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Sara Lynn teeters down the stairs that lead to the events space beneath the main floor of the Oak Club, throws her hands in the air, and grins as the band begins to play “Isn’t She Lovely.” “Thanks for coming to my birthday party!” she shouts over the music, and the audience claps. I swear there isn’t an ounce of irony as she descends the rest of the staircase and gives her big, strapping husband a tight hug, kisses her little boy and her little girl on the cheek, and ditches them for the bar. She’s thirty years old—thirty years old—and still getting birthday parties every year like it’s perpetually her sweet sixteen.
I’d get lucky to get a slice of cake. Meanwhile, darling Sara Lynn gets the events space in the Oak Club, which is basically like Rich Person Valhalla. It’s the most exclusive society club in the country, maybe the world, and if there’s something even more exclusive then I haven’t heard about it. Which is totally possible, since I’m barely ever allowedhere, much less somewhere better.
I try not to let myself feel bitter. Sara Lynn’s happy and laughing and surrounded by friends and family, and her kids look they’re having a good time sneaking extra sodas and running around thedance floor, and even her husband is smiling and not drinking too much for once. All the dysfunction of this family is safely hidden beneath expensive champagne, delicious catering, and the ambiance of a vintage speakeasy complete with priceless Tiffany lamps and stained glass leading nowhere. I stand off to the side by myself, sipping a glass of white wine with three ice cubes—I swear the bartender looked like he wanted to throw up when I asked for ice, and hereluctantlyplonked in exactly three baby cubes—and watch my cousins milling about, shaking hands, smiling, fitting in, while I wonder what that must feel like.
Family events are always the hardest. It’s easy to ignore the way I don’t fit in back at the house where I have my own life and can escape any weird conversations or disapproving glares, but here I’m totally exposed, and everyone can see how I stand out amidst a sea of skinny blondes and brunettes. I’ve worked hard over the years to get myself in shape and I’m proud to say that I’m looking the best I ever have, but I’ll never be super skinny like the rest of them. Maybe it’s my father’s genes, I don’t know, but I’m a bigger girl with hips and boobs and thighs, and it took me a really, really long time to accept what I look like.
I’m not there completely, but I’m doing the work and feel okay about myself for the first time in a really long time—honestly, probably for the first time ever, since some of my earliest memories involve my cousins bullying me for not looking like them.
Now I’m expected to smile and laugh and mill about and act like everything is lovely and fine and like I don’t despise Sara Lynn for making my life a living hell growing up. None of my cousins were particularlyniceto me, but Sara Lynn went out of her way to be nasty. I still don’t know why, maybe it’s something brokeninside of her, or maybe it’s just that I’m so flawed that I drag everyone else down by association. Either way, family parties suck, and I get through them by staying out of the way, drinking a few glasses of wine, and leaving as soon as it’s appropriate.
Except tonight, I have a mission.
A man comes toward me from the crowd. I catch his eye and something in my belly twists. He’s barely an inch taller than me, extremely skinny, wearing a navy suit with thick glasses and a receding hairline. I’d guess mid-thirties, maybe even forties, but it’s hard to say in the low light. His name is Matthew Keyne, and he’s on Grandfather’s list.
“Hey, uh, Katherine, right?” Matthew grins at me over his drink. Beer, just like every other guy in here. I like that he’s pretending as though he wasn’t sent over here to talk to me by my grandfather. Like this is totally spontaneous.
It’s not. I can practically feel Grandfather staring at us.
“Nice to meet you,” I say and shake his hand even though we met a few years ago at a party just like this one, although I forget the cause now.
“Sara Lynn knows how to throw herself a birthday.” He grins awkwardly. “Do you, uh, have parties like this too?”
I keep my smile plastered on my face. I want to say,My family would rather sell my kidneys than spend a dime on a party for mebut only politely shake my head instead. “I’m not the party type.”
