“We gave him a choice. Us or her. And he chose her.”
“I don’t blame him. You were the alternative.”
She marches up to me and slaps me. Hard enough to turn my head. But, I barely feel it. I don’t feel anything but empty and rudderless.
“He loved me.” Her voice wobbles and she pants, her breaths coming hard and shallow. “I was his wife. I gave him children. We had plans. Then, she came back.” She deflates and sinks into the seat behind her. Her body droops like a broken doll.
“It happened so fast. Your grandfather warned him. Then he followed through on it. Cut him out.”
“Because he loved someone else?” I shake my head in disgust.
“Because he was disloyal,” her retort comes out as a growl. “A year later he left her too. Walked out and never came back. Probably fell face down in a ditch somewhere, piss drunk and never woke up.”
“She thinks he’s alive.”
My mother blinks like I splashed water in her eyes.
“She’s delusional.” Her eyes widen slightly and then dart nervously to the shredder.
“What are you trying to shred?” I eye the machine and the pile of documents strewn in front of it.
She steps into my line of sight. “His death certificates. They have the real dates on there. The declaration date, seven years after he disappeared. When it was issued I ordered a copy from the county clerk. And other documents. Our divorce records. Unlike his death certificate, they were sealed, you would never have found them, but I have them here. Newspaper clippings. Things that if you ever looked, might have told you the truth.”
She lists the items like they’re nothing and I’m beyond incredulity at this point. “God forbid I learn the truth, right?” I say, exhaustion creeping into the bitterness edging my voice.
“Yes. God forbid. I would never have told you.”
“Why is that your decision to make?”
“Because I am the one who was left to pick up the pieces, to raise you as best I could. I was twenty-three. I’d only come here from Jamaica seven years prior. I had no one but him and his family. Nothing but quick thinking and the sense the good Lord gave me. I made a decision and I would do it again.” Her eyes fill with tears.
I’ve never seen her even come close to crying. It renders me dumb.
She looks at me with a plea in her eyes, but she’s not begging me for forgiveness. She doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong. She wants me to understand.
I know I never will.
“I don’t know how you could do this.” I say quietly, a hollow numbness has started to soften my anger.
“I haven’t remarried. I haven’t done anything but help your grandfather grow Wilde World so you’d have something worth inheriting. Everything I’ve done has been for that.”
“Was making sure Kal and I broke up and stayed that way also for me?”
Her expression goes from woeful to angry in a flash.
“I wish I’d never heard that girl’s name.”
“I wish you had to hear it every day.” I retort.
“She would have ruined you.” Her hand slices through the air in anger. “The way Georgina ruined your father. And I would not allow it. One day, when you have children of your own you will understand.” She lifts her chin and crosses her arms over her chest.
“I loved her.” I say, angrily.
“You loved her too much. But once she was gone, you hit your stride. You’ve done so much.” She looks like she hopes I’ll agree. I don’t even hear her anymore.
“All I wanted was her.”
“Look what you have achieved without her.”
“Look how I’ve suffered without her,” I shout back and her eyes widen and fill with tears again.
“Oh, God, Remi.” Her fingers flutter to her face and press against her trembling mouth. “You can’t say anything. Or do anything. This cannot become public knowledge. I don’t want people to know your father sired Hayes Rivers. People can’t know that he wasn’t the man we’ve said he was. It would ruin the branding we have created for Wilde World.”
“Branding? Are you serious?” Just when I thought nothing could surprise me, she proves me wrong.
“Yes. I’m serious. You know this.” Her tears clear and her expression grows stern.
“You were groomed to know it. Wilde World built is bigger than all of us. It will live longer than all of us. What we want isn’t important.” She waves her arms around the room. “This family is an institution now. We built Rivers Wilde. We are one of the largest grocers in the United States. We service nearly every single prison system in the country. We run the food programs for eight countries in South America. Do you think you can just dismantle that because you didn’t get to grow up with your father and his whore?” She sneers at me.
“She was his wife,” I remind her, just to twist the knife in.
“I was his wife.” She points at her chest. Then she looks at me the same way I looked at her a few minutes ago. As if the light around me had shifted and she could finally see me clearly.
“Oh, the irony.” She throws her head back and laughs dryly.
“What?”
“After all of my efforts to make you a better man, you still ended up just like him. At least he knew he couldn’t have both. You still think life is fair. You’re such a fool.” She sneers at me.
“I think I hate you.”
Her face falls. The sorrow in her eyes isn’t feigned. She folds her hands in front of her and nods.
“I know you do.” It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Yet, I feel nothing.
We stare at each other. Mother and son. Enemies. Broken. With nothing between us but a sea of broken glass neither of us are willing to hazard crossing.
This isn’t my family. This isn’t my home. I don’t know who I am. Or what I am. I’ve lived my entire life with a lie guiding my decisions. The man I tried to be was shaped by myth. It grew roots that bound me when the woman I love slipped out of my grasp.
And it was all a fucking lie.
