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Fiona
Pushing the tortellini around on my plate, I scan the reception hall for the fiftieth time since arriving—not that I’m keeping track, or anything. It’s just that every time I look up from the table, my gaze is drawn to the front doors, waiting to see if he shows up.
Ignoring the despair clotting my arteries, I let out a sigh and study the shrine to my mother at the center of the table—votive candles and various sizes of her high school graduation photo and a photo from a family vacation when she was still pregnant with me sit around a small hibiscus plant from the greenhouse.
It wasn’t easy getting ready to come here, but I’ve been prepping for this day for weeks. If nothing else, I owe it to her to make an effort, even if some days I miss her more than I can bear.
People bustle in and out all around us, coming from all exits—the bathroom, the kitchen where the buffet is set up, the offices upstairs where some of the men keep slinking off for business liaisons and brandy, leaving the women to grieve amongst themselves.
Fewer people turned out for the funeral than I’d thought, maybe afraid our curse would extend to them if they showed any support, or maybe giving us privacy. We’d had a closed casket at the wake, and the interment had been quick, none of us wanting to drag out putting our matriarch to rest any more than we already had.
I hadn’t expected Boyd to show up at all, although maybe I wasn’t giving him enough credit. Or perhaps giving myself too much.
To say I was shocked he brought his sister to the cemetery would be an understatement, although the shock turned to fascination when I took in her punk-rock appearance, punctuated with facial scars and a chip on her shoulder.
The way she ignored my brother but spoke to me made a root of hope sprout inside my chest, waiting for the sunshine and rain to help it bloom. Makes me think that maybe Boyd talks about me, and if he still talks about me, maybe there’s still a chance I didn’t ruin us permanently.
Juliet catches me looking around and takes a sip of her wine, the solitaire diamond on her finger glittering beneath the overhead lighting. “Are you ever gonna tell anyone what happened between you and Boyd?”
My saliva gets caught in my windpipe as I turn toward her, coughing in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
She rolls her eyes, brushing hair off her shoulder. Since that day at the church, the day my brother sacrificed himself for her, we’ve been spending a lot more time together, working on friendship—there’s an otherworldly sadness that exists in her soul, something murky and unclear, that I find refreshing.
Not that it’s there, but because she doesn’t try to hide it. Since moving in with Kieran, she seems a lot happier, but I can still sense it just under the surface, a constant burden that she chooses to embrace rather than smother.
Controlling what you can and releasing what you can’t.
“I know a secret relationship when I see one. It’s obvious something was going on with you two,” she says, quirking a blonde brow. “Then all of the sudden, nothing. Kieran says Boyd went from being slightly tolerable for a time in the spring to completely unbearable, with no outside factors seeming to have contributed. Sounds a lot like heartbreak, to me.”
“Maybe you should leave the armchair psychology to the psych major,” I say, tossing a piece of garlic bread in her direction.
Mrs. Alessi, the owner of Opulence, and Mrs. Thomas, a city commissioner, stop by our table and offer their condolences, pinching my cheeks and leaving behind stale perfume and bad breath.
Leaning in, Juliet lowers her voice. “Maybe you should swallow your pride and go talk to him.”
“He’d have to be here for me to do that.”
“Lucky for you, he just walked in.” Her blue eyes sparkle as she glances over my shoulder, giving me a wry smile. “And found you immediately.”
Turning my head, I cast a quick look around the room and spot him standing under the archway leading into the hall, as if undecided if he should come in or not. His sister’s at his side, eyeing the crowd like she’d rather die than step foot in the same room as these people, but he’s watching me.
His hazel gaze burns a path straight to my core, igniting my skin in a way that feels wholly inappropriate given the situation.
But that’s what happens when you deny yourself the things you want most in life—when given the chance, the longing comes back in full force, the taste of the forbidden, the broken, the irreparably damaged too great to resist.
Snapping my head back around, I press my thighs together, trying to relieve myself of the ache he awakens in me. Filthy sex in a custom suit, Bea calls him, even though she knows I despise the reference to the one and only time we ever fucked.
Unfortunately, I hate the reference because she’s not wrong.
“How are you in awkward situations?” Juliet asks, playing with the heart-shaped locket around her neck.
I glare. “Not good, Juliet. Not good at all.”
“Well, you’d better get good.”
“That’s not even proper English.”
“Whatever, your lover is on his way over, and if looks could kill, you’d probably be on fire right now.”
