“Ah.” Linc waved a bashful hand. “I wouldn’t miss this, man. The richest kid on Shadow Rock Island, marrying The Shadow Rock Chopper? Common, man. Shit’s better than cable.”
Gage’s face fell.
Veda’s did, too.
Linc’s eyes shot back and forth between them, and as he seemed to make sense of their horrified faces, his own face collapsed as well, his mouth falling open and then forming itself into a small ‘o’ as if he were realizing for the first time what he’d just said.
Mia’s squinted eyes dashed back and forth between the three of them, not missing the way Linc’s arm had tightened around her neck, not understanding what had just happened. Not understanding why Linc’s last sentence had just sucked all the air out of the yard.
Gage’s eyes widened, more every second, and his nostrils flared. He cut a heated look at Veda.
But Veda didn’t return Gage’s hot look, her own wide eyes locked to Linc as she pressed her lips together so tightly it made the plush globes disappear from her face completely.
Linc pressed his lips together as well, nodding sharply at Veda. “You didn’t tell him.”
Veda slammed her eyes closed and didn’t answer, drawing in a deep breath through her own expanded nostrils. Several moments of silence passed before she found the courage to look up at Gage. When she was met with his stunned face, eyebrows raised so high they were seconds from joining his hairline, she couldn’t speak.
Gage let the silence linger, just watching her with wide eyes, as if waiting for her to tell him it was a joke. That he hadn’t just heard what he’d thought he’d just heard. He waited for her to deny it. His eyes nearly begged her to.
Instead of denying it, however, Veda reached up to cup his cheek. “Baby—”
Gage snatched his head away because her pleading tone was confirmation enough. A dazzling smile crossed his face. Not a happy smile, but an astonished one. When Veda tried to cup his cheeks again, he swept her hands away once more. Still smiling, he turned and left them all without a word, stalking across the grass with a hand over his mouth, shaking his head the entire way.
“Gage,” Veda begged.
When Gage didn’t so much as look over his shoulder in response, Veda shot Linc a poisonous look.
Linc shrugged his shoulders so high they nearly touched his ears. “How the hell was I supposed to know, Vandyke? How the hell is it possible you never told him?”
“I was planning on telling him, Linc, I just didn’t think the weekend of my wedding would be the optimal time.”
“You’re right, the weekend of your wedding isn’t the optimal time. Any weekend before your wedding would’ve been a much stronger choice.” He tilted his head, frowned at her in amazement. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Veda looked away with a scoff and stomped off without responding, running after Gage, who’d already moved across the yard, around the house, and out of sight. “Gage, please, baby! Will you just stop and listen to me for a second...?”
Veda’s voice petered away once she’d disappeared around the house as well, following the blazing path Gage had just left, leaving Mia and Linc to look after her in dismay, stewing in a stunned silence.
Mia was the first to break the quiet, cocking her head back to look up at Linc. “What the hell was that? The Shadow Rock Chopper? What’s a Chopper?”
“I don’t even know where to begin.” Linc shook his head. “But I think I might’ve just ruined the wedding.”
“What?”
A lump moved down Linc’s throat as he ran a hand over his face. “Fuck…”
Mia hugged her arms around Linc’s body as he silently chided himself, her eyes narrowing to the backdoor of the yard once more as she pulled his slim waist into the tightest hug she could manage. The sight that met her at the backdoor, however, drew every bit of her attention away from her anguished fiancé.
The sight of an older blonde woman watching them in silence with tears glistening in her brown eyes took Mia hostage. A woman Mia recognized instantly for the same reason she’d recognized Veda and Gage instantly. Because Linc had shown her and Emma every picture he had of this woman, over and over, on Instagram. She looked exactly like her photos, as well. Dirty blonde hair, ghost white skin, and a left eye that twitched involuntarily. One of the many hints her body often gave to a former drug dependency.
“Linc?” Mia whispered.
“The fuck did I just do?” Linc mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Um, Linc?”
“Why’d I open my fucking mouth?”
“Linc!”
