Thirty-Three
DALTON
“Y ou just roll it,” my mother is saying, leaning over Tommy. “You’re pressing too hard on the left. See how it’s uneven?”
Tommy shoots Mom a look. “There’s only one place to press,” he insists while pointedly raising the chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc she gave him to roll out a pie crust.
“Mine is perfect,” Luis comments, lifting his own bottle to admire his handiwork.
“Oh, you’re right!” my mother exclaims, clapping before she puts her arm over Luis.
“His bottle is better,” Tommy grumbles, glaring at Luis’s crust. He bobs his chin at me from across the kitchen. “All that money and you can’t buy your mom a rolling pin?”
Without a word, I tug open a drawer, reach in, and grab one of the five rolling pins clattering around. “Take your pick, Romero.”
Tommy’s jaw drops.
“You can’t drink a rolling pin when you’re done,” my mom explains with a laugh, which prompts Lander to raise the beer he’s drinking in her direction.
Essie is standing on the opposite side of the kitchen island with her back to my mom and her brothers at the prep table. She glances up while she peels potatoes and holds my gaze. It’s the longest interaction we’ve had all morning.
Since I’m a serial killer, apparently.
And Essie, dead-set on giving her brothers a perfect life, made no effort to assuage Christian’s concerns because the alternative—admitting she willingly fucks me and posts it online—is far worse than me putting on a ski mask and murdering women in my ancestral home .
The fuck.
“Do I really look like a serial killer?” I ask in a hushed whisper, but she shoots me a warning look.
Over at the stove, Cora whirls around with a thrilled expression. I hold up my hand. “Not a word, Flores,” I warn.
Cora has to layer her palm over her mouth to stop herself. This mishap is the highlight of her year—a year that notably began with her getting engaged.
“I don’t know why you think this is funny,” Essie remarks. “After he packed my bags, Christian was going to save you next because he figured Valeria could protect herself.”
The smile immediately disappears from Cora’s face. Now, she looks like she could be a serial killer. “I beg your finest pardon?”
“I told you to come to Muay Thai with me,” Valeria teases as she grabs a seltzer from the fridge.
I check on my mother and the twins to make sure they can’t hear, and luckily they’re giggling while Tommy tells a story about MIT. I face my friends again and whisper, “This isn’t funny.”
“Hard disagree,” Lander comments.
“I laughed so much that I peed,” Everett chimes in.
“Assholes. I’m going to hunger games the shit out of you,” I warn just as Christian walks into the kitchen. He freezes.
Sick. Fucking fantastic. I’m so glad my future stepbrother—who is convinced I dispose of women in the woods of Upstate New York—showed up at precisely the moment when I’m making a reference to a book where…
…actually, I haven’t read that book, but whatever.
“Hey, pal,” I greet, and immediately regret it because it’s the most serial killer-y shit I could say, second only to, Hey, do you want to zip tie your own wrists and see what I keep in my rusty van?
All I get from Christian is a focused Romero stare. He hasn’t spoken to me since before the library incident, and the only other time I saw him was at breakfast when I offered him half an English muffin. He looked at me like I had presented a tennis bracelet handmade from molars and melted wedding rings, which is disrespectful either way because the craftsmanship for that type of souvenir would be exceedingly time consuming. It’s rude to reject a gift.
Christian faces Essie. “Are you good?” he asks her.
“I’m fine. Everyone is fine,” Essie assures him, even though Valeria and Cora have turned their backs to the island while they convulse with laughter. Their shoulders are quivering like they need an old priest and a young priest.
Christian shoots me one more look, steals one of the apples I was peeling, and leaves.
“Christian,” Mom calls, but he doesn’t come back. “Hm. Does he seem off? He’s been off today.”
Essie cranes to look at the brussels sprouts Everett and Lander are trimming. “Those are going to be amazing,” she comments. “Is that the same recipe from last year?”
“I loved those,” Mom agrees, moving past the Christian conundrum.
Crisis averted.
I bob my chin at Essie. “But are you good?” I whisper.
“I’m completely fine.”
She’s cute when she lies, but she lives for her brothers. When one isn’t happy, it consumes her. Plus, we just added an eighth layer of messiness to a seven-layer fuckery dip: After our contract ends, Christian is still going to believe I’m a deviant unless we come clean.
“Take a break. I can do that,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “Mashed potatoes are a big deal.”
“Ess,” I urge, staring at her seriously, “let me take care of it.”
Convinced, she nods. “Thank you, Daddy,” she replies—and the entire kitchen freezes.
The timing couldn’t be worse. My mother was out of her chair and reaching over the island for the bowl of apples right when Essie spoke. Now, she slowly faces Essie with a knitted brow.
Essie’s lips part, but all she can do is gape. I don’t blame her. The woman whose son she just called “Daddy” is eyeing her hard .
