Flash!
I blinked away the sting of the light. Every time he took a picture, the photographer smiled with sadistic glee. Able Small Dick Cartwright wrapped his arm around me. Cordelia perched on the throne-style chair at my hip. Two bridesmaids and three groomsmen bracketed us.
A prom photo out of a horror movie.
The poster you stare at and take bets on who will die first.
Probably me, and it’d be of my own volition. Another second of this, and I’d snap.
“One more picture, y’all!” the photographer promised for the ninth time and proceeded to snap five more. “Emery, hun? Smile! It’s an engagement dinner party! Love is in the air. Be happy!”
Stabbing you with the stiletto heel of my mandatory Louboutins would make me very happy.
My fake smile compared to the Joker’s, but I found it hard to even put in the effort. Last night came to me in floods each time I tried.
“Give me a word, Emery.”
“Redamancy.”
I’d wanted to riot, because it looked like he thought he was fucking me out of his system instead of into it. I’d fixated on the memory all morning, and no, I would not fucking smile unless it involved descending vampire teeth and sucking the blood out of every asshole in here.
“C’mon, Emery!” Click. Click. “Give me that beautiful smile!”
“No.”
Cordelia turned to me, her face nearly identical to Small Dick’s, it made me want to barf, too. She soothed a palm to her collarbone. “Excuse me?!”
Her cheeks matched the color of my roses. The only indicator of her irritation. Seriously, her forehead didn’t budge. Not one bit.
I shoved the bouquet into her chest. “Here. These match your face. You’re welcome.”
Gathering the lavender monstrosity Virginia had squeezed her bridesmaids into, I left the alcove of the Eastridge Country Club and entered the ballroom. My eyes sought and failed to find Nash.
Virginia spent the entire opening ceremony seeking a way to separate us, including sending me off to take pictures I scowled in. Meanwhile, Sir Balty creeped me out with his beady eyes and weird fixation with me. First golf, then brunch, and now the engagement dinner.
Enough already.
Pulling out my phone, I called Nash and remembered his had powered down earlier. I messaged him through the Eastridge United app, knowing he wouldn’t see it until he got home and charged his phone.
Durga: Tell me your favorite thing in the world.
I’d have to find him the old-fashioned way—gossip by socialites.
Pocketing the phone, I latched onto the arm of a random rail-thin brunette. “Have you seen Nash Prescott?”
She shook her arm away and sipped her Cosmo, a version of me my mother would have preferred. “He left down that hall with Virginia a minute ago.”
“Thanks.” I flashed her a fake smile and complimented her dress, because I knew she expected it—and would spiral if I didn’t.
Shoot me now. I hate these things.
Balthazar cued a waiter to him. I used it as a distraction and slipped past them. Déjà vu shotgunned into me once I hit the hallway leading to the office. My last time here, I’d barreled into Nash, exactly where he stood now.
He glanced at his watch, brought a whiskey glass to his lips, and entered Virginia’s office without shutting the door behind him. My heels rapped against the floor. I slipped them off and crept down the corridor. I didn’t want to be dramatic, but I’d sensed something off the whole night.
Nash seemed irritated with Eastridge, beyond his normal threshold. The silent car ride negated our honeymoon phase. It set me on edge, encouraging me to spy, even if I knew, morally, I shouldn’t.
Pressing my back to the wall, I inched as close to the door as possible without being seen. Virginia muttered something indecipherable, luring me dangerously near the open frame. I honed in on the scraps I could glean.
“Whatever you’re doing with my daughter, I want you gone.”
If she expected him to cower like the spineless Eastridgers she’d grown accustomed to, she’d be sorely disappointed. Nash fought. For instinct. For sport. For survival. Anything else equated to giving up.
I anticipated Nash’s brash response with a smile on my face. Without seeing her, I knew Virginia’s impatience fed her fury. She was a furnace doused in Butane.
Ice cubes clinked together.
He took his time sipping. “Careful with the threats, Virginia. You may look good in white, but you sure as shit look awful in orange.”