“What, baby?” He dropped his hand from his eyes, looked down at Mia, and then followed her gaze across the yard.
When he caught sight of his mother, Grace Hill, standing in the doorway, a gasp lifted his chest. Many familiar faces had showed themselves at that backdoor over the last few minutes, but none that had left his eyes watering, his chest heaving, and his teeth clenching as he fought to keep the emotion surely swirling like a tornado in his gut at bay.
Grace burst into tears that reddened her brown eyes. A wail left her thin, parted lips as she pushed away from the door and began racing across the grass as fast as her skinny legs would allow. Her tribal summer dress blew in the wind as she ran and so did her chewed up blonde hair, fluttering as she raced to Linc, the deep lines already eating up her wrinkled face ebbing even deeper as the emotion of seeing her son for the first time in years overtook her.
“Mom.” Linc released Mia and stepped forward just as Grace lunged at him, wrapping her willowy arms around his neck as tightly as they could go. “Oh, Jesus,” Linc breathed, embracing her just as fiercely, locking his arms around her waist and burying his head in her shoulder. “Oh, Jesus.”
Mia covered her mouth as the mother and son embraced, seeing the exact moment when the entire world ground to a halt for Linc. When nothing else existed. Not Emma, still pouting in the grass behind them. Not Veda, still running after Gage somewhere. Not even Mia, still watching the two of them with adoring eyes.
All that existed to Linc in that moment was his mother.
And Mia didn’t dare interrupt the moment they both needed. No matter how long it lasted.
——
Grace’s moment had lasted into the next day at the rehearsal dinner, where tears still filled her eyes as she looked upon the granddaughter she’d only just met the day before. The granddaughter who hadn’t left her arms since the moment they’d laid eyes on each other in the grassy backyard. Who hadn’t left her comfortable seat in Grace’s lap for that entire dinner, where they’d talked endlessly about any random topic that popped up in Emma’s head—from games, to cartoons, to their extensive family tree back home in California. Emma talked Grace’s ear off, and Grace drank in every word, swiping away sentimental tears every once in a while as her brown eyes desperately searched Emma’s face as if trying to memorize her.
“Not sure we’re ever going to get our daughter back,” Mia whispered to Linc from across the table.
Linc smiled in response, tapping his fingers on the tabletop, too entranced by the fragrant, untouched food that lined the middle of the ten-seater dining table in the opulent dining room to respond. He was sure the home—which he, Mia, and Emma had eventually ventured inside of after the reunion in the backyard the day before—was the nicest in that entire African city. His mother had already told him that Veda and Gage planned to purchase the house to use as their official vacation home. That Veda and Gage had invited Grace to move into that house to be closer to her son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law. Their only stipulation being that they could visit whenever they wanted. It wasn’t just an offer Grace couldn’t refuse, but one she’d boisterously agreed to.
Linc smirked, wondering what his mother was going to do with all that house. Leave it to his rich-boy brother to find the most expensive mansion in all of Africa and offer to pay for it in cash. Linc couldn’t dwell on what an extravagant spender Gage wa
s, however, because he had a growling stomach that refused to be ignored.
He knew he wasn’t the only one, either, as his green eyes moved across the other guests at the table. Everyone was well dressed for the dinner, wearing all white just as Veda—who sat at the head of the table—had requested.
From the head of the table, Veda’s eyes dashed relentlessly toward every entry and exit in the dining room, lips sealed tight.
Sitting on Veda’s right was Gage’s mother, Celeste. A tall, pale, thin woman with silky black hair, just like Gage’s, that nearly touched her bottom. Her slim features were utterly European even though she was full Italian. Her eyes danced all over the room as well.
On the other side of Veda was the quiet gothic girl Linc remembered as her best friend, Hope. The only girl at the table not wearing a white dress but instead a pair of high-waisted destroyed white jeans with a fitted white tank top underneath. Her makeup was dark and heavy. Not a patch of her skin went without some form of piercing or tattoo. Linc was sure he could hear her stomach growling just as hard as his was across the table.
