Caroline
The wedding is the day after tomorrow. That's what Lukas decided, anyway. I didn't get a vote, which feels about right for how the last two weeks have gone.
We drove back from the apartment in the same thorny silence we left in, Afon in his suit looking like a stranger, me in the corner of the SUV staring out at the dirty snow piled along the highway.
By the time we got back to the big house, it was dark.
I went straight to the guest room I'd claimed and shut the door.
I didn't sleep much.
In the morning, there's a knock.
I assume it's the woman in gray, or maybe Afon, so I almost don't answer. But the knock comes again, followed by a voice I recognize.
"Caroline? It's Cass. Open up before I have these very large men break the door down."
I scramble off the bed and open it.
Cassandra Snyder stands in the hallway in jeans and a cream sweater, her dark hair pulled back, looking exactly the same as she did at her cousin Dani's wedding six months ago, when I last saw her.
Behind her are two other women I half-recognize.
One has red hair and freckles and a build that fills out her clothes in a way that makes me self-conscious about my own week-on-a-mountain situation.
The other has dirty-blonde hair, brown eyes, and a softness to her face that doesn't match this enormous cold house at all.
"Cass," I say in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" She pushes past me into the room and the other two follow. "My friend disappeared on a 'wellness retreat' two weeks ago, then I find out she's actually been up a mountain getting shot at by Russians, and now, she's getting married in two days, and you think I'd miss that?"
"Lukas called us," explains the redhead. She sticks out a hand. "Jillian. I'm Lukas's son's—" she stops. "It's complicated. Everyone here is complicated. You'll get used to it."
"Rae," says the blonde, with a small wave. "I'm married to Lukas."
I look between the three of them. "He sent for you."
"He did," confirms Rae. "He said you'd be marrying into the family and you didn't have anyone here. And that you might need…" She trails off, glancing at the others.
"He said you might need women who understand," Cass finishes gently.
I don't say anything. My throat is tight and hot.
"Anyway," Cass continues, clapping her hands together, "there are dresses to be chosen.
Lukas had them brought in and he… Well, he's never done anything halfway in his entire life, so there are a lot to choose from.
There's also champagne, which I personally consider non-negotiable.
So. Girls' day! Whether you like it or not. "
The dresses are in a room I've never been in, which doesn't narrow it down much in a house this size.
At least three dozen of them hang on a rolling rack, white and ivory and champagne and every color in between, sheaths and ballgowns and contraptions that don't yet have a name.
Someone has set out a tray of pastries and a bottle of Dom Pérignon, sweating in a silver ice bucket.
"This is absurd," I say.
Jillian laughs as she pops the cork with a practiced thumb. "You should see his birthday parties."
She pours four glasses. Cass hands me one.
Then, at their urging, I try on a dress.
Then another. Then another. Cass zips and unzips, Rae adjusts straps, Jillian gives blunt verdicts—"no," "absolutely not," "your boobs are doing something weird in that one.
" It's strange, warm, and against all odds, almost normal.
For a little while, I forget why I'm here.
Then I catch myself in the mirror in the fourth dress—a simple ivory silk thing that skims down my hips—and I see my own face.
Just like that, the forgetting stops.
"That's the one," Rae says softly.
"What if I don't want it to be the one?" I whisper.
I sit down on the little velvet bench in front of the mirror, still in the dress, and I put my face in my hands.
"Okay," Cass declares. "Out. Both of you. Go drink the rest of the champagne somewhere else."
"Cass—" Rae starts.
"Go."
They go. Cass sits down next to me on the bench. She doesn't say anything for a while. She just sits there, and somehow, that's exactly right, because Cass has always been a woman who knows when to talk and when not to.
"He pulled my father into it," I finally say. "Did Lukas tell you?"
"Lukas doesn't tell anyone anything," Cass laughs. "But I figured something happened, and I kinda figured it was pretty bad. You've got a face like a kicked dog. No offense."
