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I can’t take my eyes off Addie. If I wasn’t already hopelessly enthralled and devastated by this woman, I would have fallen to my knees in worship. I still have every intention of doing just that the second I get her alone; I’m going to worship every inch of her until dawn.
“Paloma?” Dad says at last.
There are tears in her eyes, but she shakes her head. “It’s really fine. It’s not a big—”
Dad marches to her end of the table and pulls her out of her chair.
“Wrong,” he growls. “This should never have gone on this long.”
“I didn’t want—”
He kisses her. A long, deep kiss that has the rest of us suddenly interested in literally anything else, but the couple entwined together.
“We will finish this later.” He tells her at last and I’m not sure if he means the conversation or the kiss. Perhaps the conversation because he turns to his sister in passing and says, “We will discuss everything.”
For the first time in my life, Iris says nothing as everyone resumes eating. She’s a quiet figure sitting at the end of the tablealone. Dad has taken Paloma’s chair to his side, but she sits in his lap, feeding him. Her chair abandoned.
Across from me, Michael is back to leaning into Addie’s space. His head is too close to hers like he’s telling her the secrets of the universe, but my Addie has her knife in his face.
“I’m going to stop you right there, Michael. Your little sister is sitting right there so I’m going to keep my voice down when I tell you that I don’t have to explain my relationship to you because you are never getting into my pants. I would rather grind my pussy on sandpaper before I let you touch me, so get out of my face.”
Michael looks like he has a lot of thoughts on the verbal smack down, but we make eye contact, and I don’t blink until he’s shifting in his seat and turning his attention to his plate.
Fucker.
Only when I’ve won do I swing my gaze to my Addie, her eyes are on me, her expression soft. Something about it, about the way she gives me the sweetest smile soothes the possessive fire in my chest.
She’s mine.
All the assholes in the world won’t change that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ADDIE
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The night tapers out.
With Iris seething alone off to one side, the very air has become softer, satin almost. The lights shimmer in the cool dusk, challenging the stars pinned to the velvet canopy overhead. Music and wine flows through the crowd as smooth and natural as the laughter and chatter.
It’s perfect.
Everything about it is exactly the way the night should have gone from the beginning.
“You wereinsane!”Clio crows at one point, her heavily lined and shadowed eyes enormous against the white powder caking her face.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my cousin look so elated. Her soft, round features were usually a drab mask of impatience and teenage angst. But lips slathered in thick, black lipstick are bowed into the widest grin.
“I would give anything to talk to her that way. Mom would kill me.”
While my love for the vile woman is nonexistent, I took no joy from telling her off. I didn’t feel better for it. I didn’t take pleasure in hurting Oz’s feelings or ignoring Mom’s pleas. But ten years was long enough to sit back and listen as someone tries to tear your mom down and watching your mom always strive to be the bigger person by turning the other cheek.
I am not the bigger person and enough is enough.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I tell the girl instead, knowing it’s what Mom would want me to say for causing such a massive scene.
“Dude, it was fucking epic. I wouldn’t miss it.”
