“Owen, I asked you a question. Is your official comment ‘no comment’?”
He flopped into his chair with a grunt. “That’s my official comment to you vultures for the rest of time. But especially to the ones who fake a date to my brother’s wedding reception just to score a byline. Consider everything you see here tonightand everything you might witness from me or my family off the fucking record.”
Jenny crossed her arms and bent across the table to look Owen in the face, giving my brother a view of her ample cleavage that he couldn’t quite keep from looking at. “You can’t hide from me forever, Owen. This is my job, and I have a responsibility to report what the movers and shakers of this city are doing to its economy.”
“It’s an invasion of privacy,” he retorted.
“It’s the free press, even if billionaires prefer to control their narratives.”
“So, we’re villains because we prefer accuracy over speculation?”
“If that was the truth, you’d give me something accurate to report instead of shutting me down.”
By this point, they were both leaning far enough across the table that their noses were nearly touching.
“Whoa,” Laney murmured as she glanced between them.
“Seriously,” I replied. “You guys want a room so you can fuck and get it over with? Again, I mean?”
Both of them glared at me.
“Ronan, don’t think I won’t kick your ass just because it’s your wedding,” Owen snarled. “Talk about her like that again, and I’ll drag you into the alley.”
I snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”
Laney was shaking her head, even if she was hiding a smile. Call me crazy, but I think my girl kind of liked my sense of humor.
“You’re terrible,” she murmured in my ear.
I turned to nip her on the neck. “I’m observant. And you love it.”
She didn’t argue.
Owen and Jenny, however, continued theirs.
“Excuse me, I don’t need you to come to my rescue.” Jenny stood tall. With heels, she had to be close to six feet, nearly tall enough to look at my brother eye to eye if he were standing, and more than enough to loom over him when he was sitting.
“Oh, so now I’m in trouble just for being a gentleman?” he retorted, shoving back up to stand. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t with you, aren’t I? Same as fucking ever.”
For whatever reason, that really pissed Jenny off, enough that suddenly she was vibrating. “You… you… asshole!”
With that, she whirled around and stalked away, leaving Owen to watch her go and looking curiously like a puppy that had just been kicked. I wasn’t sure any of the Black children were capable of shame—it had literally been beaten out of us—but his expression was the closest thing to it.
“Owen.”
Every one of us swerved at the sound of our father’s voice, rough and deep from the center of the table.
Owen turned. I had to respect him for meeting Dad’s eye. Most men couldn’t manage that even under the best of circumstances.
“Sit the fuck down,” Dad ordered him. “And stop letting some broad pussywhip you in front of all of Boston. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Owen opened his mouth to argue, but when he caught the rest of us, and also a few people from neighboring tables watching him, he sank into his seat without a word and proceeded to drain his glass of champagne.
The restof the evening was shockingly endurable, mostly because Laney and I spent most of it cocooned in our seats,facing each other. Were we being a bit rude? Maybe. Did I care? Never.
But that was the magic Delaney Fisher had wrought on my ridiculous existence. Little by little, I was starting to believe this might actually work. That our marriage could actually be for good, not just for six months, and that any of the pretenses I might have had going into this didn’t actually matter because right now, when I looked at my wife with stars in her eyes that almost certainly reflected my own, nothing had been more real than this.
“You’re up, buddy,” Liam murmured right after Brendan had just finished his pseudo-best man speech. My other siblings, people who pretended they were my friends, and a few who actually were had already done their best. Any more of this, and I’d be under the table by ten.