“Can we just eat, already?” Hope asked, nowhere near as patient, it seemed, as Linc as her desperate green eyes shot to Veda.
“No, Hope!” Veda cried, throwing Hope a sour look.
Every head at the table lowered at Veda’s response and no one else dared utter the question. Not Grace, not Coco—another of Veda’s closest friends—who sat alongside her. Not even Emma, who was still too young to know when to bite her tongue when she was hungry.
“I’m sorry,” Veda breathed, setting her elbows on the table and burying her head in her hands.
A deafening silence dominated, all eyes locked to Veda.
“I’m sorry,” she said, again, lifting her head from her hands and looking over her shoulder where Lincoln Jr., the only one who’d been allowed to eat, was munching contentedly on the Cheese Puffs scattered across the tray on his high chair.
With a deep breath, Veda looked back at her guests, eyes shining and voice wobbling as she motioned to the untouched food. “You know what Hope? You can eat. Eat your friggin’ heart out, okay? Have at it. Go nuts!”
Silence.
Hope didn’t move a muscle.
She was smart not to.
If Veda’s shattered voice, manic eyes, and trembling hands were any indication, sudden movements of any kind would be the biggest mistake of any of their lives.
“Obviously he’s not coming.” Veda’s voice shook even more as she addressed the elephant in the room—the empty chair that sat opposite her on the other end of the table. The chair that should’ve been filled, by the groom, nearly an hour earlier. “So go ahead and eat. Go ‘head. Demolish it, you guys. Eat ‘til you explode. Knock yourselves out!”
Again, no one moved. Linc was certain, in fact, that no one was even breathing.
The first tear fell down Veda’s cheek, causing a round of sympathetic sighs to move across the table.
“I guess he finally realized who he’s really marrying.” Veda sniffled, moving her big, blubbery eyes back to Lincoln Jr. “A mom who let’s her baby eat Cheese Puffs for dinner. Even though they’re chock-full of chemicals and preservatives that’ll reduce his life expectancy by nearly a decade. A woman who can’t cook and ordered this entire feast from a catering company in downtown Cape Verde. A woman who’d rather chew her own arm off than pick up a broom and sweep the floors every once in a while. All he wanted was for me to sweep the kitchen floor once in a while! That’s it! And I couldn’t even do that!”
Even Emma now seemed to realize a potentially dangerous explosion was on the horizon, her big green eyes dashing back and forth between Veda and Linc, as if she were waiting for a signal from her father that it was time to make a run for it.
Veda’s voice rose to deafening levels, shattered with the tears still filling her eyes. “I guess he finally sees that I’m not marriage material or mother material. That he can do so much better than me. That he deserves so much more than me.”
“It’s just so weird.” Coco, the young black girl who’d latched onto Veda and made her a mentor—whether she liked it or not—from the moment they’d met, frowned from the seat next to Veda. “Just yesterday, he was all over you. He looked so happy and in love. What could’ve possibly happened in the last 24 hours?”
Veda shot Linc a look.
Linc took a heaving breath and rolled his eyes, knowing what Veda wasn’t saying. The words she couldn’t say in front of the people at the table who didn’t yet know the whole story. That her fiancé had ditched their rehearsal dinner, not because he didn’t love her, but because he’d just learned she was The Shadow Rock Chopper. Because she’d lied about being The Shadow Rock Chopper since the moment she’d met him. About being the madwoman who’d spent over a year running around Shadow Rock Island, castrating the bastards who’d brutally violated her when she’d been just eighteen. The madwoman who’d never been caught but had left a legacy that had persevered to that very day.
Linc assumed at least half the guests at that table were still clueless to the fact that Veda was The Shadow Rock Chopper. What he didn’t understand was why. If they could all sit there with him—knowing he’d murdered the ten rich animals who’d turned their small island home into one of the biggest sex-trafficking hubs in the world—without even blinking, surely they could accept that Veda had sliced a few balls in her day.
“When’s the last time you saw him?” Mia asked.
