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She huffs and then quietly mutters, “Maybe I don't want to be a princess.”
That makes me fall silent.
It's the first time in all the years of her doing this that I've wondered if this is really what she wants. If the glitter and the talent shows and the eternal picking apart of her physical appearance is actually a choice she's made herself or if she's only doing it to make Mama happy.
“Hey, kid?”
“Yeah?”
“You'd tell me if you weren't happy, right?” I ask, my forehead creased in a frown. “Like, you know you can come to me with your shit if you need to?”
She smiles, but it's not a real one. It's the smile she uses onstage at the pageants. The same kind of smile I see Thea use in every televised interview she does.
But then it slips, and finally, on a whispered breath, she says, “Sadie didn't come.”
And suddenly it makes sense why she's as upset as she is.
Our brother Clay and Sadie met in kindergarten and fell in love somewhere around the time they both turned fifteen. They've been together ever since, getting married straight out of high school and having their son, Bentley, just two years later. They may only be twenty-three, but anyone who knows them can see that they're soulmates.
Before the accident, at least.
As the only girl in the family, save for Mama, Clover gravitated toward Sadie from the moment they were first introduced. She’s loved her like the sister she never had ever since.
In fact, for all of us, Sadie is family in every way but blood and we all took it hard when she began to withdraw after Clay's car accident. But no one more so than my baby sister.
“You were expecting her to?”
Clover shrugs. “I mean, yeah, a bit. She never misses these things.”
I throw my arm around her again and smile when she doesn't immediately try to escape. “I know, kiddo, but can you really blame her? Her husband's been in a coma for the last six months and she's looking after Bentley all on her own. I'm sure the last thing she wants to do right now is drag a three-year-old to a pageant party.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Cole?” Clover looks up at me. “You think Clay will ever wake up?”
I don't answer immediately. Truth is, I don't know how to. One half of me thinks that if he was going to wake up, then he'd have done it already, but the other half knows just how hard he must be fighting to not leave his wife and son.
“I think he's doing whatever he can to come back to us,” I say finally and she seems happy with my answer, because she smiles sweetly up at me and quietly gives me her thanks. Then, she spots a friend in the crowd and slips away to dance with her. It’s a good thing, actually, as something in the corner of my eye has my mood immediately souring.
Standing in the double-height doorway to the barn and shivering from the cold, Althea Sparkes hugs her bare arms around herself and casts her eyes around the room.
Her dress is golden and glitzy, hanging from her shoulders with the slightest of straps and sewn together with sequins to make her look as if someone's poured liquid gold right over her. Her hair is loose and curled into fiery waves and her lips have been painted the color of a broken heart. Predictably, the woman isn't wearing a jacket.
Then, she looks right at me and it's as if time stops altogether. And I don't mean in the insipid way people do when they're talking about a lingering moment between two lovers. I mean that I'm so damn enraged at seeing her here the world around me freezes into a glacier of rage and resentment.
I don't realize that I'm even moving until I'm halfway across the room. Her eyes are wide like a hunted animal as I prowl toward her, my fists white-knuckling at my sides.
“Cole, I—“
“Who the fuck said you could come tonight?” I cut her off with a snarl.
But my voice comes out louder than I meant it to, causing the people closest to us to turn and look. Of course, when they realize it's Thea I'm yelling at—the motherfucking princess of Hollywood and abandoner of this godforsaken town—whispers spread through the room like wildfire until almost every pair of eyes is locked on us.
“Who invited you, Thea?” I demand again, my voice no less loud than before.
She leans into my space, filling the air around me with her sweetness that I've tried so hard to forget. And I'm temporarily stunned by the fact that I can't smell the perfume on her that she was wearing the other day. All I can smell is the natural, fruity smell of her skin.
“Will you keep your voice down?” she hisses. “People are looking.”
