Chapter 1 #3
She needed a moment to compose herself. She couldn’t break down here. Not in front of her family. This was meant to be a happy occasion. She wasn’t going to ruin it for everyone.
“Uh, excuse me,” she stuttered, brushing her hair back from her face while offering Fern another travesty of a smile. “I need to um powder my… Go to the bathroom.”
She fled without giving the other woman a chance to respond.
Smith was leaning against the opposite wall of the tiny bathroom hallway, staring into his drink. His head jerked up when she opened the door and his eyes shot up to meet hers.
“You okay?” The words were clearly reluctant. She cast a quick glance toward the living room. Beth and Gideon’s home was small and even with only four other people there, it felt crowded and lacked privacy.
“Fine.” She kept her response curt. To the point.
She’d ensured that no evidence of the fierce, quick bout of weeping she’d done in the bathroom remained on her face. His gaze was sharp, probing, and then he shrugged.
“You’re lying to me.” He couldn’t have sounded less interested if he tried. “But I don’t truly give a fuck anymore. You’ve been lying to me—and possibly yourself—throughout the entirety of this ridiculous marriage. Why should now—when we’re finally at the end of it—be any different?”
At the end of it? Just like that. He decided that it was over and that was it?
“Why did you come here tonight?” she finally asked, emotionally drained. “Was it just to humiliate me at every opportunity you could find?”
“I came because it’s expected. It’s always expected, right? We put on this big show for our families that nobody truly believes? Your family doesn’t like me. I don’t like them. And God knows my family and friends don’t like you.”
That stung. Kenny had tried to get along with the Jensons. Really hard.
She liked his sister. And his friends.
But she’d always suspected that they wondered why he was with her. This confirmation of that belief hurt more than it should.
“I’ve never…”
Her words were interrupted by her father’s booming voice.
The larger-than-life James Hawthorne had finally made his entrance.
Smith’s head swiveled in the direction of the noise.
The animosity between the two men had been mutual from the very beginning, but Smith had always at least pretended at civility in the past. Right now though?
He did nothing to conceal his dislike of her father from her.
“Oh, great,” he muttered acerbically. “King James has arrived, here to lord it over his lowly subjects.”
“It’s not like your father is any better,” Kenny retorted defensively.
Smith’s parents weren’t great. His mother was a shallow woman, obsessed with clinging to her youth, and oozed disapproval of practically everything about Kenny, including the way she dressed, behaved, and spoke.
Her nose wrinkled—an amazing feat for a woman whose skin was tighter than the proverbial drum—in distaste any time she saw Kenny.
His father was cut from the same cloth as her father—both powerful, wealthy, influential men.
But while James Hawthorne was bombastic, charismatic, and made his presence felt in every room he entered, Patrick Jenson was quiet, slyly manipulating those around him to bend to his will.
Kenny much preferred her father’s bull in a china shop approach.
At least you saw him coming. A man like Patrick Jenson could stab you in the back before you even knew he was there.
“My father doesn’t try to bully everyone in his immediate vicinity into submission,” Smith snorted dismissively.
“Because he’s too busy searching for weaknesses to exploit,” she said with a snide smile. His brow lowered and she tilted her chin in challenge.
He opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by her father.
“Kenny, are you avoiding me, lass? You don’t have a hug or a smile for your old man?”
She turned to face her tall father with a weak smile and was engulfed in his familiar, comforting warmth. Her father wasn’t often physically demonstrative, which always made his rare hugs something to be treasured.
Ever since Nox’s meltdown at Kenny’s engagement party nearly a year and a half ago, their father had been putting in more effort with Kenny and her brothers.
Nox had disappeared after that, not even showing up to Kenny or Gideon’s weddings.
He’d made a brief reappearance into their lives a few weeks ago, after Niall’s unexpected nuptials, but gone off the grid again afterward.
The entire mess had made their father a lot more thoughtful and kinder in his dealings with them. As if he was finally starting to see them as independent human beings rather than mere extensions of himself.
The hug ended quickly and he stepped back with an embarrassed harrumph before hilariously and awkwardly tousling her hair.
His eyes homed in on Smith, and narrowed as he noted Smith’s already inebriated state.
“Jenson,” he said with a curt nod. Smith, who suddenly appeared much drunker than she knew he was, lifted his glass carelessly, sloshing some of the liquid over the sides in the process.
“James.” Why was he slurring? He hadn’t been slurring a minute ago. There was flinty glint in his eyes and a bullheaded set to his jaw. And she realized that he was deliberately trying to wind her father up.
Her father glowered at Smith, but pursed his lips and said nothing. Fortunately he was distracted by Beth a moment later and left to join the other woman and Gideon out on the patio.
“You’re being an ass,” Kenny said, rounding on Smith furiously.
“Hmm.” The velvety purr—accompanied as it was by the wicked tilt of his beautiful lips—did disturbingly fluttery things to her stomach. “I am, but all the fucks I’ve ever given fled the scene months ago.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“You won’t talk to me regardless,” he said with a careless shrug, before tossing back the rest of his drink. “Now if you don’t mind, I need another drink. I’m gonna need it to get through this fucking ordeal.”
He turned and sauntered away without a backward glance. Abandoning Kenny without a second thought.
She stood watching his broad back for a long while, despair settling over her like a thick, suffocating blanket. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone.