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“Mom, please—”
“No!” she shouts—and I mean shouts. Everyone at the party stops what they’re doing and the small show we were putting on suddenly becomes a much larger one. “Do not touch me,” she says coldly. “I’m leaving. I can’t be here.”
“Mom—” I call after her, starting to follow.
My dad catches my shoulder and stops me. My eyes meet Xavier’s and even he looks hurt and pissed off. Great, just great.
“No, just don’t,” my dad says, shaking his head firmly. He lets me go and heads in the same direction my mom left.
Xavier gives me one last disgusted look, shoves his hands in his pockets, and then he too is gone.
Unfortunately, the worst isn’t over.
Mr. Montgomery stands in front of the grill, pieces of burning meat smoking the air, and points those fucking tongs at me again. His normally calm, cool, and collected demeanor has been stripped bare and pure rage has settled on his face.
“Married. You two are fucking married?” The tongs swing from me to Thea and back again.
Thea’s mom stands by his side with a bowl of macaroni salad in her hands and she looks shocked and maybe a little wary.
Mr. Montgomery’s face grows red and a vein in his forehead throbs. The tongs swing again and this time land on Cade. “You,” he spits. “How could you let this happen?” Cade blinks, looking almost … scared? “Come here,” Mr. Montgomery yells, not at me, but at Cade.
I watch as Cade stands, head bowed like a scolded child, and he stalks through the grass and toward his father.
“This way,” he hisses, and like an obedient soldi
er Cade follows.
I stand there, wondering what the fuck is happening. I look back at the table and Rae looks worried. Thea does too.
Thea pushes back her chair and makes her way over to me. “This is so bad,” she whisper-hisses, glancing around at everyone who still stares at the soap opera playing out in front of them. “Come on.” She takes my hand and drags me up the deck steps and into the house.
Immediately, the sounds of her father shouting can be heard and she flinches. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but the gist of it is he thinks Cade should have stopped us.
Thea lets go of my hand, and I follow her through the house and down into the basement, which is her dad’s space. As kids we always knew not to go down there.
“You worthless piece of shit!” he yells. “You couldn’t even play football like you were supposed to and then you let this happen!” We round the corner and see Cade standing there, not saying a word in defense of himself and it’s obvious this isn’t the first time he’s been dragged off and yelled at like this. “Say something!” he yells in Cade’s face, but Cade continues to stand there doing nothing. It’s obvious Mr. Montgomery hasn’t heard us enter the room, and it’s made even more obvious when he cocks his arm back to punch Cade in the face.
I stare, frozen in horror.
But not Thea.
“No!” she screams and darts in-between the two, colliding with her father’s fist. Blood spurts onto the floor, Thea’s blood, and I see red.
My feet unfreeze and I barrel forward into a crouched position and tackle Mr. Montgomery to the floor. He’s not expecting it and goes down easily, his head colliding with the floor. That’ll leave a nasty bump, but he fucking deserves it. He punched Thea, and he was going to punch Cade, and it was obvious it wasn’t the first time.
I quickly roll off of him and stumble over to Thea. Cade has his hands on her shoulders, helping her to sit up and she clutches her nose, blood gushing between her fingers. Tears fill her eyes when she looks at me.
I move her hands aside and assess the damage.
“It doesn’t look broken to me, but I’m not a doctor,” I say, smoothing her hair away from her forehead and trying to comfort her as much as possible. Unfortunately, I only manage to get blood in her hair. Great.
Mr. Montgomery starts to stand and I whip around, pointing a threatening finger at him. “If you ever come near either of them again …” I let my threat hang in the air. I don’t know what exactly I’d do, but it would be bad.
A squeak by the stairs has us all turning and I see a kid there, maybe ten years old, and I vaguely remember her being a cousin of theirs.
“Bella, sweetie, don’t tell your mom,” Mr. Montgomery says in a sickeningly sweet voice.
I growl and turn to the kid. “Don’t listen to him. Tell everyone what a monster he is. He’s a bad man.”