Veda sniffled. “Last night. We got into an argument. He said he needed some space.”
Linc cursed under his breath.
Emotion overtook Veda once more, making her voice hitch. “I haven’t seen him since…”
“Is the wedding not happening anymore?” Emma’s soft, innocent voice begged the question that the more seasoned individuals at the table wouldn’t dare.
“This is absurd.” Celeste threw down her napkin while tossing her hair over her shoulder, the legs of her chair disagreeing with the floor as she stood in a haste, shimmying to pull her fitted Marc Jacobs dress down over her taut body. “Veda, my darling, please don’t cry. He must be around here somewhere. We’re in Africa, for Heaven’s sake, how far could he have gone?”
Celeste’s left the table without another word, huffing as her heels clicked across the marble floors, clearly on her way to go find her idiot son.
Linc followed suit, his chair squeaking against the floors when he shot out of his seat as well.
“Aye,” he called across the table, waiting for Veda’s watery eyes to rise to his before he lifted his eyebrows. “We’re gonna find him and we’re gonna fix it. A’ight?”
Veda’s eyes expanded, puckered lips trembling. For a moment, she seemed to have hope. She seemed to believe there was a chance to fix it. Then, just as quickly, the truth seemed to sweep down on her like a black cloud, the hope vanished from her eyes, and her lips crumbled. A sob raced up her throat and curled her face, prompting her to hide it behind her hands once more as the cries wracked her body.
Linc cursed under his breath again and left the table without another word. As he stalked out of the kitchen to hunt down the groom, he heard the other dinner guests leaving their seats as well, each of them determined to find Gage Blackwater and talk some sense into him before it was too late.
——
Linc assumed he was the first one to spot Gage. Only because, if any of the women had found him first, Gage’s skull would currently be on the receiving end of all their purses as they sent them flying angrily into his head. But there was no violence from where Gage sat at the far end of a long wooden dock, looking out into the sunset. He wore white slacks and a white button down shirt. The white tie hanging from his neck was halfway undone. His white suit jacket was slung on the wood slats next to him, brown eyes gleaming under the shards of the vanishing sun.
He didn’t look up as Linc approached, even though he surely heard him as the wooden slats groaned under Linc’s weight.
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“Judging by your white suit, I assume you at least planned on showing up,” Linc said once he was within a few feet of Gage. “So I guess all hope isn’t lost, right?”
Gage turned his head but didn’t look over his shoulder at Linc. Wisps of sunlight blazed around his head and highlighted his chiseled jaw.
“She lied to me,” was all Gage said before he looked back out onto the flawless waters and colorful horizon.
Linc took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of ocean mist and seaweed before beginning closer to Gage once more. He lingered behind him, gazing out at the view as well, letting a long silence fall in.
“You know.” Linc started, eyes dashing across the glistening waters. “I don’t really know how to be a big brother.”
Gage turned his head slightly, but again, didn’t look up into Linc’s eyes.
Linc shrugged. “Never learned how. But… I think if I knew how, I’d tell you not to make the biggest mistake of your life right now. I’d tell you not to do something you’re gonna regret ‘til the day you die.”
Gage licked his lips and finally craned his neck to meet Linc’s eyes over his shoulder. “She lied to me, Linc. She lied to me, pulled the wool over my eyes, but didn’t pull the wool over yours. Never yours.”
Linc looked away, smirking softly while licking his lips. “That’s what this is about?” His eyes flew back to Gage. “For real?”
Gage motioned to him. “Why does she always find it so much easier to be herself with you than with me? Always?”
“Please don’t tell me you think that girl told me the truth willingly. The only reason I learned the truth about Veda was because I fought and clawed for it for over a year. Because I spent every waking minute agonizing over the same case files, the same clues, the same puzzle pieces that just wouldn’t add up… until they finally did. Until I finally had to ask her, point blank, if she was The Chopper. And even then it was like pulling teeth.” Linc stopped himself when he realized nothing he was saying mattered. “She loves you, man.”
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