I love you too much. You’re not allowed to hate me.
I walked away. I didn’t go far, just a few steps closer to the pool, but that was enough that when I turned back to face my mom, I could see past her into the Great Room. Through the massive, floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see Greer opening presents. As I watched, she picked up a white package adorned with a pale blue bow.
“Do you think Greer knows anything?” I asked. “About what happened to Ana?” It was easier to talk about that, to tell myself that I was doing this for Campbell as much as for myself.
“No,” my mom said. “She wouldn’t have. Ana and I tried to support her when she lost her baby, but she wasn’t even sad. She told us we were on our own, that she didn’t need us anymore….”
And now she’s having a fake baby shower for a fake baby.
“Are you ever going to forgive me, Sawyer?”
It would have been easier if the raw emotion in my mom’s voice didn’t sound so much like everything I’d been feeling myself.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her. I breathed in and held the breath. Think about Davis Ames. Think about the fact that he’s the one throwing the fund-raiser Nick needs an escort to. Think about the fact that the old man “handled” the situation with Ana.
Think about the fact that he may have been the last person who saw her alive.
I let out a breath and walked past my mom toward the house. I answered her question but didn’t turn around. “I don’t know.”
s she gone?”
“I think so. For now.”
“You know how I said I could feel my shoulder? Good news: I think I can almost, maybe, kind of, sort of feel a tiny bit of my arm.”
rcadia was a lakeside resort. From what I’d gathered, it had been built in the fifties. Stepping through the grand entrance into the lobby felt like stepping back in time. Granted, part of that was probably what we were wearing. Aunt Olivia might not have been a fan of the lake—or the activities Lily and I had partaken of on our last trip up here—but she and Lillian were both big fans of theme parties. Tonight’s fund-raiser was Big Band themed, and they’d insisted we go vintage.
Full-on, straight from the forties, stop-and-stare vintage.
My dress was red, with buttons at the waist and capped sleeves. Lily’s was a floral print. Both had skirts that flared and modest, fitted tops. Our hair was curled. We were given bright lipstick. The only concession, other than knee-length dresses, that Aunt Olivia had made to the fact that this was a lake party was that neither one of us was wearing heels.
Sandals, apparently, fully qualified as lake formal.
I had the general sense that the tuxedo Nick was wearing did not. He stood near a column at the side of the lobby, his back toward the door. Even from behind, I recognized him in a heartbeat: his stance, the way he had his hands shoved into his pockets, the lines of his body, only partially masked by the tuxedo jacket.
Everything about him screamed that he’d rather take that jacket off.
Tamping down on that thought, I excused myself from the family as they made their way to the ballroom and started toward him.
Lily followed. “You didn’t tell me you had a date tonight.” That might have come off as an admonition, if she hadn’t sounded so intrigued.
“It’s not a date,” I told her as Nick shifted to lean against the column. “More of an arrangement.”
Nick turned toward us moments before we reached him, like he’d known exactly where I was from the moment I walked in the door. He let his eyes roam over my dress, then glanced briefly at Lily’s.
“Nice outfits.” He balled his hands into fists inside his pockets. “I’m overdressed.”
The fact that I’d noticed what his hands were doing inside his pockets probably meant that I was watching him a little too closely.
Too close for comfort.
“A pair of khakis would have been just fine,” Lily told him delicately. “Things aren’t as formal up here. You could try taking off the jacket?”
Yes, please. I quashed that reaction and shifted to problem-solving mode. “Forget the jacket. What clothes do you have in your car?”
Nick ended up in a pair of jeans and his white undershirt—shirt tucked in, hair teased back. Under Lily’s instruction, I did the teasing.
“A little more,” she told me.
Nick’s neck was bent, his head bowed. As I brought my hand back up, he angled his eyes toward mine. I tried to view this situation objectively. Objectively, he had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a guy. Objectively, his expression was annoyed, borderline pained.
Objectively, that expression changed when I touched his hair.
“Use both hands,” Lily said, and I did, pushing my fingers along his scalp, separating locks of hair until Lily decreed that we’d reached ideal levels of mussed.
Nick didn’t look away from me once, and if I’d let myself, I could have imagined exactly what it would feel like to curl my fingers in his hair, tighten my grip, pull his head back.
Bring my lips to his.
Instead, I stepped to the side, trying not to think too much about my hands and where they’d been a moment before.
“If anyone asks,” Lily told Nick, “you’re James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.”
“Wrong decade,” Nick responded.
I shrugged and offered him a crooked grin. “That’s how you know you’re a rebel.”
He almost smiled back.
“It’s better than the tux and theme-adjacent,” Lily said firmly. “As long as you’re with Sawyer, you’ll be fine.”
“And what am I supposed to do…” Nick glanced at me, and I wondered if he was thinking about the feel of my hands in his hair. “…with Sawyer?”
“Mingle.” Lily smiled softly. “A dance or two or seven. Maybe a stroll out onto the patio.” She leaned her head slightly to one side. “Just pass the time.”
I turned my attention to her, keenly aware that Nick’s was still on me. “Are you talking about us,” I asked Lily, “or you and Walker?”
