CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“Go to Heaven for the climate. Hell for the company.”
~Mark Twain
PRESENT
Dante ripped his lips from mine so abruptly that it felt like a Band-Aid coming off.
He was panting into my face. “Tell me you don’t miss this,” he said emotionally.
This was what made him such a bastard. We were over, had been for years, but it didn’t matter. If he had his way, he’d keep me tied to him in so many ways I could never break loose. He was cruel like that.
I subjugated every pathetic thing inside of me that jumped to do his bidding. I would not feel what he was trying to make me feel.
“I don’t miss this,” I managed to get out through my constricted throat.
“Liar,” he breathed at me, madness in his eyes.
I shuddered, my own madness coming out to play. “No. No. No. I’m not the liar. You know why I don’t miss this? Because it’s a lie.”
It was his turn to shudder.
“Because it’s a lie,” I repeated.
He flinched.
“It was always a lie.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It was always a lie,” I repeated. “Want to know how I know?”
“Stop.”
“I won’t stop. I’m not finished. Want to know how I know?”
“Enough. Stop it. You’ll say any horrible thing when you’re in a temper.”
“I will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. What we had was always a lie. I know because if it was real it wouldn’t have ended. It felt like forever, and forever was a lie.”
I’d won the round, I noted numbly as his shaking body withdrew back to his side of the car.
He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched.
After a few drawn out minutes of silence he started driving again.
“You’re terrible at truces,” I said. It was an effort to keep my voice from trembling.
He nodded jerkily. “Ditto, tiger. Peace was never your strength. You were born for battle.”
“Look who’s talking?”
His mouth twisted. “A match made in hell.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
The problem with us was that he and I had become deeply attached in our formative years. Young me had become essential to young him and vice versa.
We were too precisely built together, each too profoundly shaped by the other. Every part of us had been assembled as one piece. Of course we did not function well after the construct had been ripped violently apart.
And of course I would despise the one who had done the ripping.
The car was silent as a tomb until we were nearly at the house, both of us trying to regain some composure, trying to reconcile ourselves to the past and come back to the present.
“Is my dress really too tight?” I asked him as he pulled down the long winding road that led to the house.
Grandma always got her digs in, and they always found a place to fester. I’d known the dress was flattering, provocative even. But was it trashy?
Dante cursed. “God, she always could get to you with her venom. No, it’s not too tight. You look amazing. Perfect. Gram would be proud.”
“Thank you,” I said simply.
“Damn,” I cursed as I took in the transformation of Gram’s large driveway. Parking attendants had apparently been hired to manage the large influx of vehicles for the reception. They were trying their best to valet each one, using the front lawn to fit in as many cars as possible. “Gram would have hated this. She loved to keep her lawn pristine.”
Dante cursed. “What in the actual fuck? Goddamn my mother. This has her stamp all over it. Keeping up appearances when the fact is these people can walk a few fucking feet instead of ruining Gram’s lawn.”
He was right. There was a paved road a mile long leading up to the house with plenty of shoulder room, i.e. ample parking.
But Adelaide had always hated Gram and it surprised me not one bit that she was messing with the property that had once been hopelessly out of her reach.
Dante refused to use the valet, parking on the shoulder just shy of the chaos.
“I’m going in the back entrance,” I told him as I opened my door. “I need to freshen up,” I added, feeling awkward. “Um, see you around.”
I took off.
I carefully redid my makeup and then lingered in my room for a cowardly amount of time.
It was just so unpleasant, the sounds of a large gathering in Gram’s house with the woman herself absent. It felt wrong and I didn’t want any part of it.
But then I thought about all of the vultures down there circling, all of the blood-sucking opportunists that had come, not for Gram, but to eye up the property she’d left behind, to speculate about who she’d left it to.
I had to go down, had to be there to thicken the ranks of those who were genuinely mourning her loss.
It didn’t start out well for me. In fact, it couldn’t have started worse.
I took the back stairs down to the kitchen, because I knew the place well. I went straight for the liquor in the butler’s pantry, pouring myself a liberal tumbler of scotch that I was sure was up to even Dante’s standards.
I downed it, then poured another.
Only when I was in two deep and holding a third did I move to venture out into the melee.
Unfortunately I didn’t get that far.
This place, these people rattled me and so I was uncharacteristically clumsy.
I’m sure the liquor didn’t help make me more coordinated, to be fair.
