CHAPTER 27 #2
Amelia handed me the second glass of wine she held.
“You know I’m not comfortable with sappy speeches, so let me get this out fast. I wanted to say a small toast. You both saved my life.
Not often anyone gets a second chance like that, but I’m grateful.
And I’m hoping it means you’ll give Shearwater a second chance, too.
” She didn’t specify whether she meant me or Kessian, just held out her glass to chime against ours and finished, “To you both, and to second chances.”
Kessian met my gaze for a beat too long as we echoed her.
“I’ll see you both on the dance floor later,” Amelia said.
“Ah yes, me with my peanut brittle hips,” Kessian remarked.
“I’m sure your boyfriend can limber you up and carry you.”
“We aren’t boyfriends,” I said.
“Ah, my mistake.” She turned to Kessian. “Your idiot will be happy to limber you up and carry you onto the dance floor.”
She departed with a sarcastic salute. We made our way to the dining room, not talking about what she’d said.
Dinner and speeches passed by, an entire day devoted to romantic overtures while my own love life drowned.
I had done an admirable job of avoiding the ennui for the majority of the day, but as the first dance kicked off, Fae and Camilla besotted with each other and twirling across the floor under fairy lights, it hit me hard.
Nine years of running, nine years of flash fire connections and faster goodbyes, and the one person I’d decided to risk putting down roots for didn’t trust that he could do the same with me.
And I understood his reasons—people hadn’t been a reliable source of shelter in his life, and he needed a home, and he’d only known me such a short time.
It still felt like I was the butt of a cosmic joke.
Or perhaps that was the alcohol making me melancholic.
When the song changed and I came back to myself, I found Kessian had been watching me.
“Amelia was right, you know. If you want a dance, you’re going to have to carry me.”
Before I could ask if he was joking, my mum descended upon the table. She sat straight-backed and crossed her legs at the knee, wineglass balanced upon them and held by the stem.
“Fae’s very happy you came,” she said. Subtext: I didn’t want you to, but I’m capitulating that it might have been worth it.
I was not great at reading people, but my mother was a different story. Sixteen years of predicting her moods and what she truly meant with her passive-aggressive comments had made me an expert linguist in her particular tells.
“I’m glad I could.”
“Are you both enjoying yourselves?” Small talk to set the groundwork for what she really wanted to say.
“It’s a beautiful wedding,” Kessian said. “You must be proud to see Fae find someone who makes them so happy.” I could read his subtext, too. Not that you care about all your children’s happiness equally.
She nodded, tapping the stem of her wineglass with one polished nail. A long silence followed, and I couldn’t do the awkward pleasantries thing. (I never could, but particularly not tonight.)
“Did you want to say something, Mum?”
She huffed. “Yes, I do.”
I waited. Her tapping got faster and faster until finally she spat the words out as if they’d been stuck in her teeth.
“I wanted to tell you that … I was wrong. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you from coming.
I shouldn’t have sent you away at all.” She took a very large sip of her wine before rushing through the rest. “If you hadn’t been here, Amelia wouldn’t be here, and it would have made Fae very sad for their wedding.
Now I can’t help but wonder if I hadn’t sent you away, if Laurelie, your father—”
“I don’t think I’d have been able to save them,” I said. “I was sixteen.”
“Yes, well, we’ll never know now, will we? I just wanted to say that. That I’m sorry.”
My mother had never apologized to me. It shocked me so much I didn’t say anything back until Kessian gave me a nudge under the table.
“It’s okay,” I said.
All the tension went out of her. Not with relief. She almost looked defeated. “That’s all? Just, ‘It’s okay.’ I sometimes wonder if it bothered you at all being sent away, or if you didn’t really care for us as your family. Did you even want to be here?”
After the apology, I was unprepared for the hidden knife of her follow-up, and perhaps I’d have seen it as a malicious attempt to hurt me before, but her words echoed Fae’s when I’d first arrived, and it brought me up short.
I’d taken too long to formulate a response. Mum was rising from the table.
“He does care,” Kessian said. “He cares deeply. He stayed away to protect you, not because he didn’t want to be here. He came back to try and fix things. He loves you all. I can see it. You can see it, too, in his actions rather than his words.”
I could hardly contain the dam of feeling welling up in me at being understood. He hadn’t known me long, but he spoke whatever strange language I did, the kind my family struggled to interpret.
Mum stood agape for a moment.
“It’s true,” I said. “I’m not good with words but I do—love you. And the whole family.”
For a second, she looked genuinely touched and happy.
“Love you, too.” With a nod to Kessian, she said, “I’d better see you both on the dance floor later—Oh, unless you can’t?
” She patted her mouth as if to shove the faux-pas back in there and trotted off with a quick, “Come by for Sunday roast sometime!”
“Sorry about that,” I murmured.
He hummed. “Honestly, I think I prefer that to people tiptoeing around it. Makes me feel less like the elephant in the room to at least be acknowledged as different, rather than awkwardly pretending we’re all the same, or that yoga will fix me.
Though tonight I might have to kick off my shoes and stand on someone’s feet while he pilots me around the dance floor. ”
I snorted. “That sounds fun, to be honest.”
“Did you want to?”
The song had turned slow. My heart ricocheted around like a stray bullet in my chest. “I’m not very good.”
“I didn’t ask if you were good, I asked if you wanted to dance.”
“With you?”
He bit his lip. “Yes?”
I got up. He’d started babbling. “So long as you don’t mind dancing with a guy who’s falling apart like a hard taco shell.”
I got on my knees and started unlacing his shoes. “Yes. I want to dance with you.” I held out my hand for him.
Kessian’s eyes glimmered as he took it. Kicking off his shoes, he leaned on me as I led him onto the dance floor.