“Walker Ames?” Nick said. I didn’t need to glance his way to know that his expression had darkened.
“Is it so wrong to want things to be the way they used to be?” Lily asked me wistfully. “For just one night, I want Walker to forget about—”
“Lily.” I cut in before she could say anything about Walker’s father or the events of the past year. She stared at me for a moment, then glanced toward Nick. Her brown eyes widened.
“I apologize,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about your brother, Nick. You must think I’m absolutely—”
“No,” Nick said, interrupting her. He looked down at the ground, then back up at Lily. “It’s not wrong to want things to be the way they used to be,” he told her gently, “just for one night.”
I liked him more for biting back his resentment of the Ames family and assuring her of that than I’d liked anyone, regardless of gender, in a very long time. Somehow, that felt a hell of a lot more dangerous than running my hands through his hair.
As the three of us made our way back to the lobby and the double doors leading to the ballroom, neither Nick nor I said a word. He stopped right outside of the doors. “I hate parties,” he grumbled. Then he pushed the door inward. “And I am the best damn brother in the world.”
As the dull roar of the gala washed over us like a wave, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe he was.
“Don’t be such a baby,” I told him. Once upon a time, I might have been right there with him, grumbling and feeling ten kinds of out of place, but tonight, I found that I didn’t hate parties at all.
The first thing I saw inside the ballroom was the band. A male singer was crooning. A female singer with turquoise hair stepped up to the mic beside him. My thoughts flicked briefly to the dance Nick and I had shared, but before I could even entertain the idea of a repeat, I saw a familiar figure on the dance floor that banished all other thoughts from my
head: Walker Ames—and he was dancing with a girl I immediately recognized as Victoria Gutierrez.
I’d been told once that the Ballad of Lily Easterling and Walker Ames was epic. At the moment, a more appropriate descriptor would have been awkward. Lily was too polite to kick up a fuss about one little dance. Walker was too charming to let on that he realized, 100 percent, that she was bothered.
The entire dynamic set Nick’s teeth on edge. The thin white shirt he wore made it easy for me to see the tension in his muscles every time Walker so much as opened his mouth. Walker wasn’t the Ames who’d put Nick’s brother in a coma—but for a year, Walker had believed that he was and hadn’t done a thing to make it right.
I couldn’t expect Nick to get over a thing like that. How was it Victoria had referred to him? Rough around the edges. Angry at the world.
“Come on,” I said, placing a hand on the back of Nick’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
A moment passed, and then I felt his shoulder muscles loosen under my touch. He let me lead him away from Walker—and Lily.
“Is this the part where we mingle?” he asked gruffly. “Or dance?”
I’d come into this evening open to the possibility of a second dance, but that was before I’d touched his hair. Before I’d noticed those long, long lashes.
Before he’d been kind to Lily, even though it meant fighting back his resentment toward Walker.
“Beats me,” I said flippantly. “If you were looking for a tour guide who actually understands high society, you could have chosen better.”
That got a begrudging smile out of him. “I think I chose okay.”
Objectively, that wasn’t high praise. So why did it feel like it was?
Ultimately, the two of us didn’t mingle or dance. We milled, in silence more comfortable than it should have been. There was space between us, inches. One second, it felt like too much, and the next, I was damn near certain it wasn’t enough.
Looking out at the crowd, I spotted the evening’s host on the other side of the ballroom. Davis Ames was holding court and shaking hands. My grandmother had taken up position at his side.
“If I have to listen to one more person tell me what a cozy get-together this is, or what a good man my grandfather is, I will not be held responsible for my actions.” Campbell didn’t bother with hello as she sauntered up. “Cozy is just a way of saying this year’s event isn’t half as well attended as last year’s,” she continued, “and talking about what a good man my grandfather is? That’s code for how lucky Mama, Walker, and I are that he hasn’t disowned us all.” She paused, but only for an instant, then turned her attention to my companion. “Hello, Nick.”
If I’d needed a reminder that the two of them had been friends with benefits, heavy on the benefits, her coy tone would have done it. Thankfully, I managed not to study every detail of Nick’s expression as he responded.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked her. “Daddy in prison at your hands?”
“I’m a complicated person,” Campbell shot back. “I’m allowed to hate the things I want.” She turned to me. “So is this a thing now?” she asked, nodding to Nick. “The two of you?”
No. Yes. Only for tonight. My brain supplied a string of answers, rapid-fire.
“Do you have a problem with that?” Nick asked, beating me to an actual response.
“None in the least. But I am afraid that I’m going to have to borrow Sawyer from you for just a minute. We have some things to talk about, and I’m afraid they’re need-to-know.” Campbell went for the kill shot. “Sister things.”
Nick shrugged.
“He knows we’re not sisters,” I informed Campbell. “I told him.”
Nick smirked. “I suppose I didn’t need to know…”
“But you do,” Campbell finished. “Lovely.” She flashed him another smile. “In that case, should I assume Sawyer has also told you that we found a twenty-year-old body that might have ended up at the bottom of Regal Lake at the hand of an Ames?”
No. I hadn’t.
