Chapter 26
NATALIE
“ A ll right, ladies!” Paige called from the front of the room, her veil slightly askew and her lipstick looking way too good for someone who’d just had her tongue down Levi’s throat. “It’s time!”
Groans and laughter echoed as chairs scraped and women reluctantly shuffled toward the dance floor like it was The Hunger Games .
“Oh no,” I muttered, grabbing Ellie’s arm. “She’s really doing this.”
“I will not be a cliché tonight,” someone muttered behind me like they were trying to manifest it into existence…while holding a bouquet of roses, a heart-shaped balloon, and what was definitely a ring box.
“Speak for yourself,” MeMaw said, cracking her knuckles. “I didn’t wear orthopedic heels just to not body-slam a bridesmaid.”
I side-eyed my mother, silently asking if she was going to step in, but she just rolled her eyes. Judging by the state of her rosy cheeks and glassy eyes, someone had drank a little too much champagne…
Up front, Paige clutched her bouquet like it was a glitter-drenched grenade. She grinned, tossed her curls over her shoulder, and yelled, “Who wants to be next?!”
A few cheers. Mostly groaning. Someone made the sign of the cross.
Easton was lounging at a nearby table with a champagne glass in hand, and he caught my eye and winked. “Catch it,” he mouthed, and I rolled my eyes, my lips twitching, even if the idea of marriage wasn’t seeming nearly as awful nowadays.
The DJ hit play on some upbeat, aggressively sparkly anthem, and Paige turned her back to the crowd, knees bent like a quarterback, the bouquet held high.
“On three!” she yelled. “One…two…”
“I swear, if this flower carcass hits me in the face—” someone hissed.
“THREE!”
She launched the bouquet over her head with the power of a woman fueled by mimosas and marital bliss.
Gasps. Screams. A full-on scramble.
Arms flailed. Shoes skidded. Someone fell.
And then?—
“I got it, you heathens!” a voice shrieked.
We all turned to see?—
MeMaw.
Standing center floor, victorious, bouquet in one hand, cane in the other, and smug as a cat in cream.
A stunned silence fell.
“Damn right, I caught it,” she declared, adjusting her sequined bolero with flair. “I may be seventy-blessed-and-fabulous, but I still got the reflexes of a teenage cheerleader and the hips of a disco queen, and I’m feeling frisky for some whiskey if you know what I mean.”
Laughter erupted. Levi doubled over wheezing. Someone whistled. Because yes…we did all know what that meant.
MeMaw tucked the bouquet under her arm like a football and blew kisses to the crowd. “Don’t be jealous. I’m taking applications.”
“She’s unstoppable,” I whispered, half in awe.
“Honestly,” Ellie said. “I aspire to that level of amazingness.”
As the crowd slowly dispersed, Paige was doubled over laughing, and MeMaw was already telling someone she “preferred diamonds over daisies, but she’d make it work.” I slipped out the side door and into the hallway.
I needed a bathroom. And then I needed Easton.
Preferably in that order. Though, depending on how long the line was, I could be persuaded to rearrange.
The laughter faded behind me as I padded down the dim corridor, the music muffled now, heels swinging from one hand because I wasn’t about to go into a public bathroom with bare feet even if they were wrecked.
I turned the corner and…stopped dead.
Terry.
Easton.
And her .
Brittany was standing there in her pretty blue dress, staring at Easton like she wanted to eat him.
I didn’t love that.
“I’m not asking for charity,” Terry was saying, his hand laid dramatically over his chest like he was on stage.
“Just a little help. It’s prostate cancer.
Stage four. Doctor says it’s slow-growing, but the bills sure aren’t.
You know how it is—specialists, scans, medications, and that’s after insurance takes their sweet little cut. ”
He gave a strained chuckle, like he expected Easton to laugh, too. He didn’t.
“I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t serious,” Terry added quickly, sensing the silence. “I don’t want pity. I just need a couple grand to stay ahead of the hospital. That’s nothing to a guy like you, right?”
Easton said nothing .
Nothing at all.
But his silence was loud. Final. Like a slammed door.
Terry must’ve felt it, too, because the sympathy-drip dried up fast. He pivoted so fast it gave me secondhand whiplash.
“I mean…” His eyes flicked toward Brittany, and suddenly his voice turned slick again. “Look, I’ve got three beautiful girls. Natalie’s always been a little…prickly. High-strung. Never did know how to relax.”
I would have snorted if the situation wasn’t so surreal…because how the fuck would he know what I’d always been like?
Terry smiled like that was an endearing quirk. Like he hadn’t just dismissed every wound I wore as a personality flaw.
“But this one,” he said, motioning lazily to Brittany like she was a car he was trying to unload. “She’s fun. Real easy to be around. Wouldn’t give you any trouble.”
Brittany didn’t blink. She didn’t look confused or insulted. She smiled like the world owed her something and she’d finally found the cashier.
And then she arched her back—pushed out her chest like she was on a reality show, and the rose ceremony was about to begin.
I gagged a little in my throat. I didn’t mean to. But it was either that or let my stomach heave up the steak dinner I’d managed to choke down earlier.
Which was not something these people deserved.
“She could keep you company tonight,” Terry added, the words dripping out like oil. “Make the money worth your while.”
My heart didn’t just drop. It detonated.
Every molecule in my body stilled. Froze. Burned.
I couldn’t hear anything—not the music, not the distant clink of silverware, not even my own pulse. Just a high-pitched, white-hot static of Are you fucking kidding me ?