She sucked in a breath, stilettos dragging on the floor a bit. “You know about it…” Know about what? “How—”
That tone. I recognized it. It came before a tantrum.
That neck-and-neck election for the chairwoman of the Junior Society? A Jimmy Choo thrown at the crystal chandeliers.
Gaining two-and-a-half pounds during our Italy holiday? Fat-shaming her debutantes.
After the deliveryman mistook her for my grandmother? A fire poker to the wall.
I leaned forward a tad. Just to see.
Neither of them noticed me.
Nash sat at the desk, back pressed against the leather executive chair, legs propped on the mahogany. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is, I know everything.”
Virginia’s face paled, body shivering despite the warmth. She fingered her pearls, close to dropping her drink with the other hand. “You won’t say a thing. I see how you look at Emery.”
“How I look at Emery is none of your concern, considering if you continue to test my patience, the only thing you’ll be able to look at is the other side of prison bars.” His fingertips met, forming a steeple. He could have been talking about the weather with that tone. “In the interest of time, let’s cut to the chase. You’ll leave Eastridge. No one will see you again.”
Why? Why would she do that? What did he have on her? And my biggest question: why didn’t he tell me anything?
A lie of omission still counted as a lie.
Betrayal sliced a path up my throat with the finesse of a machete hacking through a jungle. None of this made any sense. I wanted to interrupt with questions, but I feared nothing would be as candid as this moment here.
Without me.
Nash
LIES.
Four letters caused so much damage.
Virginia clenched her champagne glass until her knuckles turned white. “You have nothing but wild accusations. A thug with empty threats. So, why would I listen to anything you have to say?”
Ah.
The thug card. My favorite. Mostly, because I’d identified Virginia as a hypocrite from day one. I just never realized how accurate I’d been in my assessment.
“Because you’re scared.” My eyes scratched a path down her body. I sneered at her balled fist. Unnerved by the help’s son. I fucking thrived on karmic justice. “Look at you. You’re shaking at the very thought of being someone’s prison bitch.”
“No one will believe you.” Her head shook, but so did her whole body. “You are nothing but the son of my help—”
“Whom will people believe?” My hand made a sweeping gesture at her. “A washed-up has-been, no one in the history of Eastridge has ever liked, or me”—I pointed to myself, flashing her a charming-as-fuck smile that could win every woman over—“the self-made billionaire, who frequently gives back to the community and is referred to as the Patron Saint of Eastridge?”
I almost wished Emery could see the downfall of her mother. This hadn’t been my intention tonight. Gideon wanted me to keep quiet. As in, no feathers ruffled. A waiting game he’d endured for four years, suffering without his daughter.
Not your secret to tell, Nash.
True.
Didn’t mean I had to sustain a healthy relationship with Virginia. It wouldn’t do anyone any favors, and she needed out of Emery’s life like I needed to seal the Singapore deal, quit this soul-sucking job, and confess everything to Emery.
At least, that’s what I told myself to justify skirting the boundaries of the promise I’d made Gideon.
Virginia resembled a toddler post-tantrum, the moment she realized she wouldn’t get her way.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket, wiped it across the bottom of my shoe, and tossed it at her face. “You okay there, Virginia? You look like someone who just learned she got knocked up by her high school health teacher. Sounds like the plot to a D-grade flick I’ve seen before. Spoiler alert: both the student and the teacher are fucked.”
Virginia clutched the cotton. “I—You—” She tossed it to the ground and stomped on it, determination so fierce, I actually appreciated it for reminding me of Emery. “You can’t do this to me. Literally speaking, you cannot. Gideon wasn’t able to and neither are you.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” I leaned up in my seat, knowing I appeared more formidable than any predator in the animal kingdom. “You’ll take your gaudy ass away from Emery, remove yourself as the settlor of her trust fund, round up your clown car of corrupt friends, and leave this town.”
“I will do no such thing!” The point of her toe scuffed the hardwood flooring. “You can’t talk to me like this!”
