by Emilia Finn
In the confusion, Hannah turns and bolts from the room without being stopped by one single person. And in the silence, tears burn my eyes while Evie bathes in her own wedding cake.
“Oh god,” I cry. “Oh no.”
“Eve?” Ben looks like he might die from worry. Like he’s on the edge of a heart attack.
He takes his wife’s hand and pulls her to her feet. She’s a mess. She’s covered from head to toe, and her boobs stand as a type of shelf to hold extra cake up top.
“I’m gonna… I mean…” He teeters between enraged and terrified. “Talk to me, Eve. What do you need me to do?”
“Um…”
The muted lighting remains, the music is silent. Around us, family and friends stand in shocked horror at the scene laid out in front of them. Cake is splattered from one side of the dancefloor to the other, and in the middle lays the little cake topper that everyone thought was so cute.
“This is my fault,” I admit quietly. Quiet, but still heard. “My friend, my, uh…” I point toward the door. “She did it on purpose to hurt you.”
“But why?” Evie’s brows pull close as she processes my words. “I don’t even know that server.”
“It’s an implied infraction at this point,” I admit on a croak. “They don’t like you because they wanna be you.”
“How is it your fault?”
“I… uh…” I clear my throat, and look down at my ruined dress. “They said they were going to ruin… and I’m here with… my family doesn’t approve of this.”
A soft laugh draws my gaze as Nelly makes her way out of her seat. She pats Bobby’s arm as she passes, then Jon’s – Bry’s uncle. She squeezes Aiden’s hand when he looks like he might explode. Then she stops in front of Evie and slides her finger through some of the icing on her chest.
“I suspect this is more my fault than it is Maddi’s.”
Evie’s lips quiver when Nelly presses the icing between her lips to taste.
“Mm, yummy. I upset a family back when I was in high school, and that family finally got their payback today.” She slides her finger through more icing, but this time offers it to Evie. “We don’t let spilled cake hurt us, do we?”
“We’ve had way worse,” Evie murmurs. “There could be a bomb strapped to my chest.”
“Smalls,” Aiden groans.
“Could be a heart attack,” she continues.
“Could be a smashed skull,” Mac helpfully adds.
Nelly grins. “We’ve had way worse.”
“They ruined her dress!” Ben booms indignantly. “Twice!”
“Sasquatch?” Evie draws his attention. Grins. “It’s just cake. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine! You worked so hard for this!”
“Here.” She grabs his ears and pulls him down until he gets a taste of the cake. “Taste’s good, huh?”
“Fuck.” Ben wraps his arms around her hips, and dives back in for more.
Maddi
Money Can’t Buy Love
“How could you?” The moment I walk through my front door and find them all sitting in the parlor – the fucking “parlor” – I lose it.
My dress is still sticky. It smells of sugar. I have a headache from rage-eating too much cake from Bry’s hands. But most of all, worst of all, I have a broken heart.
Hannah sits beside Jenna. Jenna sits beside Jackson. My grandfather sits in a wingback chair on his own, and taps a cigar against a crystal ashtray; to his right, my dad sits and does the same.
“I’m disgusted with you all!”
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” My father tilts his head to the side with curiosity, but when he does it, it’s nothing like how Nelly or Bry do it. The Kincaids are genuinely curious to hear more. My father is merely taunting. “You look an awful mess.”
“Because I have cake all over me!” I screech. “Cake! From a wedding you ruined.”
My grandfather lifts both brows and studies me. “You’re making a scene, young lady. And seeing the hour, I’d really prefer you didn’t do that.”
“You connived! You got together, held your secret fucking meetings, and thought up ways to ruin someone’s wedding. For what? So you could feel superior? Because you hold a stupid fucking grudge against a family simply because they didn’t want you?” I look into my grandfather’s eyes. “A girl didn’t want you in high school, so you spend the rest of your life waiting for petty retribution?”
