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Then there was what happened later that night at the club. I let him… I still shiver at the thought, can never stop dreaming and thinking about his dark curls buried between my legs, how he held me down and spread me before him like a buffet. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to. It was my last and only moment to have him. To let him take me. To have him be mine. It’s sad and pathetic when I think about it.
Mathias was my friend. For a long time, he was my only friend in the whole wide world. He saved me. Okay, he hit me with his car first and was totally not trying to get in trouble with a DUI, but he was my only friend. He gave me my giant turtle, Bernice Sanders, who we at first thought was a boy and namedBernie.
Mathias was my friend when I was lonely, when I missed my daddy so much, I thought I was going to die from heartbreak. My movie-night friend. My everything. Now he’s about to be my husband, and I may have lost him forever.
An hour earlier…
“You did this. You’ve fucking ruined me, you ungrateful little bitch.”
Stepping back, I shake my head, not understanding what I’m seeing. Mathias Shelby Jr. slams theShelby-Love Chronicledown in front of me on the desk of my cousin Easy’s parlor, raging with all six feet and four inches of his being. His face is hard, and he’s looking at me with nothing but pure hatred and disbelief.
I read the headline: SHELBY SCION, MATHIAS SHELBY, CAUGHT AT SUGAR BABY’S LOVE NEST! The article is by Joi Love.
In horror I read how my cousin Joi reveals the history of Mathias and my friendship in the most sordid way. The article makes it seem like he’s been keeping me in a secret bungalow on his massive Shelby Sugar estate as his underage lover.
“I didn’t do this,” I say to him, my throat tight.
“How the fuck else does she know you lived in a house on our property? How does she know so many details of our relationship? You. That’s how.” His words are raw with betrayal. Everything we had as friends is being stripped away right before my eyes.
Alone. Abandoned. Cast aside. It’s all happening again.
“Mathias—”
A hard knock sounds on the door. Both our heads snap around as my cousin and Mathias’s campaign manager, LL, strides through the door.
“New plan.” He claps his hands together, looking at us with grim determination. “I just spoke to Angel and Easy. How about a double wedding?” He waves some papers in his hand.
An hourlater it feels like my spirit has left my body. It’s like I’m hovering over the scene watching a nightmare unfold. The fact it’s a twisted version of something I secretly wished for makes it that much more terrible.
I balked when LL rushed at us with the newspaper just as everyone looked at us in shock. Seconds later I could see the judgment and outright condemnation in people’s eyes as they looked from their phones to Mathias and me.
Now the solution and only way to save Mathias’s campaign is, as LL says, “To lean into the story. Make it your own. And—”
“Hell, no.” Mathias seethes. His gaze arrows in on me. “I’m not letting anyone force me into doing anything I don’t want. I just need time. There is no fucking way I’m doing this to Nat.”
“You don’t have a choice, Mat.” All our heads jerk around at the sound of the of Natalie Spencer’s posh tones as she closes the door with a soft snick.
“Nat.” Slowly Mathias walks over to her, then envelops her in a hug.
She pats his shoulders gently yet very briefly before stepping out of his arms and facing LL and me. “My parents just informed me on the way here that they are withdrawing all monetary support from your campaign, and they’ve lobbied their friends to do so as well. You know they never forgave you for switching parties after the primary. This added betrayal is too much to bear. You won’t have any of our parents’ high-powered friends jumping at the chance to help you out.” She looks at us continuing. “People love a love story no matter how huffy. If they see we are amicable about it—everyone was always skeptical of our arranged marriage anyway—then they won’t have any team Nat versus Team Nikki.”
“That’s asking too much of you,” Mathias says to her, and I can’t help but agree. She doesn’t have to do any of this; she’s the injured party, but here she is making sacrifices on his behalf.
“The work you can do is bigger than all of us,” Natalie says firmly. “You need to win this election, Mathias, because James Fitch is a knuckle-dragging troglodyte unfit for office and will take Alabama back to the ‘good old days.’ Don’t let everything you worked for go up in flames over this.”
My spirit slowly starts reconnecting with my body. Mildly inspired by her big-picture thinking, I’m starting to believe maybe this is not such a horror show.
“What do you say, Mathias? It’s obvious you can muscle your way through this.” LL says, tapping the papers I have yet to see. Mathias strides over to the desk, but not without sending me a hate-filled look.
Once he’s done signing, LL looks over to me. Smiling his thousand-watt smile, he says, “Nikki, are you ready to become Mrs. Mathias Shelby?”
Turns out Ellie—one of Easy’s bridesmaids in this official wedding Mama-Pete is insisting Angel and Easy have, since she was not invited to the first, which was a biker wedding they were forced to have at El Diablo’s clubhouse—just so happens to be a justice of the peace, and soon after we sign those papers she already notarized, we are headed to marital bliss.
Everything is all turned upside down Mathias is supposed to be the best man since he and Angel grew up like brothers in the hellscape of the Shelby Sugar Estate. While I’m Easy’s maid of honor. We’re close as close as I am to anyone, except my older sister, Kandie, and Mathias. But no one knew about Mathias and me. Until that article showed up kissing and hunching on his truck.
I mean they must have used a zoom lens or something because how could they get that close. Shelby Sugar is private property with all kinds of security.
Our secret is out now, thanks to my traitor-ass cousin Joi. I know better than to trust her with anything, knowing how she did Mimi and Santiago. I thought we were better friends than that. We all thought she’d learned her lesson when she was almost disowned for doing Mimi so dirty. She made all the right noises, apologizing and everything. Then bam! Here she goes again selling another Love out, and for what? To drive traffic to her newspaper’s website? Not to mention everything was supposition and lies. She never once mentioned to me she knew anything about Mathias and me. She never asked about him, and I never told a soul. So how she knows and what trusted source she kept quoting in the article, I don’t know.
