Chapter 14
DARE
There’s nothing crueler than fate giving you what you asked for, just to show you how wrong you were to want it.
The camera clicked again. Another photo. Another lie.
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Truen, our cheeks stiff with smiles, while the photographer chirped directions. “Put your arm around your brother,” she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My arm slid behind his back automatically. Muscle memory. Habit from a time when we used to drape ourselves all over each other without thinking.
But this wasn’t that. This was posed. Plastic. This was a funeral in formalwear, and everyone was too drunk on alcohol and optimism to notice the casket.
Tru’s shoulder pressed against mine, warm and familiar. Too familiar. I wanted to scream. Or maybe sob. Or just disappear.
How the hell did we get here?
How did we go from skateboards and secrets and piss-pacts to this?
To rented tuxedos and champagne flutes and calling each other brother like it wasn’t some fucked-up joke whispered by fate.
I used to wish I could be part of his family.
Used to stare at the photos on the fridge and yearn to belong there.
Now my photo would be added to the collection because I was part of the family. And I wanted to rip my own skin off just to escape it.
Across the ballroom, Charlotte beamed, radiant in her ivory lace gown, one hand nestled in my father’s elbow. They looked happy. The kind of happy people get embossed across their wedding invites in swirling gold font.
The photographer clapped once, bright and chirpy. “Okay! Let’s get a few with just the parents!”
Tru and I peeled apart. My arm dropped from his shoulders like it weighed a hundred pounds, and Tru slipped away as if he couldn’t move fast enough.
He laughed at something one of his cousins said, tilted his head back, and smiled that crooked, soft smile that used to belong to me, and I felt the knife twist. I pulled out my phone and, without thinking, snapped a picture of him.
It was dumb. Stupid, even. But I did it anyway. To keep for myself. Proof that he still existed like that. Unruined. Untouched by the version of me I’d become.
“Dare,” Lauren sang, tugging at my sleeve. “Come dance with me. You’re being a total bore.”
I muttered something that sounded like later, but maybe it was just no disguised as a drunk slur. The champagne had numbed the edges of everything, which was good, because otherwise I might’ve actually let myself feel something.
I continued to watch Tru on the dance floor. He didn’t look miserable. He didn’t look broken. He looked happy, and that only made it worse.
Because if he was happy, then I was the problem. Maybe I was always the problem. And this whole thing—this big, white-linen, family-fucking-merger—was just the punchline to a joke I didn’t get.
A cruel twist in the story where I finally got what I wanted, only to realize I never wanted it like this.
He caught me staring. Just for a second. His eyes lingered, like he didn’t know whether to sneer or speak. But then his friend—some girl in a pale blue dress—said something to him, and he laughed and turned away.
I didn’t breathe for a full five seconds.
Charlotte clapped her hands when the song ended, eyes watery and shining as if she’d been dreaming of this day forever. “My boys,” she said, reaching for both of us. “I want a dance with my boys.”
She didn’t mean to make it hard. But it was.
Tru stepped forward first and offered her his hand, ever the gentleman. I let him lead her to the floor. Watched as she twirled under his arm, her laughter like music.
My chest burned in a way I couldn’t explain.
When it was my turn, she held out her hands to me, smiling with eyes that meant you’re mine too.
I took her in my arms like I had when I was little and thought she hung the stars.
And I wished—more than I wanted to admit—that this could be enough.
That she could be the one person I let love me.
That it could be her and me, and no one else. No father. No Tru.
She doesn’t deserve to be stuck with my father. She’s so much better than him.
Charlotte smoothed the back of my hair. “You okay, baby?”
I nodded and looked over her shoulder, right at him. Of course, he was watching. I closed my eyes and led her around the dance floor as the music swirled. In my sixteen long and miserable years, she was the only person who ever made me feel like I wasn’t broken beyond repair.
The dance ended too soon. Charlotte kissed my cheek and whispered, “I’m proud of you,” before disappearing into a sea of relatives and wine glasses.
The music changed to something fast and flirty.