“I can talk to you however I’d like. Unless you do exactly as I say, you’ll experience worse in prison.” In fact, I looked forward to it. I toyed with a pen, nonchalant with my ruthlessness. “Wave goodbye to your chilled fennel soups that taste like armpits, your shitty orange spray tans, and your uneven haircuts, Virginia. Your life in Eastridge is over. Your life as you know it is over.”
“I’ll tell Emery.”
That gave me pause.
The only thing she could have possibly said to give me hesitation.
“You won’t.” I considered the ledger, more than willing to turn it—and myself—in if it came to that. “I have something Gideon doesn’t. Proof.”
A smile curved up Virginia’s lips. She could’ve been pretty. Beautiful, even. Too bad she conducted herself with the moral compass of the wicked stepmothers in every Brothers Grimm fairy tale. “You’re bluffing, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken four years for this conversation to transpire.”
The switch flipped. Her shoulders pulled back. So dumb for thinking I would ever relent. If she thought this was over, she’d never met persistence like mine before. Especially when it came to protecting people I cared about.
Virginia turned. I would have parted with the final threat, but when we both shifted our attention to the doorframe, we encountered my blue-gray storm.
Emery.
Emery
VIRGINIA CARRIED herself with an authority she’d never been granted. I would have admired her for it, except she’d raised me to be as cutthroat as herself. That, and I reeled from the revelations, struggling to take them all in.
I needed that moment where everything clicked. It didn’t come, and trying to make sense of their fight reminded me of trying to catch rain with my fingertips. Pointless.
Bottom line—I’d been lied to.
It stabbed me in a place I thought had scabbed over. The last big lie in my life spiraled out of control. I barely recovered from the Winthrop Scandal. How many more lies did I have to endure?
“Oh, Emery, honey.” That smile looked demented on Virginia’s face. “Let’s get this dinner started. Why don’t you go hug your father?”
My eyes burned with the effort it took not to glance at Nash. I scrunched my nose. “God, Virginia, don’t call him that.”
“Why not?” So smug, her face reminded me of Basil’s after she’d left our A.P. Spanish exam, having cheated.
“Virginia,” Nash warned.
His tone brought chills to my body, so much venom, it should have killed her on the spot. I stared at him, eyes slanted, trying to figure everything out.
And here was the crux of it all. I loved listening to Nash fight for me, but I was capable of fighting for myself. Especially when he kept secrets everyone but me seemed to know. Who lied to someone they cared about? If he could lie so easily to me, what else had he lied about?
“Why wouldn’t I call him your father?” She downed her champagne, leaving a blood-colored lipstick stain around the glass’s rim. “He is, after all, your biological father.”
She’d shocked me into silence, but it wasn’t her words or their cold delivery that pained me. It was the lack of surprise in Nash’s eyes.
He’d known, and he’d kept it from me.
The satisfied sneer Virginia flashed me before she left wouldn’t haunt me tonight.
Nash’s lies, on the other hand, crippled me.
They wouldn’t haunt me tonight either. They’d haunt me forever.
“Explain,” I demanded, barely able to form the word through my hurt and fury.
“Balthazar Van Doren is your dad.”
I sidestepped him when he approached. “Yeah, I got that.” Dragging my toe across an imaginary line, I said, “This is my half of the room. That’s yours. Don’t cross it, and I won’t knee you in the balls. Now, continue. The truth, please.”
His jaw ticked. Actually, his everything ticked. “Sir Balty was your mom’s secret high school sweetheart. Her health teacher. She got pregnant and freaked out, because the affair started before she turned sixteen—the age of consent in North Carolina.
“Your dad visited her town over vacation, and she targeted him for his money. They slept together, she told him she was pregnant, and they had a shotgun wedding.” The words rushed out, like he thought I’d leave any second.
If I looked flighty, it was because I was. “How do you know all this?”
“Gideon told me.”
In the hall, two drunk socialites ambled past, stumbling over their heels and giggling with each other. As if my world hadn’t tilted on its axis. I’d never felt more aware of my insignificance.
The world moves on, Emery, and you will, too.