“Oh, totally. I’m not either. Well, actually, this one time when I was with my brothers, you know, my fraternity brothers, we threw this wild rager…”
I stand there and listen to a wonderfully riveting tale about a big party this guy and his frat put on probably twenty years ago now, and I’m already searching for an excuse to run away. He’s not terrible, not at all, but he’s barely looking at me and his story is dragging on with absolutely no point. All I can think about is how he’s only standing here talking to me at all because Grandfather sent him over, and our family still holds a lot of influence in the world of the elite bluebloods. Except if this guy is here and single, and in this room, that means there’s something deeply wrong with him just like there’s something deeply wrong with me. By the time I’m able to pretend like I need another glass of wine and extract myself from the conversation, I’m busy analyzing just how bad this nightmare’s going to get.
At the bar, I order the same thing—white wine with ice—and I swear the bartender turns green and looks like he wants to throw up. He gets it and doesn’t complain, but boy, does he make me pay for it. I turn away, new drink secured, and start surveying the crowd—when another man appears at my elbow.
“Hey, you’re Katherine Stockton. I’m Jason Varley. Your grandfather said we should meet.” He grins at me, too-straight white teeth gleaming, his head like a perfect square, his chin like an eraser, his suit a size too small and clinging to his absurd muscles. I note that he’s easily an inch shorter than me, and I’m not tall.
“Nice to meet you,” I say and glimpse Grandfather staring at us from across the room.
My conversation with Jason lasts a little bit longer—he asks me questions this time and doesn’t brag about ancient frat keggers at least, but I come up with an excuse to get some air after ten minutes of small talk. That doesn’t last long—as soon as I’malone, another potential suitor appears, and it becomes obvious that this party has an ulterior motive.
It’s like a speed dating round except I never signed up and had no clue it was about to happen.
Three more men chat with me in quick succession. There’s the hedge fund manager that only talks about himself, the painter that freely admits he’s only doing this because he’d love to ingratiate himself with my family, and the banker that brags about working eighty hours a week. By the time I slip upstairs into the main hall of the Oak Club and hide near the massive tree growing right in the middle of the building, I’m exhausted and drained and thinking this marriage thing is a huge mistake.
Something must be the matter with me. None of those guys were particularly awful—the painter was actually kind of handsome—but I felt absolutely nothing for them, no spark, no excitement.
But why do I need that? This is supposed to be an arrangement, nothing more than a business deal, something to connect my family with another prominent family, something to make Grandfather happy with me for the first time ever. I could choose the least terrible of the bunch and maybe even grow to like him after a while, but the thought of spending my life with a man I don’t particularly like all that much, pumping out his children and devoting myself to them while he wastes his days and nights at clubs like this one because there’s nothing interesting to him back at home, feels like slow motion suicide.
I’ve always wanted the storybook romance. It’s stupid, I know, and more than a little childish, but I lost myself in old Disney movies and romantic comedies and more than a few romance novels when I was younger and miserable, and something must’ve seeded inside of me. I want that burning need, thatspark, that excitement, but I’ve never experienced it before with a guy and definitely never will if I sell myself off to the first man with a decent last name that happens to agree to marry me.
And that’s exactly what Grandfather wants. It’s what I’m going to do. Only I’m facing down the reality of the situation and coming to grips with it, and it’s not feeling good.
“Kat Stockton.”
The voice yanks me from my self-pity. None of those other guys used my nickname—the name I prefer if I’m honest—and this voice sounds familiar. I look over as a man comes toward me, tall and handsome, wearing a slim black suit with dark hair and dark eyes and a small puckered scar on the left side of his mouth that makes it look like he’s got a secret. Tattoos poke out from the edges of his shirt and at his neck, and his chiseled jaw and strong arms make something flutter in my chest.
Ford Arc stands there with a glass of whiskey in one hand and the other shoved in his pocket.
I haven’t seen this man in a long time. Not since school, back when he was in Sara Lynn’s class. I’ve heard about him in the meantime, of course—the Arc family and my family hate each other because of some weird feud that spans generations, apparently—but I haven’t actually seen him in person.
The old Ford from school was always big and boyish and handsome, but this man is downright gorgeous. It’s like he bends the light around him, drawing in the shadows, making him seem like he’s glowing in the middle of a veil of darkness. He still has that same aura, this strange attractive pull that makes people want to be around him, except he gives off the intense feeling that he thinks the whole world is a joke. Maybe it’s thescar or maybe it’s the way he stares with those beautiful eyes, always half-smiling.