I backed away from the dance floor and slipped toward the hallway by the bathrooms, where the lights were dimmer, the noise softer.
I needed a minute. But fate never gives you minutes. It gives you him.
Tru rounded the corner at the same time I did. We both froze as if we’d been caught doing something wrong.
He looked good. Annoyingly good. Hair curled at the ends from sweat or water or whatever, cheeks pink, lips parted like he’d just said something he regretted.
His tie was a little crooked, his collar wrinkled.
I wanted to hate how right he looked in that stupid suit, how grown up he seemed all of a sudden.
The version of him I’d missed had finally evolved into something I didn’t recognize.
“You following me now?” I asked.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Not trying to.” I leaned against the wall, folding my arms, and tried to pretend my pulse wasn’t slamming against my throat. “You just always seem to show up when I least want to see you.”
His jaw flexed. “That makes two of us.”
We stood there, breathing too hard for two people doing absolutely nothing.
“Why do you always look at me like that?” he asked, voice low. “Like I did something unforgivable.”
“You did,” I said. “You turned me into someone I hate.”
His mouth parted, but no sound came out. A flicker of hurt crossed his face. It gutted me more than I’d admit. Then heels clicked on the floor.
Lauren.
She appeared like smoke. Perfect dress, perfect hair, perfect fucking timing.
“There you are,” she chirped, slipping her hand around my bicep. “I’ve been looking all over for you. They’re about to cut the cake.”
I didn’t look at Tru again. I couldn’t. Not with her right there, close enough to smell her perfume, close enough to feel the threat of what I wanted thudding through me, steady and relentless, a rhythm I couldn’t silence.
“Let’s go, babe,” I muttered, letting her pull me back toward the party.
But as we turned the corner, I swore I could feel his stare bore through my back, and I’d carry the burn the rest of the night.
The ballroom noise swelled around me. I slipped into the chair beside my brother just as Dad launched into some long-winded spiel about partnerships and the “future of the firm.”
They leaned toward each other, heads close, like I wasn’t even there. My brother’s tie was loosened, his face lit with genuine interest, and Dad was smiling in a way I hadn’t seen in years. At him. Always at him.
I reached for another glass of champagne.
The stem was cool against my fingers for half a second before my brother plucked it out of reach without breaking stride in the conversation.
He didn’t even look at me when he set it down on the far side of his plate.
Just kept nodding along, soaking in Dad’s approval as if it was air.
When the waiter passed behind us, he finally glanced my way, eyes sharp in a way that told me he hadn’t missed anything, least of all the way I’d been avoiding Tru all night.
His gaze flicked across the table to where Tru sat with Charlotte, their laughter soft, their eyes affectionate. Then back to me.
“What happened with you two?” he asked quietly, low enough that Dad wouldn’t hear. “Feels like you’re circling each other with knives.”
The question squeezed around my neck tighter than my bowtie. My mouth was dry, my pulse too loud in my ears. I forced a smirk and let my shoulders roll like I couldn’t be bothered.
“Nothing,” I said, the lie sour on my tongue. “People grow apart. We were just kids.”
He studied me for a beat longer than was comfortable, and it was clear he didn’t believe it, but he filed the truth away for later.
Then he turned back to Dad, already rejoining the conversation about law schools and legacies, while I sat there swallowing the silence, wishing like hell I could drown it with champagne.
I leaned back and scanned the crowd until I found Lauren across the room, talking with a girl she knew from school who also happened to be the daughter of my father’s client. She perched on the edge of her chair with her shoes dangling from her fingers.
I crossed over, hands shoved in my pockets. “Want to get out of here?”
She tilted her head, lips curving in a pout. “I was hoping for another dance.”
“Not likely,” I muttered, and her laugh was soft, practiced, like she’d expected the brush-off.
We slipped out the back, into the cool night air, the parking lot buzzing with cicadas.
I drove aimlessly for a while, music low on the speakers, streetlights flickering past the windshield.
We didn’t talk much. We never did. And every mile that passed, the guilt pressed harder—that I was only with her to look normal.