“Young lady, watch your to—”
“You wasted your entire life!” I roar. “All of these years, everything you have, you’re blind to it all, because you hold a grudge about something inconsequential. You think about them every day, but guess what, Grandpa? They never think of you!”
His lips firm to flat lines.
“You wasted your entire fucking life on this, and you created an asshole out of my father,” I look to him, then to Jackson, Jenna, and Hannah, “then you passed your poison on to my friends. All for payback against a family that literally never thinks of you.”
“They thought of me tonight.” Grandpa blows out a long plume of smoke. “Didn’t they?”
“With pity,” I hiss. “Then they laughed. They laughed at all of you and ate cake from Evie’s boobs, because they don’t give a single fuck about you and your perceived slights. I’ve met Nelly,” I look to Grandpa, “the woman you wanted. I’ve met her, I’ve eaten with her, I’ve discussed love and forevers with her. And you know what?” I stab my clutch in his direction. “She was always way too fucking good for you. She would choose to love and lose Bryan a million times, rather than spend even a second with the likes of you.”
I look to my “friends”. “I’m disgusted with all of you. And I’m done. I will not associate with assholes. I’m sorry I let it go on so long.” I turn on my heel, and move toward the parlor doors.
“Where are you going, sweetheart?” My father’s voice is sweet like honey, but cold. So fucking cold.
I spin back. “To pack a bag. I refuse to sleep under this roof tonight. You make me sick.”
“If you pack your bag with a single night’s worth of clothes, then be sure to pack for the rest. You’re not welcome back here if you go there tonight.”
Broken hearted, I lift my chin anyway. “Fine. It’s time I became independent anyway.”
“If you leave this home, Madilyn, you will no longer be Monaco’s PR Manager.”
That brings me back around with a whimper. “You would demote me? I worked my ass off for that job!”
“Not demote, honey.” My grandfather grins behind a plume of smoke. “You would become unemployed. To be a Tosky means to be loyal. If you walk away tonight, then we know you’re not loyal to the family.”
Tears track over my face. They squeeze through my lashes and dribble over my cheeks, until they hit my lips. “I don’t think you have the slightest clue what it means to be loyal. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
I turn and dart up the stairs of what is quite literally a mansion. I grew up in a fucking mansion. But money doesn’t buy hugs, it doesn’t buy love.
Or loyalty, it would seem.
I push through my bedroom door with a cry, and snatch a suitcase from my walk-in closet. Blinded by my tears, I begin tugging clothes from the drawers. Jeans. Jeans. I have so many pairs of jeans.
I move to the shirts. Then I snatch a couple dresses, because they hang in my line of sight. The suitcase fills quickly, far too quickly, so I grab a second and work on that. I shove in a couple pairs of sneakers, some sweaters, then I move into my room and snag the sweet teddy bear my mother gave me when I was a child.
She was dying, but she still gave me the bear, told me to hold on tight, and to believe that soon she would be the bear. Each night in bed, we could snuggle, we could talk and tell our secrets. She was living a death sentence, but she made sure to tell me I had a friend right there in a stuffed teddy.
I shove my laptop into the second case, my other electronics. I snag a pair of pyj
amas – because leaving home with dozens of pairs of jeans and only one pair of pjs is a totally reasonable ratio. When I clear out what I need, I shed my dress, drop it to my bedroom floor, then I shrug into a sweater, pull on a pair of jeans I didn’t pack, and slip my feet into a pair of sneakers. I snag the hat – Bry’s hat – from my dressing table, drop it on my head, then I look around my childhood bedroom and feel… empty.
There’s no nostalgia, no sense of home. There’s no longing, and no gut-dropping at the thought of leaving. There’s just a room that shows absolutely none of my personality. A bed that I never chose, a bedspread that I had no say in.
Swallowing, I take my bags and push my shoulders back, then I walk into the hall. Down the stairs. Past the fucking parlor, and outside into the cold.
“Oh, sweetheart?” My father follows me outside and stands at the top of the steps. “Would you like me to call you a cab?”