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is she talking about, Sawyer?”
“The Lady of Regal Lake,” Campbell supplied.
“I know about the body,” Nick said, his eyes still on me. “I run a bar. I hear things. What does Campbell mean about someone in her family being responsible for the body?”
If stoking Nick’s enmity toward her family had been Campbell’s goal—well, goal achieved.
“Campbell is jumping to conclusions,” I said. I couldn’t leave it there, though, because Nick deserved better than for me to let her dangle the possibility like a string in front of a cat. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t dismiss the idea Campbell had planted in my mind the week before, and I couldn’t lie to Nick. “But there was a teenage girl that her father knocked up. As far as we can tell, no one’s heard from said girl in twenty years.”
Nick ran a hand roughly through his hair, then forced a smile for anyone watching. “Do you two even hear yourselves?” he asked. “You get that this isn’t normal, right?”
“What isn’t normal?” a voice asked cheerfully.
I turned to see Sadie-Grace. Beside her, Boone held out his hands, as if framing a picture around my face. “Lo,” he called out dramatically, “thereby a vision in red came upon me, and her name was…”
I shot him a look that almost proved effective in preventing him from finishing that sentence.
“Sawyer,” he whispered. “Her name was Sawyer.”
Boone’s last name might have been Mason, but he was an Ames, and though Nick didn’t have anything against him specifically—as far as I knew—I couldn’t help thinking that my “date” was probably reaching his limit with all things Ames.
He probably wished—like I did—that we were back at his car, my hands teasing his hair.
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Turning that idiom over in my mind, I looked away from Nick—and the rest of the group. On the other side of the room, an immaculately dressed couple approached Lillian and Davis Ames. The man looked to be in his seventies—at least; the woman he had his arm around didn’t look all that much older than my mom. Her skin was a glowing, medium brown; his was lighter. They both resembled their daughter, enough so that I might have pegged them for Victoria’s parents, even if she hadn’t mentioned their notable age difference.
The expression on Victoria’s father’s face as he shook Davis Ames’s hand was inscrutable.
“Earth to Sawyer?” Campbell said. I had no idea what I’d missed.
“We were just about to discuss how incredibly debonair I look in this hat,” Boone informed me, sliding his fingers along its brim. “I was born to fedora.”
I wasn’t sure whether the pained look on Nick’s face was the result of Boone’s use of the word fedora as a verb or the conversation he, Campbell, and I had been having before we’d been interrupted.
“I’m sorry to do this,” I told him. “But I have to go—just for a few minutes.”
On the other side of the room, words were being exchanged between Victor Gutierrez and the man whose company he’d attempted to topple. If it was personal, if he targeted the Ames family because of Ana…
“I’ll be back soon,” I told Nick. “Think you can stomach a dance then?”
Campbell responded before Nick could. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered. I wasn’t sure if she’d clued in to what I’d noticed, or if this was just another attempt to get under Nick’s skin.
“No,” I said. Whatever Campbell’s intention was here, I’d never told her the exact words her grandfather had used when he indicated to me that he’d handled Ana. Cam might have had complicated relationships with her parents, but she loved the old man.
I needed to talk to him alone.
“Will you be okay?” I asked Nick, because he still hadn’t replied to anything I’d said, including the question about the dance.
“I’m a big boy.” Nick didn’t even have half a smi
le for me now. “I can take care of myself.”
Like me, he had probably been born taking care of himself. If you didn’t rely on other people, they couldn’t disappoint you. Hadn’t that been my own mantra, once upon a time?
I’ll make it up to him, I told myself as I started weaving through the crowd toward the Ames and Gutierrez patriarchs.
“You, too, would look excellent in a fedora,” I heard Boone tell Nick behind me.
“Is now a good time for a subject change?” Sadie-Grace asked, in a rare moment of social acuity. I told myself she had the situation in hand, but the last thing I heard as I stepped out of earshot was “Because I think my stepmother might be planning to steal a baby.”
et’s play a game. How deep do you think this hole is?”
“That’s not a game, Sadie-Grace.”
“Not with that attitude, it’s not.”
“Seriously?”
“Come on. Please? How deep do you think this hole is?”
“Deep enough that it’s going to be a pain in the ass to climb out—if we even can.”
“Well, I’ve decided I like our chances. Because I’m an optimist, and I’m pretty good at giving boosts.”
y the time I reached Davis Ames, Lillian and Victoria’s parents had been swept up in other conversations. Pushing down the urge to look back toward Nick, I wondered what Mr. Gutierrez had said to the Ames family patriarch. Idle chitchat? Not-so-friendly doublespeak? A warning?
“You have the look of a woman on a mission,” Davis told me.
I nodded toward the man I assumed to be Victor Gutierrez. “What did he want?”
“To say hello.”
That was a nonanswer if I’d ever heard one. “What else did he want?”
Davis cocked his head slightly to one side, then laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Escort an old man out for a breath of fresh air,” he said, “will you?”
The deck outside the ballroom faced the water. Down below, a hundred or more boats were docked. Farther out, the lake glistened in the twilight. I could hear the sound of water rhythmically washing over the shore.
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