Including me.
An hour later, I drive away from Rivers Wilde and if I have my way, I’ll never be back.
Part I
The Start
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
HOUSTON, TEXAS.
Chapter 1
LEGENDS AND LIES
KAL
* * *
The door to the library opens and I stop writing. My heart races and my hands tremble so badly that my notebook slips from my fingers and lands with a thud on the floor. Loud voices and the blare of music that flood the room disguise the noise. I pick it up and press my body close to the wall and hold my breath.
My mother will kill me if I get caught in here. We haven’t even been at the party for thirty minutes. I thought I’d have at least another couple of hours before I had to go looking for her.
The sound of approaching footsteps sends my pulse into a wild gallop. My heart feels like it’s attached to a boomerang inside my chest. But for those footsteps, the library is as quiet as it had been when I’d snuck in here.
The door opens again and I lift my feet off the ground and hug my knees tightly to my chest and hold my breath.
“I told you to get upstairs,” a woman’s voice cracks through the air like a whip even over the loud din from outside, and I nearly jump out of my skin and my eyes widen in terror. All I can see is the dark blue backing of the curtain.
“Don’t just stand there, answer me.” Her voice is so cold, so hard that I close my eyes again the figure forming in my mind. I imagine her to be tall, with a narrow face that’s shrouded by the thousands of snakes that slither on her head where her hair should be. They hiss and bite each other constantly.
I imagine that her eyes are entirely black. But her mouth is strangely beautiful—it’s heart shaped with lips that are coated with a poisonous apple-red lipstick.
“I just came to get my books.” The boy’s voice is frightened and sad. I wish I could give hi
m a hug. The way he sounds is the way I feel a lot. With my eyes closed, I can just imagine him. He’s small and skinny, with hair that needs cutting and shoes with that are so small, the toes are rubbed thin. The worn cuff of his two sizes too small pants stop above his bony ankles.
“Just make sure you don’t linger. And don’t let me catch you sneaking downstairs one more time, Remington.”
“I just wanted to see the other kids.”
“Why?” her voice is like the surprise of a clap of thunder when there’s not a cloud in the sky. I press my lips together and bite them to stifle the whimper that’s bubbling in my throat.
“You have forgotten who you are. What your responsibilities will be. You don’t get to mingle. You’ve got to set yourself apart. And you don’t do that by sneaking down to a party when you should be in your room working. Get your act together,” she warns.
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy says.
“Get your stuff and then get to bed. You’ve got school tomorrow.” The door opens again, the din from outside is fleeting this time as it shuts quickly.
“I hate you,” I hear the boy say in a voice that’s full of anger that I know all too well. The kind that comes when you’re a kid who knows your parents are missing something regular parents have. He sniffles softly. Then he does it again. This one sounds muffled like he’s covering his mouth. Then another and another right after it.
I forget my notebook, and I forget that I wasn’t supposed to let anyone see me and I scramble from behind the curtain to console the poor kid who’s crying by himself. Just like I’ve always wished someone would do for me.
As soon as I step out from behind the curtain, he stands up. I stop right where I am and stare at the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.
He’s not a small, skinny kid in clothes that are too small. The only thing my imagination got right is that he’s a kid. And even that, just barely. He’s tall, and a little lanky, but in his Houston Rockets jersey and shorts, I can see the muscles that declare him an athlete.
His shoes might be too tight, but given how brand spanking new they look, I doubt it. With his perfectly cut, close-cropped mop of dark curly hair on top of his head, he looks more like a kid in a boyband than he does a kid who would cower in front of anyone.
He’s got a face that looks like it was carved out of stone, all sharp edges, and rounded curves and smooth skin that reminds me of the creamy nutty inside of an acorn shell.
But his eyes make my heart leap into my throat. They’re as dark and beautiful as the starless skies Houston nights are known for and are full of hostility as he watches me.
He looks just like one of the kids who throws spit wads at me from the back of the classroom. Just like one of the kids who sticks his foot out when I walk by in the lunchroom and then laughs when I fall on my face with my lunch splattered all over me.
They’re all perfect and tall with great clothes and great hair and teeth that are being trained into perfectly straight lines by braces.
It’s me whose clothes are too small; whose shoes are too tight. Me, who needs someone to come to her rescue.
“What are you doing in here?” He jumps from the couch he’d been crying on and wipes his tears away. He sounds mad now and not scared at all.
My stomach starts to hurt. I’ve probably just gotten myself and Mama into big trouble. And for what?
“Who are you?” he asks, louder now.
I step backward toward my little hiding spot and wish I could click my heels and transport myself back behind the curtain.
“I’m sorry. I only came out because I heard you crying. I didn’t mean—”
“I wasn’t crying and you better not tell anybody I was,” he says angrily.
“You were too, crying. I heard you,” I argue even though I know I shouldn’t.
“Then you need to get your ears cleaned.” He shoots me an annoyed glance but then sits back down on the couch and stares at his hands as they rest in his lap.
