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Chapter Five
Laney
MEETING CADE HAS LEFTme shook. I had no idea mystepbrotherwas going to look like that guy. Honestly, if I’d met him down a dark alley, I’d have turned and run, and, by the darkness hiding behind his eyes, he’d most likely have chased me.
A little frisson of something I don’t want to analyze too deeply goes through me.
Cade isn’t even the famous one. If Cade is this imposing, what the hell is Darius going to be like?
Reed guides me through the foyer, his hand lightly placed against the small of my back. I’m painfully conscious of the position of his palm and of all the curious glances we’re receiving. Do people know who he is? He nods and greets several people we pass, but I can’t tell if he actually knows them or if he’s just being polite. Either way, he doesn’t stop to introduce me to anyone else.
We climb a grand staircase, which leads onto a bar area, and then climb yet another staircase, taking us even higher into the building.
“This is us,” Reed says.
He guides me out into the concert hall, and I discover we’re in a box with private seating. It gives a view across the rest of the hall, and all the people below us, and of course, of the stage itself. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Reed is Darius Riviera’s father and manager. If he can’t get good seats, who can?
He gestures for me to take a seat and then drops into the one beside me. His thigh is touching mine, but he doesn’t seem to notice, and I don’t move my leg to create space. I like having a piece of him touching me.
Maybe I have daddy issues—since I’ve never actually had one—but I’m enjoying the sense of having a man be protective of me.
I give myself a little mental shake and remind myself why I’m here. This man owes me. He could have changed my whole life and chose not to. Now, I’m left with nothing and no one, and I’m determined to make him pay for that.
Negative phrases threaten to bombard me—gold-digger is one of them. Am I choosing to go with him because of money? Fuck yes. But I won’t be shamed for it. My entire life has been a struggle, but it hadn’t needed to be that way. Maybe he didn’t feel any obligation toward me, since I wasn’t his flesh and blood, but, as I’ve just discovered, he was legally my stepfather. Didn’t that mean he should have had some kind of responsibility for me?
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod. “Just a little overwhelmed.”
Movement comes behind us, and a waitress appears with a bottle of champagne in a silver cooler and two glasses. Reed waves it away. Is he going to tell me I’m not old enough?
“I don’t drink,” he says instead. “Not anymore. I’ve had a few slips, but I’ve been clean almost fourteen years.”
Fourteen years. The length of time he’s been away from my mother.
The length of time he’s been away from me.
“Oh, right.” I press my lips together and stare down at my hands. I want to ask a question, but I don’t want to stir things. But I have to know. “Did you drink when you and my mom were together?”
He doesn’t look at me but nods. “Drink, drugs...you name it, we took it.”
“Did you stop because you left her?”
“Kind of. I got the call from the boys’ mother to say she was sick. Cancer. She didn’t have anyone else.”
“So, you got clean for them?”
Jealousy curls through me at the thought of his two sons. He chose them instead of staying with me and my mom. He got clean for them, but he didn’t for us.
“I didn’t feel I had any choice,” he says.
His words hang between us. My mother never bothered to do the same for me, and the pain of that knowledge makes my chest hurt. I wasn’t enough for Reed to get clean for either. It’s not as though I was ever his, biologically, and I guess in this situation, blood matters.
That hollow space in the middle of my chest expands. I’m not important enough for the people who were supposed to love me to want to make changes in their lives. Maybe I should be grateful Reed is stepping up for me now, but it’s hard to be thankful when my mother is dead, and I now have the knowledge that this man had the ability to change my life for me but chose not to. He focused his attention elsewhere instead, toward the two biological sons he ended up raising.
A part of me wants to stand up and walk out, to tell him to go fuck himself and his money. I can’t, though. If I do, he’ll call the woman from CPS, and then God only knows what will happen to me. I don’t even know if I can go back to the trailer, or if it’s still considered a crime scene.
I remind myself that this is a better option than staying with some random family. These people have money, lots of money, and the way I see it, I’m owed. This asshole walked out on both me and my mother, and for the past fourteen years we’ve been living in poverty, while he and his sons have been staying infive-star hotels and eating fucking caviar for dinner every night. I think of all the hours I’ve worked while also trying to stay up on my schooling. I’ve slept barely more than five or six hours a night since I was twelve years old. I’ve busted my backside doing cleaning jobs until late and then getting myself up early in time to get to school the next day. I think how easily this man could have changed things for us. The sort of money that would have meant nothing to him would have changed our lives. Did we even cross his mind? Probably not, but I’m determined that by the time I turn eighteen, he’ll feel so fucking guilty he’ll sign over his life savings.