“But I have my…” I look to my Audi. To my keys.
Then I understand his words. This car was never mine. It was never in my name. It’s just another status symbol, another way to keep me indebted to my family.
Shaking my head, I drop the keys to the ground and move down the long driveway. “I’d rather walk.”
Bryan
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
The gate buzzer sounds and draws me out of my daze as I lay back watching TV in the dark, the sounds of rain against my roof lulling me into a type of coma.
Maddi was going home to get fresh clothes, probably to go a round with her parents because they’re fuckwits, then she was coming back here to spend the night with me.
Exactly where she belongs.
Since I’m expecting her, I merely walk to the control panel at my front door, and hit the release so the gates open. Opening the door and expecting to see her headlights as she rolls through the gates, I frown when there are none.
I step onto the porch with searching eyes, only for my stomach to drop when I find her standing at the end of the driveway, in the rain, with her arms pulled low from the weight of two suitcases, and her hair drooping and sticking to her neck. My hat sits on her head, it shelters her eyes from the rain, but the rest of her is soaked to the bone.
“Maddi?” I dart down my porch steps in nothing but sweatpants. No shoes, no shirt, no hat. I sprint along my long road until I catch her at the gates.
Her lips are almost blue from the cold. They tremble, and her eyes swim with tears and rainwater.
“Baby? What the hell happened?” I take her bags, set them on the ground, and pull her into my arms. She’s freezing, and sends goosebumps racing to my toes when she presses her nose to my warm chest. “You’re so cold.”
“I don’t feel it anymore,” she murmurs. Her voice cracks, and her teeth chatter. “I went numb.”
“Come inside. Fuck.” I grab her bags in one hand, and throw my free arm over her shoulder to try to lend her a little of my warmth, then I lead her toward my front door and curse the fact I left it wide open.
She needs a warm house, not a door left open in the winter.
Most of the other houses that surround us are tucked away for the night. My uncles and aunts, my cousins, my sisters and my parents. Everyone but Evie and Ben, no doubt, are asleep by now.
I lead Maddi along the narrow street and up my porch steps, then through my front door. I drop her bags in the middle of the room, and lead her straight up the stairs. Along the hall, into my bedroom, then into my bathroom.
I flip the shower on at full heat, and come back to Maddi to strip her soaked clothes off. I set the hat on the counter, pull her sweater up over her head and take care not to pull her hair or earrings.
She’s changed her outfit since I last saw her, but her makeup remains… sort of. It runs now, from the rain. From tears.
I drop to my knees and begin unlacing her shoes. Then I unbutton her jeans and use all my strength to drag them down her legs. Wet denim is like fighting a fucking alligator, but I drag them down and internally curse her frozen skin. I push her back to sit on the closed toilet, tug her shoes off. I toss the denim and her panties into a pile, then I pull her back up to stand and lead her to the shower.
I fix the temperature, and as soon as it’s warm – not even hot, because it’ll feel like razor blades on her cold skin – I gently push her in, and stay out only long enough to drop my sweats and kick them aside.
I follow her in and plaster my chest to her back, and as time passes and we stand under the warm water, I increase the heat until the room fills with steam.
“Maddi?” I press a kiss to the back of her neck. Then add more, gentle, nipping kisses. “Baby? What the fuck happened?”
“Can I stay here?”
She bursts into howling sobs when my kisses stop.
Turning, she buries her face against my chest and cries. “Can I stay a couple nights until I can find someplace else to go?”
“You can stay forever.” I draw her face up and swallow her sobs when I press my lips to hers. “Forever and ever. You’re mine now, okay?”
“Okay.” She lowers her face and chokes on her tears.
“Forever.” I hold her close, wrap my arms around her trembling body. “When a Kincaid knows, he knows.”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t believe me.
“Unconditionally.”
Maddi
Unraveling
I do my very best to hold myself together all day Sunday.
