Trips
Full dark has fallen by the time Clara and I head to my father’s Sunday dinner. Not something I’d planned on being coerced into doing ever again.
Three years of freedom from family war rooms put on by a corrupt man and his unwilling generals. Not that business is addressed, but it’s close enough. It’s all about appearances, about expectations, about where to stand, when to smile, how to answer that question that gets too close to the truth.
Clara is wearing her usual jeans and a sweatshirt, as everyone there, except maybe my brother, knows she isn’t Midwest royalty. She’s just a girl, and I’m glad that, for once, I didn’t have to ask her to be anybody other than who she is.
But even in her own clothes, she’s wearing armor. Her makeup is precise, and her hair is down, the curls free to bounce around her like a moving curtain. And all I want to do is dig my handsinto her hair and kiss her until she’s smudged and messy. I want to see that feral look in her eyes like when she bit me yesterday, as out of control with me as I always feel around her. I want to stop on the side of the road and drag her into the backseat, finally giving in to the pent-up tension that’s always hovered between us.
But I can’t. Because I fucked up the way I always do. I lost my shit, and instead of some dirty asshole losing his dick, she almost lost her life. I almost killed her.
Just because she’s sitting beside me doesn’t mean she’s forgiven me. She shouldn’t.
She makes a humming noise, and I catch her eye. Her lips twist to the side, and her hand taps out its familiar rhythm against her leg, but she stays silent.
I hate that she’s uncomfortable with me. That I can’t look at her without seeing her lips a berry blue, her lashes damp with snowflakes against the unnatural paleness of her cheeks.
Like she was already dead.
Even with her dark eyes peering up at me, like they are now, I can’t look at her.
Because I’m a fucking disaster.
All my life, I was supposed to be the fists. The stick to my brother’s carrot.
It wasn’t until Trevor was almost done with college that my father realized that his beautiful boy was an idiot. And then he pulled me into his work in ways besides beating secrets out of innocent men. I learned about the cameras and recorders in the house, the mountains of blackmail he holds over all his employees, about all kinds of secrets and power plays that no teenager should have control over.
I shared what I learned with Mattie as she got older, leaving out the blood that stuck in the bed of my nails after a night of helping Father. She was a kid, but she needed to know what wasgoing on so she could keep herself safe. Because by then, I knew I couldn’t be the puppet master my father wanted me to be.
Not only would Trevor never give me the reins, but I also didn’t want them. Being a king was all fine and dandy, but I didn’t want my throne resting on the quicksand of my father’s blackmail. Even Mary, sweet Mary, was stuck working in that house because my father had something on her. I had her love and loyalty. How long would that last if I took to power and didn’t set her free?
The first year away from home, I started severing ties, and my father gripped the remaining few with more urgency while still giving me my space. I think he believed cutting me off, leaving me only a tiny portion of my trust fund to play with after I bought the house, and uninviting me to his parties, blocking me out of his strategy meetings, would leave me isolated and coax me back.
Little did he know that those were the best years of my life.
I didn’t miss the newest season of luxury clothes or the catered dinners. I still had access to the family’s fleet of cars, even if none of them had my name on the title. And the last thing I wanted was to flaunt my name like it meant something.
My name is nothing but bloodstained mud to me.
I should have seen this tact before it came. I should have planned for him using the people I care about to control me. He’s done it before with Mattie. But, for some stupid, hopeful reason, I thought he’d given up on me.
I’d hoped he’d let me go my own way.
Fucking hope always shits on my life.
Clara gets up the courage to speak, and it fucking kills me that she has to psych herself up for it.
“What should I expect tonight?”
“Usually Sunday dinner is a Westerhouse family board meeting. I imagine my father will lay out the plan for ourengagement in more detail. Besides that, I can’t tell you. I haven’t spent much time there lately.”
She swallows. “I’m going to find a way out of this.”
“I hope to shit you’re right.”
A hint of a smile twitches in the corner of her mouth, then disappears before I can appreciate it.
I miss the little teasing grins she’d shoot at me.
