janica readily agreed. “Anything. I’ll do anything to help you. Just like you’ve always done for me.”
Lily smiled at her baby sister. “You know that fashion show you’ve got planned? Do you think we could make some last-minute changes?”
The next morning, Lily called Luke. “Lily, where are you?”
“At Janica’s design studio. How’s Travis?” She had been unable to think of anything else all night. “Is he okay?”
Luke grunted. “If completely drunk is your version of okay, then yeah, he’s fine. What happened between you two? One minute everything seemed perfect, then you were gone, and he was downing whisky shots two at a time. Come back, Lily,” Luke pleaded. “Travis is a mess without you.” “There’s something I’ve got to do first.” “What could possibly be more important than Travis?” “Nothing,” she said quietly. “And that’s why I need you to do me a favor.” When Luke didn’t respond, she said, “Please, Luke, help me with this. I’m not going to hurt him anymore, I promise.”
Reluctantly, Luke agreed. “What do you need me to do?”
Forty-eight hours later, Lily was once again backstage at Janica’s fashion show. Only five new designers were presenting their lines, and as the newest one on the block, Janica was opening the show. The theme was young, hip clothes, the kind of thing that thirty-year-old women and teenage girls would be comfortable in. She and her sister had spent every waking minute working on the outfits to Lily’s specifications. Lily knew her idea was crazy, but for once in her life she was going to go for what she believed in without reservation. Without fear.
Not that she wasn’t scared, of course, because she was. But since she realized that losing Travis was scarier than risking it all, she’d stayed the course.
She prayed that Luke had made good on his promise to get Travis in the audience. If he didn’t show, all of her plans would be for nothing. And then she didn’t know what she’d do.
But she couldn’t think about the possibility of failure. Hope was all she had to hold on to, and Lily wasn’t going to let go of it, no matter what.
Janica was brimming with excitement as the models walked past one by one. “Lils, this is going to be the best show ever. Your idea was fabulous. I don’t have to give you credit, do I?”
Lily laughed. “Not as long as Travis forgives me.”
“He will,” Janica insisted.
The music amped up a notch, and Lily was about to explode with nerves. The moment of reckoning had come.
Travis had never seen Luke so determined before. He’d practically picked him up and thrown him into the cab. And that was the only reason Travis was sitting in a plastic chair waiting for a stupid fashion show to start. Hadn’t Luke seen that he was busy with the bottle? He ran a hand over the stubbly mess that was his face. As soon as this charade was up he’d head right back to the neighborhood liquor store to stock up on supplies. Thank God for booze. It was the only thing that could numb his emotions since Lily had walked out on him.
He wished he didn’t feel so helpless, stuck in some sort of time warp while he waited, praying, for Lily to wake up and realize that she was worth something. Something amazing and wonderful and the best thing that ever happened to him.
The loud, pounding music was making his eyes water. He’d give anything to take a shower and slip under cool sheets. With Lily.
He looked up at the runway. He could still see her in that incredible dress, the mask of feathers and sequins covering her eyes. So beautiful and so sensual and so lush. And his. He’d known it from the moment he’d seen her on this very stage that fateful Saturday night that she was meant to be his.
His heart clenched, and he gladly grabbed a beer from a passing waiter. Luke shot him a worried glace, which Travis ignored as he slugged from the bottle. There was nothing else for him.
Lasers opened fire on the stage. Two huge video screens dropped into place on either side of the runway. Techno music swirled and pulsated. And then the first leggy blond model hit the stage. The screens flashed the word sexy and the music hammered home the same message that the sparkles on her tiny shirt spelled out. She paused at the end of the runway and mouthed word. “Sexy.”
Travis swallowed hard. Why did everything have to remind him of Lily?
The crowd applauded and the next model appeared. The screens flashed passionate as pink sequins spelled out the word across the girl’s ample br**sts. She acted out the word with a definite flair and the crowd ate it up as her big pink lips formed the word. “Passionate.”
Visions of Lily’s br**sts in his mouth, of her riding his c**k like a she-devil assaulted Travis.
A third model emerged as irresistible flashed on the screens, mirrored by the words on her chest.
Everyone in the audience laughed, happy to play along with the game. “Irresistible,” someone shouted, and the hair went up on Travis’s arm.
“What the hell?” he said, more to himself than to his brother. Was this more than just some random fashion show? Was all of this meant for him?
Another model followed closely on her heels, her hair in little-girl pigtails, sweet declared the video screens as the girl sucked a lollipop with an ardent tongue. Hoots and hollers and whistles filled the room.