push through her sorrow over Mack just enough for Liv to smile and enjoy the sight. At least someone got their happy ever after.
“Wow,” Jessica sighed. “It’s cool that even old people fall in love.”
Liv must have made a face that revealed the direction of her thoughts because Alexis once again came to her side. “Are you sure you don’t want to call Mack?”
Liv squeezed her eyes shut. Mack. She couldn’t think about him right now. She needed to stay focused. “I’m sure.”
“It’s not too late.”
Alexis’s words could have had two meanings—that it wasn’t too late for Mack to help today or it wasn’t too late for them. But Liv didn’t ask which one she meant before sliding into the front seat. She had to do this first. And then she would go to him and tell him what a fool she’d been. To tell him she was sorry—so damn sorry—for not being brave enough to hear his side of the story, to accept it, to trust him.
To tell him she loved him.
Him.
Braden Mack or Braden McRae. Whatever his name was, she loved him. She didn’t know how it was possible, but it had happened, and she wouldn’t survive if she’d destroyed it with her stupid insecurities.
Hop climbed into the driver’s seat. “Last chance to back out,” he said brusquely.
Alexis and Jessica slid into the back seat and buckled their seat-belts. “Let’s do it,” Alexis said.
“I’m ready,” Jessica added. “He can’t get away with this anymore.”
Liv reached into the back seat. Alexis and Jessica placed their hands on top of hers.
“I love you two,” she said, her voice heavy with an emotion she hadn’t expected. “I’m sorry I made such a mess of things at first—”
“Stop apologizing,” Alexis said.
“I know I pushed too hard.”
Jessica shook her head. “None of this would be happening without you.”
Liv felt their support and forgiveness all the way to the tender parts of her soul. She laughed through a sheen of tears.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” Mack said, snapping his seatbelt. “Let’s go.”
Mack drove the van with Malcolm in the front seat. The Russian was crammed into the back next to Noah, who worked feverishly to get the tape of Royce ready. Thea, Gavin, and Del followed in Thea’s car because they actually had a stupid game tonight after this. Mack would’ve laughed about it if his heart weren’t lodged in his throat.
Mack’s phone buzzed just as the small caravan pulled onto the freeway. His heart sputtered with hope that it would be Liv, but it was Gavin. “What?” he barked.
“She just texted Thea. They’re almost there. We need to go fast.”
Mack hit the accelerator, but the fucking van was a million years old and barely broke sixty-five.
Mack pulled the phone away and relayed the message to Noah. Then he returned to the call. “Thea is sure we shouldn’t tell her we’re coming?”
“She’s sure. Liv needs to—”
“Do it her way,” Mack finished. “I know.”
He ended the call and tried again to nudge the van up to something close to the speed limit. Cars passed on the left and right. When this was over, he was buying Noah a new fucking van.
Actually, there were a lot of things he was going to do when this was over, and almost all of them involved doing whatever it took to get Liv back.
The skyline appeared after several tense moments.
“Mack, we got a problem,” Noah said from the back just as he took the exit.
Not the words Mack wanted to hear. “What kind of problem?”
“I can’t edit it down.”
“What does that mean?”
“The part about you. I can’t cut it out in time. If we hack into their audio, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to turn it off before—”
Mack squeezed the steering wheel.
Before all of Nashville’s elite learned the truth about him.
What would that feel like? To be free of the shame? To wake up every morning without the crushing weight of his past? What would life be like if he could finally free himself of the suffocating illusion that was Braden-Fucking-Mack?
Here was his chance.
And he was taking it. “I don’t care.”
“You’re sure?” Malcolm asked quietly.
“I’m sure,” he said, certainty adding an edge to his voice. “I’m done being undercover in my own fucking life.”
He just prayed he wasn’t too late.
They were going to be late.
An entire block around Savoy was blocked off for the event, because of course it was. If Royce had to shut down the whole city to bask in his undeserved glory, he’d do