Chapter 21
SASHA
“Ahh! You’re here!” Chelsea Reilly, Griffin’s little sister and the baby of the Kelly clan, practically drags me inside her house. “She’s here!” Chelsea shouts over her shoulder.
This morning, approximately five minutes after sending a group text to his family letting them know he was getting married—today—Chelsea called Griffin demanding to speak to me. She very sweetly asked if I wanted help getting ready.
I really hadn’t thought everyone would be available to come to the quick wedding, let alone help me get ready.
“Hi,” I say, feeling a little shy. I’m not used to feeling shy.
Chelsea embraces me, hard. I’m not expecting it, but I can’t say I don’t love it. Her arms are tight, and she keeps making this little squealing sound.
“Sasha. We’re so, so, so happy for you.” She holds me at arm’s length, her eyes wet.
“Oh,” I say, my throat growing tight. If only I were really getting married. I mean, I am, but for real. Chelsea’s acting the way I would have wanted Leila to if she knew I was getting married. And if she hadn’t fled from home when I was only eight years old.
“Well, if I’m being honest, I’m mostly happy for Griff,” she says, finally letting me go. “From what Nora tells us, he’s the luckiest man alive for having scooped you up. I still can’t believe he never said a word until now! Actually, never mind. I can believe it. Anyway. You look amazing.”
Chelsea’s clearly full of nervous excitement, which I absolutely get.
“I’m not even dressed yet,” I say with a grin. I’m freshly showered, but still in sweats, with my hair in a messy bun and no makeup on.
“Me next!” comes another voice from behind Chelsea. Cassandra, the oldest of the family—by only minutes over her twin, Eli—wraps me in a second hug. She’s taller than Chelsea, and my face squishes against her collarbone.
She releases me suddenly. “Sorry, do you like hugs?”
“I do! I’m just a little…well, I didn’t want this all to go down like this,” I confess.
The two sisters look at me as if on pins and needles.
“I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Oh,” Cassandra laughs. “Okay. We were, frankly. Which would be amazing.”
“I’d love Imogen to have a cousin the same age as her,” Chelsea says, choking up again. She waves a hand in front of her face. “But no, that’s good. We’d love to get to know you first.”
As Chelsea tells me Seamus took their daughter out for her nap a while ago and we migrate to Chelsea’s bedroom, I can’t help but get the feeling that Griffin put his family under strict orders not to grill me on the rush wedding.
Either that or they’re just extremely cool with surprises.
I learn after a few minutes it’s probably a little of both, because they tell me that even though they never know what to expect from Griffin, they’ve learned to roll with it.
“Remember that time he told me he needed to use that vacant room in the staff apartments?” Cass asks after she sets me up at the vanity. There’s a whole mini beauty salon here, with hair stuff and makeup and a chair layered in a soft, plush towel.
“Oh my God, yes,” Chelsea says, handing me something pink and bubbly in a champagne flute. “And the next day, I rode the elevator with that woman who took down that whole baseball team.”
“Football,” Cass clarifies.
I take a sip of my drink. It’s delicious—grapefruit-flavored with a hint of champagne in it. Then I register who they’re talking about. “Wait, was that Grabby-Hands-Gate?”
“Yes!” Cass says.
I remember the story—a woman who broke open a scandal on an NFL team.
“She got the league to change the rules around sexual harassment,” I recall now. She was a hero in some circles, a pariah in others. “My dad and I got into a fight about it.” I explain how dad thought she should have minded her own business and taken the payout. “He said it wasn’t real assault.”
Anger tightens Cass’s features. “No, he didn’t!”
“He did. I told him her harassers needed to face justice.”
The two of them are silent for a moment, looking awkward. They had to have seen my father in the news alongside pictures of Sam. It’s the most I’ve seen of him this year.
“Well, evidently your fiancé agreed with you,” Chelsea says, saving me from thinking about my family.
Fiancé. I haven’t even had time to register that.
“But now you know the kinds of things Griffin springs on us,” she adds. “Him getting married is a shock, but I can’t say I’m surprised he kept you from us.”
We ease into relaxed, neutral conversation while Cassandra takes out my hair tie and runs her fingers through my messy locks. She asks what I’m envisioning like she’s a hair stylist and not the CEO of their family’s massive hotel who’s taking the day off to attend to her future sister-in-law.
I chatter like I do when I’m nervous, giving them the same modified version of the story I told Jude when they ask about how Griffin and I met.
Not the whole truth, but not a lie either.
