Chapter 27 #3
Still so much like my father no matter how hard I’ve tried not to be.
Mr. Sullivan looks back at his family, then dips his head and heaves a sigh that I feel deep in my own toes.
Like he knows.
Like he knows this day that he’d been dreading would eventually come, but he didn’t want to face it, and now he has to, and there’s no telling where his life will go from here.
Maybe I’m wrong.
I hope I’m wrong.
I hope he’s always known.
But there’s a difference between known and suspected.
There’s a difference between my wife and I have already had this conversation and the slouch of his shoulders and the ragged way he’s sucking in breaths now.
And it’s my fault.
If I’d stayed away—if I’d stayed away, if I’d never thought of using the triplets in my revenge scheme, they could’ve kept this secret forever.
Or at least discussed it with their family on their own terms.
I’m a goddamn monster.
It’s in my blood.
And you can’t fight what’s in your blood.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Decker says to me. “And you—” He looks at Rhys, disgust coloring his expression. “I thought I could trust you. I thought we were friends. But you’d give it up all for a woman you barely know?”
Rhys flinches. “It’s not—”
“It’s what? You’re in looove?”
Rhys flinches again, harder this time, and I don’t know what that means either.
That he loves me?
That he doesn’t?
That he’s on my side?
He shouldn’t be on my side.
I don’t deserve people on my side.
I hurt them. I will always hurt them. It’s too ingrained in me to win at all costs to not hurt everyone I love and everyone I want to love.
I can’t see the line where I don’t cause collateral damage.
“Shut up,” Lucky says to Decker. “Not helping.”
“Nothing’s fucking helping,” Decker replies. “You know what would’ve helped? If someone hadn’t decided his dick was more important than blindsiding a friend.”
“That was my fault,” I say quickly, because Rhys doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to hurt more because of me and my mistakes. “I—I blackmailed him.”
“She did not,” Rhys says.
“I did—”
He cuts me off again, looking at Decker. “You knew the risk that it would all come out when you invited her.”
Decker snorts. “Not the full risks.” He nods toward me. “Only she knew how bad it could be.”
“That’s fair. Blame the child for the father’s actions. Way of the world, isn’t it?”
“Stop it,” Lucky says. “Mom, Dad, we’re leaving. Margie—Margot—whoever you are—I can’t talk to you right now. We have bigger things to handle.”
It’s not just a punch to the gut.
It’s a thousand little splinters to my heart.
I have a family that I need to take care of and you, Margot, are not it. You’re not family. You don’t count. You don’t belong.
He’s not wrong.
I don’t belong.
Not here.
Not in my job.
Not in my family.
I don’t even deserve Daphne.
And Rhys—Rhys.
Rhys and that massive, massive wounded heart—my god, he deserves so much better.
I suck in another shaky breath. “I didn’t—I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
All of them ignore me as they hand over the phones they found to Laney, then turn and head back toward the party or their own vehicles or wherever they’re going.
To anywhere but here.
All of them except Mr. Sullivan.
He looks at me one last time, his eyes pinched and watery, mouth turned down, a sad hollowness lingering around him.
And then he notices Lucky pausing for him, and he’s leaving too, with Lucky’s arm slung around him.
Rhys grips my hand tight while Laney lingers, watching us.
“Go on,” I tell her. “Yell at me. Tell me how awful I am.”
Her gaze dips briefly to the ground, then lifts back up to meet mine. “Your article in Business Women Weekly about increased productivity through staff care and support last year changed my work life. I quote it all the time, and you’re right. It works. Thank you.”
I brace myself, waiting for the but.
All I see, though, is sadness and sympathy. “And as the daughter of a suspected cheater with an ungodly amount of money and resources at his disposal to cover it all up,” Laney says, “I’m sorry for what yours has undoubtedly put you through. We all deserve better.”
She gives my shoulder a slight squeeze, and then she, too, turns to leave.
“Do you think they’ll forgive me?” I ask her.
I know the answer.
The right answer.
The right answer is no.
I broke them. I broke their family.
I don’t deserve their forgiveness.
Much like I don’t deserve Rhys’s either for what I need to do next.
Laney meets my eyes again. “I think they have a bumpy road ahead of them with family in general. Take all the time you need, but it’s probably best if you don’t come back inside.”
You’re not welcome here anymore, Margot. You were never welcome as you.
That’s what I hear echoing in my head as the woman most like me here, the woman who could’ve been a tight friend who would’ve understood things that sometimes even Daphne doesn’t, walks away.
Rhys pulls me into a hug that I shouldn’t take and that I don’t deserve.
I squeeze him back while my brain does what my brain does and asks me how to salvage the situation so that I can still destroy my father.
Fucking brain.
No matter how much I try, I still haven’t trained it to take a back seat to my heart.
I don’t deserve my half brothers.
Or anyone.