Page 38 of Threaded Lies

I lift my glass of wine to my lips and don’t respond. It’s easier that way. Lying is way harder than I thought it would be.

“Try and look a little happier, huh?” she says. “I understand you’ll have nerves and cold feet, but this was simply meant to be—our two families merging in the most beautiful of ways.” Someone laughs in the distance, out on the barge. “Come on. Let’s go. The boathouse isn’t where the woman of the hour should be hiding.”

“Mom. I needed a minute and I’m taking it.” From Chad’s overbearing presence, the gazes on me, and the squeals of excitement from people whose opinions I don’t give a flying fuck about.

“But honey, the guests are here to see you and Chad. To celebrate you.” She steps up beside me cautiously. “It’s simply not polite to hide out here when everyone wants to see the blushing bride.”

As overbearing as she’s always been in wanting me to marry Chad, there seems to be some sort of reservation on her part now that I am. Almost as if she can sense that something isn’t right.

Sell the lie. Isn’t that my new motto?

“I know,” I say softly and try to fabricate a justification on the spot. “But this is a lot for someone like me who hates all the pomp and circumstance.”

“There are going to be a lot of these little events over the next two months, Rowan. You’ll—”

“That’s not what I agreed to. I said I’d give you one event other than the actual wedding and rehearsal dinner. You agreed—”

“There’s the bridal shower. The bachelorette party. The—”

“I agreed to one. This is your one.”

“Rowan.” She snaps my name out as if it’s going to knock some sense into me. Never come between Emmaline Rothschild and her plans—especially when she feels they are moving her further up the social ladder.

“What?” I turn to face her, to meet eyes the same color as mine, and wonder if I want her to see through me or if I don’t want her to.

She reaches out to touch a strand of my hair but then pulls her hand back. “I don’t understand your hostility. These are all normal things, normal celebrations that happen when one decides to marry the man of their dreams.”

I struggle to swallow at the thought. Chad, nice? Yes. Convenient and willing? Even more so. But the man of my dreams? Not even close.

Only one person flashes through my mind at those words and my chest immediately constricts at the thought. He threw that away with lies while I’m trying to make something of it with my own.

“These are all normal things for who? For you? For Westmore society? They’re not me and never have been, so quit trying to make me fit in that box you’ve been lining with barbed wire my whole life.”

“Is there something going on here that you’re not telling me?” she asks as music starts playing again at the party.

“Like?”

“I don’t know.” She runs a hand down the back of my hair, and I’d give anything to be able to lean into her touch and grab an iota of comfort from her. But I can’t. I haven’t been able to for years. I’m not my forever seventeen-year-old twin sister, Cassie, and I’m more than scarred from escaping that barbed-wire box my mom’s tried to contain me in. Her gasp startles me. “You’re pregnant.”

I sputter. “What?”

“That’s why this sudden about-face with Chadwick, isn’t it? You got pregnant and instead of you tarnishing our name, he’s being the upstanding man I always knew him to be and marrying you.”

“Um . . no.” I’m rarely flustered but I’m just that. And leave it to my mom, a definite product of Westmore, to make this all about Chad being the upstanding person if that were the situation. “That is not what happened.”

She glances down to my abdomen and a smile flickers at the corners of her lips. I swear tears well in her eyes but I can’t quite tell in the dim light. “Oh, honey. You should have told me. This is … this is just wonderful.” She frames my cheeks with her hands and peers into my eyes. “You’re not showing. We can tell people the baby came premature. That way your reputation will stay intact. No one in this town likes an irresponsible mother who has sex out of wedlock.”

Did we just step back into the 1950s?

“You’re out of your mind, Mother. I am not pregnant.”

“You’re in denial. It’s normal. I know these things,” she says as I step back and shake my head. “It’s okay. I’ll keep your secret, but just know this only proves to me that Chad is the man I always knew him to be.” She puts her hand over her heart, her mind made up despite my protests.

“No. He’s not. I’m not. You’re. Not. Listening.” I roll my shoulders.

“Your hormones are surging. That’s why you’re being so irrational.”

“If you want me back at the party, you’ll go back to it yourself right now and give me some space,” I grit out.