I don’t like having to hide the truth from them.
Unlike Griffin, I’ve mostly always been an open book.
But all this fun doesn’t preclude the fact that Vincent Creelman sent someone to… what, kidnap me? I don’t actually know.
“Are you close to your siblings?” Cass asks when my family comes up.
I have to swallow down the old hurt that comes up with that. While Leila and Cal both check in on me when they can, mostly, I’ve always been an afterthought to them.
“Not really,” I say. Because how do I say the worst one was always the kindest to me? I reach into my pocket, but of course the bird isn’t there. It’s stuffed in my bag back at Griffin’s place.
I realize both women are looking at me expectantly.
“We’re not really close,” I say honestly.
I can’t exactly say I wish they were here, either, not when I didn’t invite them.
My mom wrote me back yesterday, barely acknowledging my email about being gone, telling me only that she was worried about Sam.
I closed the email without responding, not ready to process either her ignoring my concerns as usual or the fact that, for the first time, she didn’t sound like she was in denial about Sam.
“It’s fine. My brothers and sister were way older than me growing up, so we never really had a chance to get close.”
I picture Sam hoisting me on his back, my fancy dress-up shoes soaked as he chased me through the sprinklers while the media shot pictures on the other side of the house.
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about him now, either, or my heart might break right in half.
Griffin’s sisters look at me with concern. “You okay?” Cass asks.
I nod, though I’m not okay. Not really. “I do wish they were here,” I say, my voice cracking.
Cass squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It’ll be hard for Griffin not having Mom here,” Chelsea says.
I know the family lost their matriarch only a few years ago.
Chelsea brushes eye shadow onto my eyelids. “Mom was the funniest combo of all of us. A planner like Cass, but when she got mad at injustice, she was like Eli.”
“She’d lose it,” Cass agreed. “But she was also playful, like Jude.”
“She loved the card game Hearts,” Chelsea says. “Can you play?”
“I’m not bad,” I say. I’m actually decent at it. My mom’s mother used to love it. It’s the one thing my family still does on occasion that has my parents letting their guards down.
“Our mom also drew pictures, like Chelsea,” Cass says.
I know Chelsea’s an accomplished artist. Griffin has one of her paintings hanging in his living room.
That’s all the siblings they’ve counted off. Except Griffin.
Cass sees me waiting expectantly and smiles as she curls my hair with an iron. “Honestly, in some ways, Mom was most like Griffin. She was private about some things, especially her own childhood.”
“We don’t actually know a lot about that side of the family.” Chelsea agrees. “Her parents passed when she was young, and she was raised by our great-aunt. She never talked about what that was like for her.”
“I bet she had the same heart as Griffin, though,” I say before realizing I’ve opened my mouth.
Chelsea smiles. “She did. She was fiercely loyal to her family, even as she ran the business. Just like Griffin. And she always looked out for the little guy like him, too.”
Cass has curled my already natural waves a little tighter and begins piling part of it on my head. “One time someone left their child at the hotel when they took separate flights to Europe.”
“Oh my God, I forgot about that,” Chelsea says. “It was crazy, like a Home Alone situation where each parent thought the other had him.”
Cass adds a pin to my hair. “He was nine, from France. Barely spoke any English. Completely distraught, obviously. But Mom brought him home while she tried to reach the parents. He stayed with us for two nights, and the only people he’d talk to was Mom and Griffin.”
“I swear Griff taught himself French overnight,” Chelsea laughs. “He acted like the kid’s bodyguard at dinner when everyone was trying to talk to him. Ushered him away when he saw he was getting upset.”
“Griff was only twelve,” Cass says. “He slept on the floor so Charles could have his bed.”
I want to keep hearing stories about little Griffin, but I happen to glance at my phone on the vanity and swear. “Oh my God, I have to be downtown in twenty minutes!”
Chelsea gives an excited little noise. “It’s finally happening.”
“I guess I’m done, then,” Cass says, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Do you like it?”
My stomach plunges as I’m brought back to what we’re doing here. I’m getting married. To a man who, by all accounts, would probably make an incredible real husband. Except it’s all for show.
“You okay?” Chelsea asks. Both sisters are heading for the door to leave me to change.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Nervous, maybe, a little.”
Chelsea’s eyes glisten again. “I understand. But we’ll be right there with you.”
My heart hurts as they leave the room. The thought of having normal family gatherings to go to—with all the joking and bickering and love—it’s something I always wanted.
How am I going to tell them none of this is real?