To keep the lie polished and shining. She deserved someone who wanted her for real.
Not someone clawing at shadows in the rearview.
God, why couldn’t I love her instead? It would be so easy, with her sweet smile and sweeter body. I’d never understood why she put up with me. Maybe we were both using the other in a way.
By the time I pulled into her driveway, the silence between us had grown thick. She leaned against the door, gave me that small, searching smile, and asked, “Want to come in?”
It shouldn’t have sounded tempting. But the thought of going home—back to Tru, back to the newlyweds, back to myself—was worse.
So I killed the engine.
Inside, Lauren kicked off her heels with a groan and flopped onto the couch. The TV remote was already in her hand.
“Want a drink? Snack?” she asked, tilting her head toward the kitchen.
“No,” I said too quickly, sinking into the opposite cushion.
Her eyes flicked to mine, then away. “Movie, then?”
“Sure.”
The opening credits washed the room in pale blue light. I leaned back, pretending to focus, but her perfume curled toward me, sweet and heavy. Halfway through some forgettable comedy, her hand slid onto my knee.
My skin prickled. Not in the way it should have. Not in a way I wanted. It was more like a rash, an itch under the surface I couldn’t scratch without giving myself away.
I stared at the screen, rigid, as if laughing at the right time would make me normal. As if sitting there, letting her touch me, would drown out the truth buzzing like static in my veins.
But it didn’t. It never did.
Lauren lowered the volume, the laughter track fading into background noise. She let out a soft sigh, then turned toward me, her hand still resting on my knee like she had some kind of claim there.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I frowned at the screen. “About what?”
“Truen. Your dad. The wedding. Moving in with them.” Her voice had lost its playful edge, softer now, almost careful, as if she was tiptoeing through broken glass.
My jaw tightened. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Her brows pinched. “Dare, come on. You’ve been wound up for days, weeks. You think I don’t notice?”
I forced a laugh that sounded nothing like me. “You notice too much.” I grabbed the throw pillow beside me, pressing it against my stomach. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
But the word cracked in my mouth. And from the way she looked at me, I knew she heard it too.
Lauren tilted her head, studying me the way she did her chemistry homework, hoping that if she stared long enough, she’d figure out the right formula.
“Fine doesn’t look like slamming your glass on the table or driving around in circles for an hour,” she said quietly.
I swallowed hard, jaw flexing. “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it,” she pushed, her hand still warm on my knee. Not flirting, not angling for anything—just there. Patient.
I should’ve brushed her off. I should’ve made a joke, switched the movie back up loud, anything to reinforce what I was to her and what she was to me. A cover story. A shield. A lie I wore to make it all easier.
Not that she knew that.
But Lauren was more than that. She was also my friend. And sometimes, friends notice when you’re bleeding, even if you swear you’re not.
“My dad only talks to me when he wants to remind me how to be like him. My brother shows up, and suddenly, he’s the golden child again.
And Tru—” I broke off, shaking my head, running a hand through my hair like it might clear the fog.
“He just…exists. And somehow that’s enough to make everyone love him.
Meanwhile, I’m the asshole in the corner who can’t breathe without it turning into a goddamn performance. ”
Lauren was quiet. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t tell me I was wrong. She just leaned back, gave me space, and let me vent until the sharp edges dulled.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, realizing too late that I’d said too much. The air felt too heavy. I’d wrenched open a door I’d meant to keep locked.
Lauren didn’t pounce on it or pry deeper. She just reached for the remote, turned the volume back up a notch, and leaned into the couch cushion beside me, not touching, not crowding, just…there.
“Sounds like a lot,” she murmured, her soft voice almost lost under the movie’s dialogue.
I let out something between a laugh and a sigh. “Yeah. You could say that.”
We didn’t talk after that. We didn’t have to. She unwrapped a piece of gum, offered me half, and went back to pretending we were just two kids killing time on a Saturday night.
Maybe that was why I kept her around. Because Lauren didn’t need me to be fine. She just let me sit in the mess without asking me to sweep it up.