I stand there, torn between wanting to help him and wanting to hide. I watch the door nervously and pray his mother doesn’t come back.
“I was just trying to be nice. I’m sorry. Just pretend you never saw me,” I plead with him.
He looks up from his lap and wide, dark eyes are full of suspicion, his thick slashing brows are drawn together.
“What are you doing in here?”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to get in trouble. But, I’m already caught, and he’s not supposed to be in here either, so maybe he won’t be rushing to rat me out. Maybe he’ll just get his books and leave and I’ll go back behind the curtain until Mama comes back.
“My mom brought me with her to the party. I was bored, so I came in here to wait until she’s ready to go.” I run a hand over my hair, my nervous tic, and have a momentary shock of not feeling my normally, thick tangle of curls. Tonight, my mother sat me down and mercilessly blow dried and then flat ironed every curl into straight submission.
He looks me over. I make myself stand still and wait for him to reply.
His gaze flits over my shoulder at the curtain. “You were hiding back there?” He tips his head at it.
I nod.
“So, you heard everything my mom said?”
So snakehead is his mother. My mother’s terrible, but she never talks to me like that. I feel sorry for him again.
I nod again.
He sighs and closes his eyes.
“Where do you go to school?”
“T.H. Rogers.”
“You’re in middle school?” His eyebrows shoot up. He eyes me up and down, and I can see the doubt on his face. My mother has been dressing me like this and bringing me to these events with her since I turned twelve.
She tells people I’m her younger sister. I’m tall for my age and had breasts by the time I was eleven. So, throw me in a skintight black dress, paint my lips red and stuff my feet into some heels, and there are some places that won’t even card me.
I shrug. “Seventh grade. What you about you?”
“Eighth, I go to Rainier.” He mentions the middle school that serves Rivers Wilde.
“Oh, okay.” I try to cover my surprise. He looks older, too. He’s taller than any of the boys in my middle school.
“You know anyone at Rainer? I don’t want it getting around there that I was crying.”
“No.” I don’t add that I barely know anyone who goes to T.H. Rogers either. I have one friend, Nikki and even she only eats with me because her other friends have a different lunch period.
“That’s good.” He runs a hand over his face like he’s tired. “You want to sit down?” he asks, and when I hesitate he pats the seat next to him.
I’m tempted, these shoes aren’t exactly a joy to stand in. But I hesitate for a second and gauge how quickly I can be back behind that curtain if someone comes in.
“Come on. No one’s coming. I promise.” And there’s something in his smile that tells me he takes his promises seriously.
So, I walk over to the couch and sit down next to him. He leans back like he’s getting comfortable and stares up at the ceiling.
“I wasn’t crying. My mom just makes me mad.”
“It’s okay. I hate my mom sometimes, too,” I admit with a shrug.
“I don’t hate her—I don’t know. She just—”
“Doesn’t like you very much. Is never happy with you, no matter what you do? Wants you to be everything you’re not?”
He slides his eyes over to me again and looks me up and down. I push my glasses up my nose and smile nervously. He doesn’t smile back.
“How do you know that?”
“Because, mine’s the same way. And… I heard what your mother said.” I give him a sly smile and he smiles back.
It’s such a nice smile, complete with twin dimples. I’m sad when it disappears as quickly as it was there.
“Yeah… so that’s it. Basically. I’ll never measure up to my dad.”
“
Why? Is your dad famous or something?”
“Even worse. He’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugs like he means it. “He did all of these great things before he died. He went to business school and was a marketing whiz. He and my grandfather built Wilde World from nothing and my mom wants me to step in and do the same.”
“Is that like AstroWorld, but with animals?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “No, it’s the name of my family’s business.”
“Oh…” I glance around the library. If this is his house, his family must have some sort of huge business. This library is bigger than our entire apartment and has more books than the public library in my neighborhood.
“So, you’re going to be in charge one day?” I ask him in awe.
“Yeah. I guess.” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter.
“You should count your blessings. I wish I had a family business or something more than my mother’s pretty dresses to inherit,” I tell him.
He flushes. “I know I’m lucky. I know. I just… I don’t know. I want to be myself, too. They want me to be just like him. I just want to play basketball.” He slumps forward and stares forlornly at the carpet.
“The best way to get people to stop telling you what to do is to show them what you can do. If you want to play. Play. Can she really stop you?”
“I like that. Your mom’s advice?” he says slowly.
“Nope. Cosmo. If I listened to my mother, the only advice I’d be able to give you is that you could never be too rich or too pretty,” I say and stare at the door, my eyes trained on the handle for signs of it moving. I really want to have time to get behind that curtain again if snakehead comes back.
“So, what have you done to disappoint your mother?” At his unexpected question, I turn and find him watching me closely. I blush and let my hair fall forward so it hides my face. I worry the tasseled edge of the huge rug with the toe of my peep-toe heels. I can’t wait to take them off.
“Have you heard of The Fly Girl?”
The Rivals Page 34