Chapter 27 Perry
PERRY
I don’t get more than fifteen minutes alone. The way the day is going, I’m surprised I get that much.
I’m standing in the bridal suite, trying to breathe, trying to figure out how to reassemble myself into something functional, when Jason comes barreling toward me like he’s been launched.
“Where is she?” he demands.
I blink at him. “Where is who?”
“Faith,” he snaps. “I can’t find her. She was doing just fine in the reception hall, and then she shook her head, said she couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t, and I quote, ‘live a lie,’ whatever the fuck that means. She stormed off because of you.”
Of course it’s because of me. “She heard you,” I say evenly. “So how is that because of me?”
“She shouldn’t have,” he fires back. “You should have told me she was standing there. That’s why it’s your fault.”
The audacity of that almost makes me laugh. “You want me to protect you from the consequences of your own mouth?”
He throws his hands up. “You knew she was there!”
“I was a little busy defending myself from you propositioning me at your own wedding.”
He scoffs. “You’re twisting it.”
“Am I? Do you remember propositioning me, or are you claiming a champagne memory?”
His face is flushed now, not from champagne but from anger.
He looks less like a groom and more like the boy I used to fight with over nothing.
“You always do this. You light a match and then stand back and act like you’re innocent while you watch the flames.
You have always been a drama queen, Per, and you’re ruining my life because of it! ”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. You did. Don’t blame me for your bullshit, Jason.”
He steps closer. His words come out slower. Not slurred this time. He’s sobered up. “You could have said something.”
“Like what? Hey, your bride is behind you while you ask me to find a room?”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not what I said.”
“Liar.”
He runs a hand through his hair, pacing once like he’s trying to collect a coherent argument. “You didn’t have to humiliate me.”
“You humiliated yourself. I didn’t do shit!”
He stops pacing. “Don’t pretend you’re above this. You’re the one who started it.”
“Started what?”
“This whole thing. You and my dad and your revenge on me.”
“You think this is about you?”
“It is about me,” he insists. “You went after him to get back at me.”
I stare at him. “I got over you last year. That was just payback for you and Faith.”
“You’re not over me.” He laughs, short and disbelieving. “That’s some bullshit you tell yourself so you can keep your distance. You still want me.”
“I don’t want you, Jason. I don’t think about you.
I don’t fantasize about you. I don’t wake up wishing you’d made a different choice.
That’s over now. It’s been over for about a year now, actually.
You’re nothing to me, and if you’re not careful, you won’t even be my brother-in-law, so go find Faith and stop running back to me when you have a problem. ”
His expression flickers. “You were in my bed with my father on New Year’s. How is that not about me?”
“I was angry.”
“You wanted me.”
“I wanted payback on you and Faith,” I say bluntly.
He smirks at that. “So you admit it.”
“I admit I was hurt back then. That doesn’t mean I want you now.”
He steps closer again, lowering his voice. “You’ve always wanted me, baby.”
The confidence in that statement would be impressive if it weren’t so delusional. “Not anymore. Not for a very long time.”
He leans in slightly. “You don’t get this fired up unless there’s still something there.”
“There isn’t.”
His eyes search mine like he’s trying to locate the girl who used to melt under that look. She’s dead and gone. And the realization seems to irritate him more than anything else. “You tried to ruin my life.”
“Back then, yeah. Now? My life has nothing to do with you.”
He shakes his head slowly, his voice still low and seductive. “Be a good girl and go tell Faith this is your fault.”
And for the first time tonight, I see something in him that isn’t arrogance. It’s panic. About losing Faith or losing me, I’m not sure, but he’s out of his depth, and he knows it.
Hearing “good girl” out of him is revolting. “Absolutely not. I didn’t make you proposition me, and I’m done with this conversation. Don’t ever refer to me as ‘good girl’ again, and I’ve been done with you for a very long time—”
Jason lets out a sharp laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You expect me to believe you’re over me? You slept with my father.”
I fold my arms, partly to keep from shaking, partly because I refuse to let him see how raw I still feel. “So?”
“That’s not a normal rebound,” he shoots back. “That’s revenge.” He’s still stuck on the version of events where he remains the center of gravity, and I orbit him like a deranged satellite. I’m not surprised. “The only reason you got with him, was to get back at me.”