I clear my throat and ask, “You good, Mom?”
“I am,” she replies as she glances between us. “What about you, Dalt? Are you good?”
“Yep,” I lie.
“Okay,” she says before she fixes her attention on Essie. “And you? Are you good?”
“Of course,” Essie responds, but she answers too quickly to be convincing. And because my mother is Alyssa Cavendish—a woman who once told a Vanderbilt they were tacky—she’s not going to let this go.
Her elegant hand rises. “Did you…” She points a manicured finger between us. “Did you call him… Daddy ?”
“Dalty,” I lie again.
And neither of us—or any of the people watching this horrifying spectacle—are delusional enough to believe the Alyssa Cavendish would ever buy this shit.
“Dalton Franklin Richmond Cavendish the Fourth,” she murmurs. “What—” She puts her hands on the island. “—the fuck —” She grips the marble. “—have you gotten yourself into?”
Essie’s eyes lock on me, and maybe if Christian and his big feelings hadn’t kept her up, she wouldn’t be giving me the saddest, most pleading Bambi eyes I’ve ever seen.
Okay, so…more lies. That’s what I need. Maybe we could cop to some casual sex or—
“The hell?” Everett demands. He’s standing with both hands up, looking at his expensive shirt, where there’s a brown spot on the front.
On the other side of the island, Lander is standing with his arm partially extended like he’s on the back end of a throw.
“You threw a brussels sprout at me,” Everett remarks, shock tinging his words. “Do you have any idea how long it takes a brussels sprout to grow?”
Lander glances at me and lowers his chin like he’s about to storm the beaches at Normandy. “I don’t care how long they take,” he says to Everett. “ And they’re better with pancetta .”
Everett flinches as if Lander just elbowed his way to the front of a pack of roman senators so he could be the next one to stab him. “Are you…trying to fight me ?”
Good lord. This is the diversion? I could have just as easily poked one of Mom’s Le Creuset pots with a metal fork, and she would have forgotten the whole Daddy thing in her rage.
“Scared?” Lander questions, moving like he’s about to roll up his sleeves, but he pauses. His sweater is super nice. Clearing his throat, he wipes his hands on a dishtowel and then shoves up his sleeves.
“God, I get so dry when they do this,” Cora mutters, rolling her eyes.
“Same,” Valeria agrees. She downs the rest of her seltzer and grabs Cora’s hand.
Lander lunges and gets Everett into a headlock, which he quickly releases when Everett winces and says, “Easy. The pillows here are too firm, and I have a crick in my neck.”
“ Go ,” I say to Essie, who removes her apron as Cora and Valeria come around the island and usher her out of the kitchen.
“Stop that,” my mother warns, rushing over to Lander and Everett. “And don’t lie, Everett. Those pillows are down-filled.”
“I would never use goose down,” Everett blurts out, looking horrified.
“Stop insulting Alyssa,” Lander warns, shoving Everett’s shoulder. “You know she bought cruelty-free ones for you.”
“Stop shoving me,” Everett snaps. “I would have slept better if Pierre hadn’t been pawing at the door to my room because he likes me more.”
The insult makes Lander stagger backwards. “You’re dead, Logan,” he hisses before…tickling Everett? I don’t know. The secondhand embarrassment keeps me from watching too closely to be sure, but whatever it is, it works.
My mom is still trying to pull Lander away from Everett, so I slip out. I have to find Essie and get our story straight, but she’s long gone when I enter the hallway, and shit— I must have left my phone.
I’m heading for the stairs when four words stop me in my tracks: “ You messy little slut .”
“Mom!” I spin around. “You can’t say that to me.”
My mother closes the gap between us and locks her hand around my forearm to pull me, moving alarmingly fast for a woman in high heels. “I can say whatever I want to you. I made you .”
“You shouldn’t be calling anyone a slut…”
“You are the only person I’ve ever called a slut,” she replies, shoving me into an empty room, and she has a point because I definitely had a threesome here the summer before college.
She slams the door behind us and pushes me toward one of the couches in the center.
“I can explain,” I declare, plopping onto the upholstery.
She folds her arms and glares at me.
Oh shit, she really wants an explanation.
“Okay, I can’t actually explain,” I admit. “I just thought it was a saying, you know, like, ‘so the tides have turned,’ or ‘that’s the way the cookie crumbles.’”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I should have had you neutered,” she murmurs.
“Please,” I counter. “As if you raised Lander, Everett, and me to be sex positive without considering the possibility that we could end up being a tiny bit slutty.”
“A tiny bit slutty? Tiny ? Did I not catch you getting a blow job on the day of your grandfather’s funeral?”
…Okay, fair. “I like to think Grandpa Franklin would have wanted me to honor him that way.”
