‘So Riley was a victory to them?’ Laurel shifted a little closer, tugging the duvet up to her shoulders to keep warm.
‘Riley was everything to them. It was like I ceased to exist.’
‘I know that feeling,’ Laurel said, and the image of her father’s face when he’d seen her in Angela and Melissa’s house for the first time filled her mind. That was the moment when she’d realised that her father had a new life, a new daughter. That he didn’t need her any more.
Dan’s arm snaked around her shoulder, pulling her against his side, and the warmth of his body took the chill from her thoughts.
‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘I guess we’re more alike than I would ever have thought.’
‘Both older siblings of a more famous brother or sister?’ Laurel guessed. ‘Or both the least favoured child?’
‘Either or,’ Dan said easily. ‘You and me...we’re the ones in the shadows, aren’t we? The ones who just get on with the business of living.’
The business of living. She liked that. She liked the idea that her life could just carry on going, regardless of what Melissa chose to do. That she still had her own life, her own value, when the spotlight of Melissa’s fame moved on again, as it always would.
‘I guess we are,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have someone who understands for a change.’
And strange to think that if it hadn’t been for Melissa’s last-minute change of heart about the wedding favours they might never have been in a position to discover that about each other.
Suddenly the idea of making it through the week without Dan by her side felt...impossible.
‘So, what did you do?’ she asked. ‘When you realised you could never live up to Riley in their eyes?’
It was something she often wondered about herself. Whether, if she’d known about Melissa earlier, if her father had left when she was a baby rather than a teenager, her life would have been different. Would she still have spent her whole adult life trying to be good enough? She certainly wouldn’t have spent the last sixteen years trying to make amends to Melissa for something she knew in her heart wasn’t even her fault.
Maybe Melissa would have tried to make amends to her, impossible as that sounded.
‘Do? Nothing,’ Dan said. ‘Well. Not really. I mean, I knew I couldn’t be what my parents, what everybody wanted me to be. I couldn’t be Riley. So I decided to do the opposite. I rebelled in basically every possible direction for years. Then I joined the army straight out of school, more as a way to escape than anything else.’
‘The army? How did that work out for you?’
Dan gave her a rueful smile. ‘Turned out I didn’t like them telling me what to do any more than I liked my parents doing it. I served my time, got out the minute I could and moved to LA.’
‘And became a stuntman?’
Dan shrugged. ‘It was a job, and I was good at it. I had the training, and the control, and I knew how to make sure people didn’t get hurt. Soon enough I had more work than I could handle, which is why I set up Black Ops Stunts.’
‘You’d think that would be enough to make your parents proud.’
‘Any parents but mine,’ Dan joked, but Laurel could hear the pain under the flippant words. ‘At least in the army I was doing something of value, even if it wasn’t what they wanted. But in LA no one even knows it’s me. I think that’s what drives them crazy. They’re all about the recognition, the fame.’
‘And you’re not.’
‘It’s the ultimate rebellion, I guess.’
How crazy. And she’d thought her family were dysfunctional. At least no one expected her to be famous—that was Melissa’s job. In fact she wasn’t sure what they wanted from her at all.
And all she wanted was to be good enough for them at last. To earn her place back in her family.
Melissa’s wedding was her chance to do that.
‘So. Your turn,’ Dan said. ‘I’ve heard how Melissa tells your story. How do you tell it?’
‘Pretty much the same, I guess,’ Laurel said with a small shrug. The facts were the horrible, horrible facts, and nothing she said could change that.
‘Tell me anyway,’ he said.
Laurel shifted under the covers, sitting cross-legged as she twisted to face him. Her side of the story... She didn’t think she’d ever told that before.
‘Okay... Well, until I was sixteen everything was perfectly normal. Normal parents, normal house, normal school, normal teenage angst. Then one day my dad came home from work and said he was leaving.’
She took a deep breath and for a horrible moment she could feel tears burning behind her eyes. She hoped Dan wouldn’t be able to see in the darkness.
‘My mum followed him upstairs, and I could hear her sobbing and shouting while he packed his bags. Then he came downstairs, kissed me on the forehead, said he’d see me very soon and left.’
The pain didn’t fade. It stung all over again as she remembered it.
‘And did you?’ he asked. ‘See him soon, I mean?’
Laurel nodded. ‘I didn’t figure out what was really going on until a few days later. I was busy taking care of Mum, so I didn’t leave the house much. But eventually I had to go out for some shopping. I kept my head down at the supermarket, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that people were whispering and pointing at me. I started listening to those whispers...and that’s how I found out that my dad had another daughter. Another family—another wife, to all intents and purposes. And he’d chosen them over me.’
Okay, never mind the other stuff. That, right there, was the killer. That was the part that burned every day.
‘Anyway, for a while I tried to ignore it. I had Mum to look after and she...she just fell apart when I told her I knew what had happened. Maybe she could deny it if no one else knew. But once I confirmed what Dad had told her...it was like she gave up completely.’
Laurel shuddered at the memory. All those horrible days coming home from school to find her mum in the exact same position she’d left her at eight-twenty that morning. She’d tried so hard to be enough for her mother, to be reason enough for her to come back to the land of the living, to give her the love she’d lost when her dad had left.
But she’d never been able to fill the hole in her mother’s heart that her father’s walking out had left. And her mother had never been able to forgive her for being her father’s daughter.
It was horrible to think it, but Laurel couldn’t help but believe that her mum moving away to Spain eight years ago to live with an old schoolfriend was the best thing that could have happened to their relationship. Postcards and the odd phone call were much easier than dealing with each other in person.
‘Eventually, once it was really clear he wasn’t ever coming back, I confronted him.’ Laurel continued her story, twisting her hands around each other. ‘It was easy enough to find out where he was living with...them. People were falling over themselves to tell me.’
‘Probably wanted to follow and watch,’ Dan muttered.
‘Probably,’ Laurel agreed. ‘He looked shocked to see me. Like his two worlds were colliding and he didn’t like it—even though it was all his fault. Eventually he invited me in...introduced me to Melissa and her mother. We had the world’s most awkward cup of tea, and then...I left.’
‘That was it?’ Dan asked, sounding confused. ‘You didn’t yell, scream at him? Anything?’
Laurel shook her head, smiling faintly. ‘Melissa’s mother, Angela, explained it to me. I’d had my fair share—I’d had sixteen years of a loving, doting father that Melissa had missed out on. And now it was her turn.’
Dan frowned. ‘And you bought that?’
‘It was the truth,’ Laurel said with a small shrug. ‘What else was there to say? He didn’t want us any more—he wante
d them. And Melissa had missed out.’
And she’d been making Laurel pay for it ever since.
‘But that can’t be your whole life,’ Dan said. ‘Everything didn’t stop when you turned sixteen.’
‘Sometimes it feels like it did,’ Laurel admitted. Then she sighed. ‘What happened next? Um...I went away to university, studied subjects that were utterly useless in the real world. Got a job at a small events company and worked my way up. Met up with Benjamin again in London and started dating—you already know how that ended. Then last year I decided it was time to go out on my own and start my own wedding planning business.’
‘And Melissa hired you for her wedding.’
Laurel nodded. ‘See? It pretty much always comes back to her in the end.’