"None taken." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
"Afon told me the whole story, the thing I went up that mountain to find out.
" I take a shaky inhale. "The short version is that my dad was a good man—and then Afon dragged him into the Bratva's world.
The way he put it, once you're in, you don't get out.
So my dad slid in deeper and deeper. And that's why my parents are dead. Because of him."
Cass breathes softly at my side. She's looking at me in the mirror, her dark eyes steady.
"Can you believe I fell for him?" I whisper.
"Or at least, I thought I did. But what am I supposed to do with all that now?
" I look down at the gauzy white fabric draped over my lap and laugh miserably.
"Marry him, I guess. That's so funny. The thing I wanted so badly for a minute there is now the absolute worst thing that could happen to either of us. "
Cass doesn't gasp. She doesn't tell me it's terrible, or that it's fine, or any of the things people usually say. She just nods slowly.
"Can I tell you something?" she says after a while.
"Fire away," I say with another sickened laugh. "It's not like I have anywhere else to be."
"I married the man who killed my sister."
I turn to look at her in horror. I know bits and pieces of her story, but truth be told, I've been kind of absorbed with my parents' deaths over the last year. "What?"
"Raymond. You remember him, I'm sure. He and your father were the lead partners at the law firm.
" Her jaw is set tight, eyes shining with ferocity.
"I'll spare you the gory details for now, because this isn't about me, but in short, he killed Giana, my older sister.
And I married him. On purpose. Eyes open, as you'd say.
" She picks at the hem of her sleeve. "So you don't have to explain the feeling to me.
The thing where you want something and it disgusts you at the same time and you can't tell which one is real. "
"Cass, I didn't—I didn't know."
"Nobody does. That's sort of the point." She gives me a small, crooked smile.
"But I'm not telling you so you'll feel sorry for me.
I'm telling you because I've thought about this exact thing more than anyone alive, probably.
" She leans back against the mirror and smiles sadly in my direction.
"And here's what I figured out: There's a very, very essential difference between a man who chose to hurt you and a man who's hurting for you. "
I don't say anything. It's hard to reply when someone's busy scrambling your brain so effectively.
"Did Afon want to hurt your family?" she questions. "Was that the plan? Get in, ruin the Oglethorpes, watch you cry over their graves and cackle like a supervillain?"
"No," I say, shaking my head. "No, I think it was all just… You know how one desperate choice leads to another? I think it was something like that. Grief just makes us all stupid, I guess."
Cass nods, as if that's exactly what she figured I'd say.
"So he made one decision," she says. "Twenty years ago.
Out of his mind with grief, chasing the people who murdered his wife, desperate, alone, and he went to your dad.
And it spiraled. And then it kept spiraling, bigger and bigger, until, boom, it rocks your world.
" She fixes me with a glance. "Just curious: Did he tell you he was sorry? "
It takes me a moment to remember the details of our conversation.
I think my brain wants to blot it all out and erase it from the record.
"He told me there was nothing to forgive because there was no making it right.
" I let out a tear-stained laugh. "And that he'd rather I walk out hating him with the truth than stay loving a man who never existed. "
To my surprise, that makes her smile from ear to ear.
"Caroline, you crazy girl," she says finally, "do you understand how rare that is?"
"What?"
"A man who tells you the worst possible truth about himself when lying would have been so, so easy…
" She shakes her head slowly. "He could have told you anything.
There's a billion people he could plausibly blame.
But he took the burden on himself, let you know that he was the villain.
Even though he also knew damn well that it would make you run for the hills.
Or, well, maybe run for the beach. I get the feeling you're sick of heights.
" She laughs pleasantly and smiles at me again, full of wisdom I never knew she had.
"Men lie about everything. Trust me, I know better than most. But the one man with the most reason in the world to lie to you—he told you the truth. The one that costs him you."
I stare at the floor. I can't even cry, because I'm not even sure that what's happening right now qualifies as "sad." It's just… a lot, I guess. It's so much. Too much. My heart can't take this many simultaneous feelings.
