Count Your Lucky Stars •CHAENNIE•

Chapter 24

12:49 p.m.

Hey, this is Roseanne! I can't come to the phone right-

Jennie ended the call.

Jisoo winced. "No answer?"

Jennie shook her head. No answer, just like the last five times she'd called. Four rings followed by voicemail and each time the pressure inside Jennie's chest swelled a little further, squeezing her heart until it hurt to breathe.

"There's still time," Jisoo said.

Right. Eleven-no, ten minutes until the rehearsal started.

Jisoo was right. Roseanne was cutting it close, but she could still make it.

Unless Roseanne wasn't coming.

Jennie lifted a shaking hand, resting her fingers against the notch at the base of her throat. Her pulse fluttered wildly under her skin, her heart going haywire. She couldn't think that way. She couldn't let herself think that way. Roseanne would be here. She had to be here. There was too much riding on this wedding, it mattered too much to Roseanne for her to simply blow it off.

Unless . . . unless Jennie was wrong. Unless Roseanne had changed her mind. Made it home and talked to her dad and decided to do what Jennie had feared she would, set what she wanted aside to take care of whatever was going on in Enumclaw that she hadn't even let Jennie know about.

Jennie had never felt so utterly in the dark in her life, desperately wanting to believe that Roseanne would show up, but not knowing. Not knowing where Roseanne was, what had happened last night with her dad and his house and his health, if Roseanne was on her way. A million terrible scenarios flashed through her head. That Roseanne's dad wasn't actually okay. That maybe Roseanne was there in Enumclaw, needing Jennie and afraid to say so after their fight. That the reason she wasn't picking up her phone might not have been because it was dead like Jisoo had suggested but because she didn't want to pick up. Or worse, maybe she couldn't.

The pressure in her chest ballooned further, each breath she sucked in shallower than the last.

Or, there was always the possibility that she'd made it to her dad's and thought about everything Jennie had said and had taken it all to heart, but instead of deciding that putting herself first for once meant getting in the car and coming back to Seattle, she'd realized that this-the city, this career, this life-wasn't what she wanted. That Jennie wasn't what she wanted.

Jennie set her jaw.

No, absolutely not. Rosie cared too much to simply blow off the wedding. She would, at the very least, show up to make this weekend happen, and then-

Only time and talking to Rosie would tell what would come after. What their future would hold.

Eight minutes.

"She'll be here," Jennie said, sounding a whole hell of a lot more confident than she felt.

Jisoo smiled and reached out, squeezing Jennie's hand, a brief show of support that made a tiny bit of the pressure in Jennie's chest release.

"It's starting to rain," Jisoo murmured, and Jennie turned her face up.

A light sprinkle, heavier than a mist but lighter than a drizzle, had started to come down. Jennie hadn't even noticed. She shrugged and reached behind her neck, flipping her hood up over her head.

"Hey, you guys?" Lisa poked her head out of the door of the venue and frowned. "You can wait inside, you know?"

"Lisa's right," Jisoo said. "We can wait right inside by the window. You can see the street and stay dry. So when Roseanne shows up you won't look like a drowned rat." Her lips quirked. "Though I'm sure you'd make an adorable drowned rat, Mar."