“Shut up, Dalton.”
“Point taken.”
Mom starts to pace. “Come on, Alyssa,” she murmurs before she faces me—but looking at me seems to make her angrier. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised you seduced your stepsister. After I caught you seducing your Spanish tutor, I should have known you had no impulse control.” Her eyes narrow. “Did you ever learn Spanish?”
“I’m learning now,” I reply in lieu of admitting the truth: Unless she wants to know where the biblioteca is, I didn’t learn Spanish.
She exhales and lowers into the armchair adjacent to the couch. “How long have you and Essie been…” Her eyes tick over me. “…Did she call you Daddy ?”
“Never going to clarify that for you, ma’am,” I reply. “But to answer your first question, since Halloween.”
“Recent. Good,” she says, straightening her spine—bracing herself. “Well, I survived the time you sprained your wrist during a keg stand and then sprained the other wrist the following weekend when you tried to do a one-armed keg stand.”
“Yep.”
“And I survived the time you got drunk and bought a live peacock at a silent auction. At least that was for cancer research…”
“Yep.”
“And I survived the time you drank so many liters of beer at Oktoberfest that the Bavarian Minister-President told you to never come back. I’m sure I can survive—” She adjusts the hem of her expensive linen skirt and exhales. “—the story of you and my future daughter.”
I tell her everything.
…Well, just everything that won’t traumatize her, which is, like, one sentence: “We got drunk, hooked up, and decided to keep hooking up until the wedding.”
Her eyebrows float and stay there. “You have feelings for her.”
“But we set a deadline. It’s strictly professional.”
She stares at me hard.
I stare back.
… Shit . Mom has always known Essie, Valeria, and Cora are camgirls, which means…
“ Dalton …”
I grimace. “Yeah, Mom.”
“Professional,” she repeats, enunciating the word. “As in…”
I hesitate before I nod, and Mom looks away. “Like I said, we’re going to stop,” I try to reassure her. “Essie’s serious about the deadline, and she respects you. And you don’t have to worry about our jobs. We wear masks, and Essie’s amazing. She can edit the videos if we accidentally say something we shouldn’t.”
“And you’re okay with all this?” she inquires.
“With camming? Totally—”
“No, are you okay with…” She waves her hand. “With being intimate with someone you love for four weeks and then just stopping?”
Someone I love.
When I don’t respond, she leans back in her chair. “You don’t have to lie. I’m your mom; I know. I wish I’d known how serious this was.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. You deserve to be happy. You spent your adult life taking care of Lander, Everett, and me, and you were stuck with Frank. He held you back. We held you back—”
“I’m happy,” she cuts in firmly. “I chose to have you, to take Lander and Everett in like my own sons, and I have no regrets. Maybe there was a time when I wondered about working or traveling alone, but I did plenty of exciting things after I divorced Frank. And after all that, I realized I wanted a partner again—and Porter made me laugh. He’s gorgeous and creative and earnest, Dalt. Do you know how refreshing that is? Frank never…” She clears her throat. “Anyway, what you just described—a woman raising three boys instead of getting what she wanted…it’s noble of you to try to correct that for me, but isn’t that what Essie had to do?”
The words collide into me. “Shit,” I blurt out. “Did I make the wrong choice?”
Mom rises from the chair and loops her arm over me as she sits. “If what you and Essie have is serious, I don’t have to—”
“Do not cancel your wedding,” I warn. “I’ll literally never forgive myself. You think I’m sad now? Just wait. I’ll have an acoustic album of guitar ballads written by the end of the year.”
Her expression goes soft. “My son,” she murmurs, “you don’t even play the guitar…and you’re the most selfless person—for better or for worse.”
Right now, it sure feels worse.
“Now, be honest,” she continues, rubbing my shoulder. “Does anyone else know other than the six of you?”
“Don’t be mad—”
Her expression turns grim. “Those words have never boded well for me…”
“—but Christian knows something.”
“Something? What does something mean?”
“Unless you want to hear about how your future stepson believes I’m a masked serial killer, and how he subsequently tried to get his sister and her friends to flee before I could murder them and bury them behind the stables…no.”
My mother’s brow folds. “Honey, if Christian knows, it’s a matter of time before Porter finds out. He won’t take it well. None of the boys will.”
“I know,” I admit, and I exhale like I’m extinguishing a candle with a stubborn wick. “I know Essie and I have to…”
I can’t say the last word— stop . The thought makes my stomach roil.
Mom tilts her head against my arm. “I’m so sorry, darling. Maybe Porter and the boys could come around one day...”
But we both know how unlikely it is. “And if they don’t?”
“We’ll try,” she promises, patting her hand against my cheek. “But in the meantime, be careful. Let’s do this right.”
Right. Let’s do this right.
Easier said than done.