I stare at him. “Right. Because everyone I do is about you? You’re out of your damn mind.”
Jason smiles, but it’s not charming. It’s condescending. “See that?” he says, stepping closer. “You couldn’t get all fired up without the passion.”
“Oh my god,” I snap. “Get over yourself. This isn’t passion, Jason, it’s revulsion.”
He closes the distance further, and suddenly he’s in my space the way he used to be, the way that used to make my pulse spike and my thoughts blur.
Now, I’m just nauseous.
“Perry,” he says, lowering his voice to something intimate and deliberate, “you ruined my marriage.”
“You did that all by yourself.”
“You obviously still want me. Admit it.”
“I don’t want you, Jason.”
He searches my face as if looking for cracks, as if he expects to see the girl who used to cave under this kind of pressure. “You always wanted me,” he says quietly. “You always came back. You could never say no to me.”
“I was in love with you. Past tense. I’m over it.”
He flinches at that, but recovers quickly. “Then why him?” he demands. “Why my dad?”
“The first time was payback. I’ll admit that. But all the other times? That’s because I fell in love with him.”
He laughs again, harsh and disbelieving. “You’re trying to convince yourself of that.”
“No,” I say evenly. “I’m trying to explain to you in small words that you are no longer the axis of my life.”
His expression hardens, the charm dissolving completely now. “You couldn’t have me, so you went for the next best thing.”
“The next best thing?” I repeat, incredulous. “You are married to my sister! How are you any better than me on that score?”
Jason leans in closer, too close, his voice dropping into that low register he used to weaponize when he wanted control. He whispers, “If you’re over me, why are you shaking, baby?”
The word and the closeness makes me twitch. My hands tremble at my sides, not from him, but from everything else. From Damian walking away. From Amber’s bullshit cruelty. I pull back just enough to look at him. “Because Damian broke my heart, and I can’t stop crying about him.”
For the first time tonight, Jason recoils from me. “You’re serious?”
“Yes!” I am so tired of being misunderstood.
He stares at me like I just confessed to something perverse, stepping back like he needs distance from me. “You’re in love with him?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
His expression shifts into something angrier than before.
“You did all this,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the ballroom, where laughter and music still pulse through the walls.
“You blew up my reception. You dropped that bomb on him in the middle of my wedding, and you’re telling me you’re in love with him? ”
“It wasn’t about you—”
“It is about me!” he snaps. “It’s my father! My wedding day! My family! How could you do this me?”
“You propositioned me. Don’t pretend to be some virtuous man, Jason. We both know that’s a joke.”
His jaw tightens. “You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re a joke, but this isn’t funny. It’s tragic.”
He shakes his head sharply as his nostrils flare in anger. “You broke up my marriage before it even got through cocktail hour.”
“You did that. Not me.”
His mind is reeling—I see it in his eyes. “You kept me from my baby brothers,” he says suddenly, his voice rising again. “You kept my father from his sons.”
That one lands hard enough that I flinch. I did all of that. “I didn’t know how to tell him—”
“That’s not good enough,” he snaps.
“I was scared.”
“Of what?” he demands. “Of losing him? Of losing me?”
“Of losing everything,” I say, and now the tears are falling again, and I don’t even try to stop them. “Everything except for losing you. I couldn’t give a shit about that.”
He stares at me with something that looks almost like disgust. “You’re a mess.”
I don’t reply. There’s nothing to say. He’s right about that.
He steps closer again, looming. “You’re a monster. You sleep with my dad, you blow up my life, and then you cry about it, like you’re owed sympathy. It’s pathetic.”
“I fucked some of this up, but don’t act like you had nothing to do with it—”
“You psycho bitch,” Jason is still mid-breath, still flushed and towering over me. His fist balls, and I brace.
But the footsteps behind him steal his attention. He turns slowly.
Damian stands in the doorway. He looks composed in a way that is dangerous. His tie is straight again. He plucks an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve. His expression is bored, except for the sharpness in his eyes.
Not composed. Not boredom. Barely controlled fury.
Jason opens his mouth first. “This isn’t what it looks like—”
“Keep talking to your future stepmother like that,” Damian says cooly, “and I’m writing you out of the will.”
The sentence lands like a dropped glass.
Jason goes pale. “What?”
“You heard me,” Damian replies.