Chapter 14 #3
“But you’re good?” Reese asked quickly, already onto her new most pressing matter, now that she’d realized Sydney was safe.
Sydney gave Reese’s hand a squeeze, her eyes uncertain as she saw the look on her face. “I’m good. I’m going to head inside and clean up.”
“You should go upstairs. Third door on the right. There’s an en suite in that bathroom.” She hadn’t lived in this house in fifteen years, but she had no doubts that her mother kept every room meticulously maintained and stocked.
Reese disengaged their hands, though not before she ran her fingers across Sydney’s knuckles, their softness doing little to abate the fury rising inside of her. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
Seconds ago, the world had felt soft and hazy. Now it was sharp. Angry. She was angry.
Until this moment, with fire running through her veins, neither she nor Sydney had looked at Grant. Before he’d careened into the waiter, she hadn’t even noticed him skulking about.
They’d been at the party for a little over an hour at this point, and except for seeing him on the sidelines of the heartfelt speech that Margie and Stan had given on behalf of the parents, she hadn’t engaged with him. Thankfully.
But now, as she studied him more closely and tried to focus her rage, she could see the wrinkles in his half-untucked shirt, which had been obscured by his sportcoat until he started to turn around. His eyes were glassy but bloodshot, and he had a small stain on the knee of his khaki pants.
“You’re drunk,” Reese hissed. She stepped closer to him, separating him from the group he was trying to join.
Brynn stood behind Reese, more than willing to stay out of the fray. Reese couldn’t blame her, but in her not-expert opinion on matrimony, it seemed like a bad start to things if the bride-to-be was already cowering in embarrassment.
“It’s my couple’s shower, Reese,” Grant said with an exaggerated flick of his hand at the dozens of people milling about, though the party was thankfully large enough that only those in their immediate proximity knew anything had happened.
Like good members of the upper crust, they were probably all still listening but had the courtesy of looking away to give the siblings the illusion of privacy.
“Don’t you just love it a brunch ?” Grant asked, the sarcasm dripping from his tone like venom, and Reese just… couldn’t understand.
“Grant, this party is for you. Planned by your families. For a wedding that you wanted to have, after you asked Brynn to marry you.” After you betrayed Sydney, a woman you never deserved anyway, to live this life , she added silently.
Nothing about it made sense.
Reese lowered her voice, realizing that Grant was even more drunk than she’d first thought. “Why are you acting like this?”
“Like you care,” Grant scoffed. “The better child has returned to claim her rightful place. You already took my girlfriend. Coming after my job next?” The line would have been more impactful if Grant hadn’t hiccuped, causing any viciousness he’d been going for to be cut off at the knees.
But even if Reese was calming down, now that Sydney was safely upstairs and Grant seemed willing to stand still for the moment, he was still so off base that it was hard to believe he wasn’t minutes from passing out.
“You know our father has no interest in me joining the company. And I have no interest in joining it either.” At first, she’d said the words to placate him, but it wasn’t until she’d said them out loud that she knew it was the truth.
As they rolled off her tongue and into the world, she felt them in her bones with staggering clarity.
There was nothing gained and everything lost by ever accepting a place with her family’s business.
Her sanity, for one, if Grant was any indication of what became of a Devereux child who followed in her father’s footsteps.
And, more importantly, her integrity, judging by how both Grant and her father had been behaving since she’d been back in town.
Grant scoffed again, like he couldn’t believe it, his features pinching up in such an ugly way that Reese almost laughed.
But then she caught Brynn out of the corner of her eye, looking like she was going to burst into tears at any second. A part of her wanted to believe that Brynn had known what she was getting into, marrying Grant, but as the days wore on, it honestly seemed like that wasn’t the case.
Which meant that, instead of tearing into Grant like she’d wanted to, she guided him by the arm, surprisingly compliant after his last outburst, over to a beverage station. She poured a glass of fresh cucumber water from the carafe set atop the table, waving a bartender off in the process.
“I’ve got this,” Reese mouthed quietly across the few feet of space where Brynn looked adrift, breathing deeply to keep the tears at bay. She waited another beat, her attention focused on Brynn, until she saw her meander into the crowd.
She turned her attention back to her brother.
“Drink this. Sober up. Get it together.” She handed him the glass, which he immediately gulped down.
“I have no idea what’s going on with you, but you’re at a party to celebrate your wedding, for god’s sake.
No one’s forcing you to be here, so stop acting like it. ”
“Perfect Reese. Always doing the right thing,” Grant said mockingly as he set his glass back on the table.
“What the fuck, Grant? I’m helping you, and you’re still being an asshole.
I don’t know what you want me to say right now.
Do you want me to leave you to keep embarrassing yourself?
I’m sure that would go over well with Dad and all of his business associates.
I’m sure it would go over even better with Stan and Margie, whose daughter you’re marrying.
Dad seems so far up Stan’s ass that you, the actual prodigal child , may even suffer some consequences for once in your life if you don’t stop acting like this right now. ”
Grant tried to speak, but Reese held her hand up, words already bubbling up in her throat.
She was on a roll now, unable to stop herself.
The picture of the last few weeks was coming together in startling clarity.
“And Brynn. You know, your fiancée . The woman you proposed to, though you’re acting like she’s more of an inconvenience than anything else.
You’re more intent on talking about Sydney and refusing to accept that you fucked up and threw her away than on being embarrassed at what you’re putting Brynn through.
She looked like she was about to cry just now, and you couldn’t give a shit if someone had pumped you full of laxatives. ”
Grant stared at her, slack-jawed, and Reese wondered if he was absorbing anything she was saying. Probably not, but it still felt good to voice these opinions. Really good.
Which was why she had one last piece to stay before she attended to more important things.
“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that spilling a drink all over Sydney was an accident, but I’m honestly still on the fence about it.
I’d say it’s too convenient, but I don’t think you’re sober enough right now to string a multistep plan together. ”
“Are you calling me stupid?” Grant finally responded, missing her point by a mile. God, he really was so fucking self-involved that it made Reese want to scream.
“Best-case scenario, I’m calling you drunk and a poor planner,” she said decisively before adding, “Now, I have a girlfriend to attend to, and I’d encourage you to go see if Brynn is okay.”
The dimness in Grant’s eyes lit up, and especially in his drunken state, Reese knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from making a dig about her and Sydney.
Whatever their plan had started as, it was clear that the idea of her and Sydney rankled Grant on a level even she couldn’t have anticipated.
Hard to imagine, considering he was the one who’d cheated.
Instead of waiting for whatever embarrassing—to him—comment he’d likely make, she moved the few feet back to the bartender. “He’s cut off, and if it doesn’t happen, it will be everyone’s problem, especially yours. Got it?”
The bartender nodded at the same time he gulped, and Reese poured another cup of water from the carafe before she walked back over and handed it to her brother. “We’re probably leaving. Have a good rest of your party.”
And with that, she slipped through the crowd of people whose names she didn’t know and whose lives she didn’t care about, intent on finding Sydney and making sure that she was okay.