It’s the day after Ben and Evie’s wedding, and despite the fact they said they weren’t honeymooning anywhere – at least not until after the tournament – they still deserve at least twenty-four hours of blissful ignorance.
But the truth sits heavily in my stomach. It’s like a growing, pulsing tumor that won’t go away until I voice it out loud.
Being with Bryan today has been calming. He doesn’t demand answers, but he likes to feed me. It’s his thing, I guess. When he’s unsure how to fix something, he makes food.
Pancakes for breakfast. Biscuits with jam and whipped cream for ‘second breakfast’. Fresh-made lasagna for lunch, and candy and a movie for second lunch.
His niece comes over in the middle of the afternoon, brings her dog, and she simply climbs onto the couch between us and settles in for a movie.
She’s the sweetest kid I’ve ever met.
Bry chatters with her for hours, but he doesn’t make me feel left out. He holds my hand, plays with my fingers, and each time that pulsing tumor wreaks havoc with my anxiety, he stretches my fingers out, and forces me to tell us both that I love him.
It’s such a discreet system. It’s silent, and can be done by feel. We don’t have to see, we don’t have to hear. We just have to be holding hands to express our feelings.
And damn him for being so sweet when I have such a massive secret to tell.
Alyssa writes a book while we watch a movie. She says it’s about me, but I’m not allowed to read until she’s done. Which is fine, and so effing sweet that I barely stop myself from weeping.
Or maybe the weeping is because of the dismissal in my family’s eyes, which continue to flash through my mind.
I was disposed of. Just like that. So fucking easily, like I was a bad business investment and not made of their flesh and blood.
But now it’s dinnertime, and Ben and Evie have deemed their alone time over.
“Turdsky?”
Bry sits beside me at the table while his family talks over each other to be heard. We eat all sorts of things – pizzas, pastas, salad. There’s fried chicken in a baking dish right in front of Alyssa, as well as a tall glass of something that fizzes while her dad and soon-to-be stepmom giggle between themselves.
I wish my stepmom was more like Lyss’. I wish my stepmom loved me enough to treat me as hers, to hug me when I was sad, to kiss me at night, and hold me in her lap when I needed human contact.
Instead, my stepmother is only two years older than me. And that has made me sick from the m
oment she was brought home and introduced to me as my new mother.
There was no, ‘Hey, Maddi. This is Daddy’s new friend. Would you like to spend some time getting to know her?’ It was literally, ‘This is your mom now. Don’t bring up your late mother anymore.’
“Turdsky?” When I don’t answer him, Bry presses his lips to my temple. “Hey? You in there?”
I’ve been on the verge of crying all day. Every time anyone asks how I’m doing, brand new tears rush to my eyes, and force me to harden up or humiliate myself.
I draw in a long, chest-filling breath, let it out with a nod. “I’m fine.”
“Wanna go home?” he whispers. “We can swipe a pizza box and make ourselves scarce in two minutes flat.”
I shake my head and hate the way my breath hitches. “No… I, uh… I actually have something I need to tell you guys.”
His breath comes to a standstill. His family continues chattering, but Bry’s body stills while he searches my eyes. “Are you okay? Are you leaving us? Are you marrying someone else? Dammit, Turdsky, don’t break my heart.”
“No.” My voice comes out on a laugh that draws eyes. I reach up and swipe at my falling tears.
“Maddi, sweetheart?” Kit leans across the table and pats my hand. “It’s okay. Ben enjoyed the cake the way he got it.”
“Fuck he did,” Evie’s dad snaps. “I can’t get that shit out of my brain now.” He turns to Evie. “Why’d you have to do that, Smalls?
She only chuckles and picks at her pizza. “I had fun, I don’t know what y’all are complaining about. I got hitched, I got to eat a great meal, I danced with my husband, and with my daddy, then I got lucky.”
“Smalls!”
Sitting beside her, Ben only rests his elbows on the table and chews his knuckles to hide his smile.