When We're Thirty by Casey Dembowski (beautiful books to read .TXT) 📕

5 was a pipe dream, Will! We were always either going to get divorced or fall in love.” Or both.

“I know that! Don’t you think I know that?” Agitation finally showed in his voice. He clearly hadn’t thought this through before calling her.

“You’re not making any sense.”

Will sighed heavily on the other end of the line, and Hannah knew his hair had to be mussed—she hoped he didn’t have any interviews today.

“‘If this doesn’t work out, I’ll have nowhere to go.’ That’s what you said. I know I came to you with the pact, but maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should’ve just asked you on a date like a normal person. Most people don’t need to keep a second apartment in case things go wrong. They risk everything on the chance that it will work out. I need you to do that now, and the only way I’ll ever believe you want to be with me is if we end the pact.”

Hannah blinked back tears. Maybe he had thought it through. Maybe he was right. If they got rid of the safety net the pact afforded—that they wouldn’t be jerks, would stay friends, and would be married for one year—they would either catch each other, or they would fall. Would their fledgling relationship survive without the pact tying them together? Were their hearts enough?

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Let’s end the pact.”

Chapter 51Hannah

Hannah stared at the blank screen on her phone. Had that just happened? Will couldn’t have realized what day and time it was. He wouldn’t have knowingly called her during the biggest interview of her career. And yet she had picked up. Why the hell had she picked up? She forced the conversation out of her mind, straightened her shoulders, and tried to refocus her thoughts. Leonard Nulty was waiting for her. Literally.

“Everything okay?” He was also standing behind her.

Shit. Hannah whirled around, plastering a smile on her face. “Yes, of course. Sorry, that was my husband reminding me to get him an autograph.”

“Ah. Big fan?”

“We both are,” Hannah said. Maybe he hadn’t heard anything. She directed him toward a pair of couches where bottled water and wine waited on ice. “He introduced me to Wilderness, actually.”

Leonard squinted in concentration. It was a face she’d seen plenty of times on tour, but up close, it was completely different. “Let me guess. Your wedding song is... ‘Love Acts.’”

Hannah laughed. That would have most definitely been their song. “I wish.” She palmed her face. “It’s actually that new Ed Sheeran ballad, but I imagine under different circumstances, it would’ve been ‘Love Acts.’”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do tell.”

She shook her head—she shouldn’t be telling Leonard Nulty about her love life. “That’s a long story.”

“I love long stories.”

“I’m sure you do, but this interview is about you, not me,” she said, pointing her pen at him.

“Right, right. Ask away.” He sat back on the couch. His body language seemed open and relaxed.

“You haven’t given an exclusive or any long-form interviews in over two years.” Her hands shook as she spoke—Leonard wasn’t any other celebrity. He was her celebrity. She clasped her fingers, resting them on top of her notebook. “Why now?”

“I’m retiring.”

Holy shit. Another album, another tour, going solo—all of these she’d been prepared for. But retiring? The fangirl in her was screaming. Outwardly, she met his gaze with as professional an expression as she could manage. “Wow,” she said, letting out a breath. “That was hard to hear.”

He laughed softly. “I’m sure it was.”

“Why give this to Deafening?” The question was out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about it. It was a fair question, though hardly appropriate in this setting. News like this, even with his midlist career, was worthy of much bigger venues.

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “When we first started, we went out to LA to hit it big. We played in God knows how many small venues and Battles of the Bands. We made no traction.” Hannah knew most of this, but she wasn’t about to stop him. “And then one night, Riley Anderson—hell, she was younger than me—interviewed us for Deafening Silence. I’d only ever seen that magazine on the windowsill of the old records store on Sunset, but Riley was the first person to interview us, and she kept at it. She found us again and again. She’s one of two journalists I trust.”

“Who’s the other?”

“My college roommate, Jackson Mendez.”

No freaking way. “The editor in chief of Talented.”

“The one and only. And I know your next question. Why not give this story to him, right?”

Hannah nodded.

“Well, as a fan, would you rather hear a filtered-down version of the story from an interviewer who drew the short straw over at Talented or, as Jackson put it, from ‘one of the most talented writers on the alternative music scene’?”

Jackson Mendez knew who she was. She felt faint. That would be an interesting turn of events. She scanned her list of questions, more to give herself a moment to process the knowledge she’d just received than because she needed to. She’d memorized her list backward. None of them seemed relevant now.

“Why are you retiring?” Simple but effective.

He shook his head. “Before I answer that, Riley said you’d do right by me. That’s why I agreed to the exclusive even though it wasn’t with her. But if I’m going to bare my soul, I want something in return.”

Had this been another artist, Hannah might have been concerned. As it was, Leonard was happily married. Nearly all his songs were about his wife. “What do you want to know?”

“For starters, you can tell me that story about your wedding song, and then we can talk about what really happened on the phone.”

It was a good thing acting wasn’t in Hannah’s future. There was no harm in telling him about Will, and if it got him to answer her questions, there were worse things than talking to her musical idol