This man—the man who had shown up out of nowhere claiming he wanted to fix things—wasn’t here for closure or forgiveness.
He was here to barter. To beg. To sell.
Had he really just asked my boyfriend for a loan while pimping out his other daughter like some blackjack table bonus?
Was this his idea of rebuilding a relationship ?
I felt something hot and acidic surge in my throat. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t hurt.
I was furious .
The kind of fury that came from every scraped knee he never kissed, every birthday he missed, every night I stared at the door wondering if maybe— maybe —he’d show up this time.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw the smirk off his face and throw Brittany’s six-hundred-dollar shoes into the nearest punch bowl.
Easton’s voice cut through the quiet like a blade wrapped in thunder.
“You should walk away. Right now.”
“Come on,” Terry chuckled, but it was dry, brittle. The kind of laugh people fake when they’ve just been caught stealing from the offering plate. “You’re acting like I offended you.”
Easton stepped forward, the air around him suddenly ten degrees colder.
“You did. Not for my own sake…I’ve had people try to con money out of me since the moment my face hit a billboard.
But you just insulted your daughter. The woman I love.
The woman I’m going to marry as soon as I can convince her. ”
I don’t know what stunned me more, how calm he sounded, or how much it shook me.
As soon as I can convince her .
Something hot and fizzy lit up inside me, as if a soda can had exploded beneath my ribs.
But I didn’t pause to savor it, I couldn’t. Not with what I was hearing.
I stepped out from around the corner, my bare feet soundless against the worn wood, my eyes locked on the man who helped create me—who now stood there like he hadn’t just tried to auction off my half sister for a check and a pat on the back.
Terry’s head jerked up.
“Natalie—” he started, his tone pitched somewhere between innocent and oh-shit.
But he didn’t get another syllable out.
Because I punched him. Right across the jaw. A clean, snapping, bone-deep punch that came from years of swallowed pain and everything he had not been.
He stumbled sideways into the wall with a grunt, hand clutching his face like I’d just committed treason instead of self-defense. Brittany let out a tiny gasp, one hand fluttering to her chest like someone had spilled red wine on her Birkin.
More offended than concerned. Of course.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted, fists trembling at my sides.
“You show up after years— years —give some Oscar-worthy monologue about being sick and full of regret, and then I catch you here, asking my boyfriend for money like some back-alley grifter in a Men’s Wearhouse clearance suit?
! And… offering her up like she’s part of the damn deal? !”
“Natalie—”
“No,” I snapped. “Don’t speak. Don’t say my name. Don’t look at me.”
My voice shook. My hands, too. But my spine? It had never felt straighter.
“She’s not a consolation prize,” I hissed. “I’m not some missed investment. And Easton sure as hell isn’t your personal ATM.”
His mouth opened again, but I wasn’t done. Not by a mile. Because something had just struck me…something he’d said.
“You told me you had leukemia .”
He froze.
“I stood there while you tried to make me feel bad for you, and now I hear you spinning some sob story about prostate cancer ? ”
His mouth opened, shut, then opened again like a fish yanked out of water. “It—it’s both.”
“Oh really?” I barked out a laugh, half wild. “You’re just collecting cancers now, huh? Like Pokémon cards?”
“That’s not—I just didn’t think?—”
“No, you didn’t . You didn’t think I’d catch you. You didn’t think I’d hear. And you definitely didn’t think I’d remember what you said. You’re not even sick, are you?”
Silence fell like glass shattering in the air.
His jaw worked, but nothing came out. His eyes skittered sideways. The corner of his mouth twitched. And there it was—truth, plain as day, smeared all over his face like a bad toupee and even worse lies.
My stomach flipped, but this time it was from clarity, not pain.
“You lied,” I whispered. “To me . About cancer .”
“I didn’t think you’d talk to me otherwise—” he started.
“Save it.”
His eyes darted to Brittany like she might save him, but she was too busy inspecting her nails and pretending the floor was fascinating .
I stepped closer.
“Do you know what it cost me just to let you touch me today? What I had to swallow to say yes to that dance?” My voice cracked. “And this is who you are?”
His eyes flickered…guilt, shame, something close to fear.
Good.
Easton stepped in then, his hand brushing my back like a tether. “Let’s go.”
But I wasn’t quite finished. I turned to Brittany.
“And you?” I said, my voice slicing clean. “You let him use you like that?”
Her lips parted like she might gasp or speak or pretend she hadn’t just stood there letting herself be offered like a party favor with a pulse .
But nothing came out.
“No,” I snapped. “You don’t get to be speechless now. You don’t get to play innocent when you smiled while he bartered you like a fucking accessory.”
Color flushed her cheeks, but I didn’t care.
“He may have forgotten what being a father means,” I said, my words low and cutting. “But you don’t have to let him keep treating you like you’re a pawn in some cheap, rigged game. Grow a spine, Brittany. Or at the very least, grow up.”
Then I turned back to the man I used to wish would come home.
The man who once lived in my daydreams, always stepping through the door with apologies and promises and the miracle of being different this time.
“You never deserved me,” I said, voice like frost, sharp and final. “And you never will.”
I turned and walked away, Easton close behind.
And I didn’t cry.
I didn’t even look back.
Because this time, I wasn’t the girl anymore. The one waiting for her father…hoping that he would change.
I was the woman walking away from him.
Forever.