I moved to open the door that swung out from the kitchen into the formal dining room, but I mistimed it, and one of the many servers that were taking trays around frantically came in right as I was going out.
Half of my glass ended up on my chest.
The server, a young nervous guy, apologized profusely and brought me a stack of napkins.
I set down my glass, took the napkins, and waved him off. I started patting at myself, wondering if I should change.
At least I was wearing black.
The liquid came up easily, but the napkins left little white fuzzies all over my bust.
Fumbling with it, I opened my little clutch, taking out a moist towelette that I kept in it because I was one of those girls that knew the proper purpose of a handbag, which was to be prepared for anything.
It took forever, but I slowly got the front of my dress looking normal again.
I tossed the towelette and napkins into the trash, but somehow ended up bouncing a tube of lipstick out of my open clutch.
It landed right on top of the pile.
I would spend my last twenty dollars on a tube of M.A.C. lipstick. I took that shit seriously, and so I went in after it.
With a curse I bent down, grasping at it, trying to get a hold before it slipped in deeper.
To no avail, it kept falling deeper, through layers of leftover food and used napkins.
I almost left it, in fact had resigned myself to, when I felt the smooth edge of it touch my finger. I grabbed it and straightened, but not before the damage had been done.
That was how they found me. Elbow deep in the garbage.
Fucking typical.
“Trashcan girl is back, and I see that not much has changed,” a laughing female voice told my bent back.
The old nickname was familiar and despised, and epitomized everything I hated about this place.
I straightened with my lipstick in hand to face a small group of snickering women. There were three of them, all girls from high school that I recognized instantly as being part of the mean girl pack that had done their best to terrorize me back when I’d been a stuttering mess.
I was not a stuttering mess now.
“I see the bitches still travel in packs around here. And by the way, guests aren’t even supposed to come into this part of the house.” I told their leader, Mandy, my voice steady, eyes flashing. That had been a strict rule of Gram’s. No guests in the kitchen, ever.
Also, I was extra defensive and hostile with the way they had caught me, the sore spot they had rubbed right off the bat.
“Oh, guests aren’t welcome, but charity cases are?”
She had a point. Mandy was a bratty little bitch, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Just because Gram had treated me like family didn’t make me any less of a charity case. I’d just been too stupid to see it myself back then.
No, I shook off the thought. No. Just because Dante had thrown me away didn’t mean Gram had.
Gram had really loved me. I was as sure of it as I was of anything.
I smiled unpleasantly at Mandy. She hadn’t grown up to be an attractive woman, but then she’d never been an attractive teenager. Looking at it in retrospect, I could see clearly now at least one of the reasons she’d hated me. I may have been trash, but I was beautiful trash, and there was not one beautiful thing about her. Her weasel face was as ugly as ever.
“Well, this charity case is allowed in the kitchen, and you’re not.” I waved at the door that led to the front part of the house, the section where company was allowed.
Mandy took a threatening step toward me.
I laughed, setting down my clutch. I held my arms out wide. “Please. Is that a threat? Come at me. I dare you. If all three of you attack, it’ll be just like old times, right? I remember how you thought the odds of three to one would help you.”
Of course they backed down. When they went in for the kill, it was usually with words.
Because mean girls don’t kill. They dehumanize.
A few times they’d tried their luck with me the other way, but I could see that they still remembered how that had gone for them.
That was the moment that Dante walked into the room, and damn him, and me, I was actually happy to see him.
He zeroed in on Mandy and strode right up to her. “I’m only going to say this once,” he told her harshly. “It’s your first and final warning. If you can’t be civil, if you try to pull one of your childish stunts, or I catch you making one snide comment, or even hear that you did, you’re out of here. Also, no guests in the kitchen.” He pointed to the door.
The pack of bitches left, shooting murder at me over their shoulders.
“God, do you have any idea how you just crushed her?” I asked him, smiling. “She’s had a thing for you since high school, and don’t ask me why, but it looks like she still does.”
“I give less than zero fucks how she feels. That one is a coward and a bully. I don’t even want her in this house. I haven’t forgotten how she treated you in high school.”
“You haven’t?” I asked him.
He looked at me. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”
I looked away. “Well, this started as badly as it could have. I already got caught digging in the trash and almost got into a fistfight, all before I’ve even walked into the reception.”
“If anyone else gives you any problems, I’m kicking them out, I swear to God.”
My eyes flitted to him and then away. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“It’s not hard, Scarlett. In fact, it feels a hell of a lot more natural than what we’ve been doing.”