I shook my head, unable to fit these puzzle pieces together, even as he spoon-fed them to me. “Why would da—Gideon let Balthazar into our lives?”
So many questions, but I trembled too hard to ask them all. I needed to take a step back, have this conversation tomorrow when the alcohol and adrenaline fled my system, but I feared he’d be less candid.
No, it needed to happen now.
“He didn’t find out about Balthazar until you turned six. Balty showed up, looking for some cash. He threatened to claim his parental rights over you. Gideon struck a deal, allowing him to be a partner in Winthrop Textiles in exchange for his silence.”
“Why would Dad—” I swallowed, digging my nails into my palms. My pulse gripped my throat, erratic and unrelenting. “Why would Gideon tell you this?”
“Because he’s not guilty.”
Another lie, maybe?
I tugged at the corset of this ridiculous dress, struggling to breathe. “But the F.B.I. and S.E.C. announced an investigation against him. The whole town calls him a cheat.”
“I—” He cursed and yanked his collar hard, causing a button to pop off. Neither of us were made for these clothes, though he wore his easier than I wore mine. “None of this is my secret to tell. At least, not before you talk to your dad.”
My lower lip wobbled. “Except he’s not my dad.”
I wanted to scream, and yell, and claw at Nash. I wanted the same for him. An uncontrollable reaction.
This didn’t feel like us. A civilized argument, no magic in the air, no flames we couldn’t douse, no fucking fight.
Our age gap never felt more prominent than it did now.
Twenty-three and fatherless.
Thirty-two and fatherless.
We carried it so differently. Him, with barriers erected higher than any skyscraper mankind could build. Me, with tiny thorns that pricked but didn’t possess the strength to draw blood. Unbreakable stone versus a fractured heart. I knew which would win, and it wasn’t the heart.
“He is,” Nash insisted. “In every way that matters, Gideon Winthrop is your father. Even when you never returned his postcards and ignored him after he tried to visit you, he didn’t give up hope that you’d return to him.”
I remembered the visit. Three years ago, I spotted him waiting for me outside the diner I worked at. I called the cops and told them some creep stalked me there.
Disbelief clung to me, it’s hold nearly choking my neck. “I told you yesterday that I miss my dad.”
“I know, and I—”
“You saw me near tears, and instead of telling me the truth, you fucked me.”
“That’s not why I—”
“I don’t care why you screwed me, Nash. I care that you did, knowing how I felt about my dad in that moment.”
“Shit.” He palmed his face. “That wasn’t fucking. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything last night. What happened to redamancy?”
I did feel it, but I didn’t answer. Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight. Everything hurt too much. Felt too raw. Because I promised myself after the Winthrop Scandal, I’d never let another liar into my life.
No matter how good he tasted. No matter how good he made my body feel. No matter how good he made my heart feel.
My foot inched past the doorframe.
“Emery.” He matched my steps.
“I thought I built walls after the scandal. I thought something like this would never happen again. I feel so stupid for not seeing the difference between a truth and a lie.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t. Not entirely. My heart was hungry, so you fed it lies. Everyone in this world lies, and I should have realized that.”
“Maybe everyone lies, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
“If it’s the truth, yes. And you know what happens after the first lie? Every truth becomes questionable. How am I supposed to believe anything you say now?”
He didn’t answer.
I answered for him, “A liar once told me, life is a Sisyphean task. You put out one fire, and another one starts. It’s easier to accept it burns. We live in a world consumed by fire, but at least it’s the truth. You’re not lured to sleep with a false blanket of security, telling yourself you exist in a part untouched by the flames. There’s death, and betrayal, and revenge, and guilt everywhere you turn. It’s healthier to live it, breathe it, and participate in it than to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
I edged closer to him, cupping his face and hating myself for it. “Do you remember what you said when I asked what happens after you’re burnt everywhere?”
He dropped his eyes, and it was so unlike Nash, it startled me for a moment.
Even the language of your body is a lie.
My palm whipped away from his skin, and I gave him the biggest truth he’d ever told me, “Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.”