Because Cass is right.
Afon told me. Over and over, in a hundred ways, from the very first day, he told me exactly who he was and exactly what was coming. He never once pretended to be a good man.
"He told me at the beginning," I say slowly. "He said it would break my heart, and that he was going to make me leave before that could happen."
"Yet you didn't leave," Cass infers. "Why not?"
The answer is obvious. "Because I'd already started to love him."
Another wise woman grin. Cass reaches over and takes my hand. "The way I see it, we're not concerned anymore with what Afon did or did do. The question is, what are you gonna do about it? Can you love an imperfect man?"
"I'm just so mad at him, though," I protest.
She laughs like I just told the world's best joke.
"Damn right you are! But guess who's even madder at him than you are?
" She waits a second before she delivers the only possible punchline.
"He is, of course. Honey, he's tortured himself for a long time now because of what he did.
He quite literally turned himself into a hermit.
But then you come stumbling along—literally, from what I hear—and suddenly, the man who swore he'd never want something ever again finds himself wanting you.
It's no wonder he kept trying to give you back.
He doesn't think he's allowed to have you.
You get to decide whether or not that's true. "
I'm crying again. But it's different this time. It's not the scooped-out, rotten-wound crying from the hallway last night. These tears come from somewhere deeper, somewhere that's been clenched tight for days.
"He's so stupid," I sob. "He's such a stupid, brave idiot."
Cass laughs and pulls me into a hug, careful of the silk dress. "They all are. Every single one of them. It's a whole epidemic in this family. You'll fit right in."
The others come back in eventually. Rae with red eyes of her own, like she'd been doing some crying in the hall, and Jillian with a fresh bottle of champagne.
"Ladies, are we okay?" Rae asks gently.
I look at myself in the mirror. The dress is beyond gorgeous, but my face above it is puffy from crying, blotchy, red, just a straight up mess.
And yet…
I've got my mom's bright eyes. My dad's strong chin. And the eyes are shining and the chin is high and proud, just like they taught me.
They're here with me, in their own way. I think I can live with that.
"Yeah," I say. I'm surprised to find I mean it. "I think we're okay."
"Is that the dress?" Jillian asks.
I pat the silk down over my hip and grin shyly. "I think it's the one."
We drink the rest of the champagne and yap our little hearts out.
Rae tells me about how she met Lukas—she was his executive assistant, of all things, and there's clearly a whole novel in that story she's only giving me the first chapter of.
Jillian goes next, and her meet-cute is so insanely dark that I gasp and knock my glass over and have to pour a new one.
Cass tells a story about Matvei that has all of us crying with laughter, and for a while, it really does feel like a girls' day, like I'm a normal bride with normal nerves and normal friends, and not a woman marrying the man who set in motion the deaths of her parents because the alternative is being hunted through the snow by the ghosts of his past.
How insane.
How certifiably crazy.
How freaking poetic.
I'm marrying the man who ruined my family.
Who is also the man who held me on the floor of his cabin until the fear let go, and tended my many wounds, and carried me down a mountain.
Same man. Same hands.
I thought, last night, that those hands were hideous. That they shoved my parents into their graves and heaped the dirt on top.
But Cass is right: A man who lies to keep you isn't worth keeping.
A man who tells you the truth that loses you—well, that's the sort of man you marry.
When the champagne is gone and the dresses are hung back up except for mine, and Rae and Jillian have wandered off to find their own husbands, Cass lingers at the door.
"You're going to be okay," she says. "I can tell. You've got the look."
"What look?"
"The look of a woman who just figured out what she's doing." She grins. "Welcome to the family, Caroline. We're a disaster, but we're loyal to the death."
She leaves, but I stand alone in the room a while longer, looking at the ivory dress on its hanger and smiling like Wolf lying in a patch of sunlight.
Then I go to find Afon.
I know exactly what I'm going to say.
Eyes open. On purpose.
I.
Choose.
You.