Chapter 35 #2
If looks could incinerate a man on the spot, I’d be Ghost Theo hovering over this lanai for a brief minute before peace-ing out to see if souls can fly.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, telling my bride shit about?—”
“I told her,” Laney interrupts.
Gail gasps.
I choke on my own tongue. Why the fuck?
“What did she say?” Charles says. “ What did she say ?”
Chandler gapes at Laney for a split second before a scowl takes over. “A guy gives you a good time for the first time in your life, and you believe any bullshit he spews?”
Uncle Owen and my dad both grab one of my arms and yank me back into my seat.
Those fuckers are strong for old guys.
“You never told her,” Sabrina says to Chandler. “ You never told her ?”
“You knew?” Emma whispers. She looks back at Chandler. “What else? What else haven’t you told me?”
“Nothing,” Chandler says. “They’re making shit up to wreck our day.”
“ Dude ,” Jack says quietly.
“What. Else?” Emma says. For the first time, her voice wobbles.
And it makes me want to leap out of my chair, toss her over my shoulder, and take her somewhere safe.
Decker coughs over something that sounds like who paid for the wedding .
I freeze again.
Chandler looks over his shoulder at his groomsmen. “So that’s where we’re going? You’re going to take sides with a fucking porn star over your own cousin ?”
He looks back at Emma, and the noise registers before my brain comprehends what I’m seeing.
My sister, the world’s happiest person and largest pacifist, voted least likely to ever take part in a fight in high school and most likely to peacefully talk her way out of a hostage situation, just slapped her fiancé.
That’s not a collective gasp of horror from the crowd.
It’s more .
Bigger.
I finally succeed in jumping to my feet, my father and my uncle right beside me, ready to do what we need to do if he lifts so much as a fingernail in her direction, but the minister scrambles between us while the bridesmaids hover closer to Emma and the triplets angle closer to Chandler.
“Do. Not . Mock. My. Brother,” Emma growls while Chandler rubs his jaw and gapes at her.
“ Especially when he’s paying for your fucking wedding,” Sabrina adds.
Laney looks at me.
Back at Emma, who’s now also gaping at me. Then at Sabrina, then back to me.
I squirm.
The minister pushes me back a half step.
“Who’s a porn star?” Charles says behind me. And he’s not the only one. I can hear Addison giggling somewhere behind me.
Fucking gossip.
Shit.
How many people are recording this?
Laney’s not the only one looking at me.
Everyone is.
Everyone .
I can’t look at Laney. I don’t want to watch her realize she’s been fucking around with a guy who lets his junk hang out for the whole world to see.
I don’t want to see the horror. The embarrassment.
This isn’t how I was supposed to tell her.
“Theo,” Emma says. “You’re paying for my wedding?”
I clear my throat and look down.
“ Theo .”
“Theo?” Dad says. “You should’ve told me. I had money saved for this.”
“I got it, Dad,” I force out.
“How are you paying for this wedding?” Laney whispers.
“Oh my god, the press,” Gail says behind me. “They’ll eat her alive.”
Heat flashes over the cold numbing my body.
She’s not wrong.
Future CEO dating a porn star is a fucking awful headline.
Laney loves her job. She was born for this. It’s her heritage, and she wears it well.
“You paid for my wedding,” Emma repeats.
I finally find my voice along with my nuts, and I look up, aware that my face is flaming.
“He’s not—” Chandler starts.
I cut him off. “I’m paying for your wedding, because I love you, and I want you to have your dreams.”
Emma’s breath is coming quick and fast as she turns on Chandler again. “ Why is my brother paying for the wedding that you insisted you could afford?”
“Because Bean & Nugget is behind on taxes and he has no money,” Sabrina answers for him.
Emma gasps. “Is that why you wouldn’t let me do Bean & Nugget’s returns? So I wouldn’t know you weren’t paying taxes ?”
“They’re not behind anymore,” Addison says from the crowd while Chandler stutters that Sabrina’s making stuff up. “He sold it to cover the debt and there’s nothing left. My company handled the closing in Denver this morning.”
Chandler goes ghost white.
The caught kind of ghost white.
I choke.
Several gasps go up in the crowd.
And Sabrina—oh, fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck .
Sabrina looks like she’s been slapped. “No,” she wrenches out on a sob.
“What the fuck ?” Jack snarls.
“What the fuck?” Lucky echoes.
“You can’t sell Bean & Nugget ,” Decker says. “What if my kids wanted to work there someday?”
“You did not,” someone on his side of the crowd says. “Chandler. Explain this.”
Aunt Brenda’s voice rises above all the others. “That better not be true, you little asswipe.”
“ You sold it? ” Sabrina whispers. Laney grabs her elbow when she teeters on her heels. “I had a solution. I had a solution .”
“I’m not taking more porn star money from that dick,” Chandler snaps.
“ Stop it ,” Emma cries.
“ You sold it ?” Sabrina repeats once more. “That’s my life . I should’ve had a chance to buy it. How— no .”
We were supposed to have two months.
I told her no.
I could’ve fixed this.
And I didn’t.
Chandler reaches for Emma. “Babe. Babe . You know we’ll work this out. Let’s just get married?—”
“ Seven years ,” Emma shrieks. “ Seven years , you didn’t want to get married, and now, when you’ve lied, cheated, and probably stolen from everyone here , pretending everything’s fine , when you let my brother go to jail for you and never thought to tell me , when you lied to me about what was wrong at work , now that you’ve gotten caught, now that you’re hoping Theo will support us , now you want to get married? ”
“Think of our babies,” he says.
She gasps.
Audibly, painfully gasps.
I’m clenching my fists and bouncing on the balls of my feet.
That’s all she’s ever wanted.
To get married, have babies, have a family. A normal family with a mom and a dad and a distinct lack of taxidermy animals lurking in every corner of her house.
“How. Dare. You?” Emma says.
“Babe. Babe . You know I don’t want his money.”
“I’ve known you for fifteen fucking years , Chandler,” Emma shrieks. “You can’t stand it that Theo’s making money?—”
“With his penis ,” Chandler says.
He angles back while Emma advances on him. “—and you’re not,” she finishes.
“Why are they calling you a porn star?” Laney asks me.
One more person I’ve let down today.
Emma’s wedding is ruined. Sabrina’s café is gone.
And Laney.
Laney’s finding out in the worst possible way that I have a side hustle that’s not the least bit respectable.
I square my shoulders and look her straight in the eye. “Because I am.”
“Oh my god in heaven,” Gail says.
“Shut up , Mom,” Laney snaps.
“And I’m fucking good at it,” I add.
“Theo, stop ,” Emma says.
I don’t look at her. Instead, I stare straight at Laney. I want to see it.
I need to see it.
I need to see if she can live with me, all of me, even if this isn’t how I wanted to tell her, or if she’s one more person that I’ve let down today.
“I strip,” I say. “I bare the goods. All of them. I put them on the internet. And I get paid a fuck ton of money. That’s the kind of modeling I do.”
Laney gasps so hard it’s like she’s in physical pain.
And I want to hug her.
I want to hug her and tell her I’ll never do it again if she’ll just give me a chance. A real chance. A chance at home, where everything’s normal.
But I’m not giving up a good thing—a good thing where I make a fucking difference —to fit someone else’s mold of normal .
That’s not who I am.
“That’s not what you do,” Sabrina says.
“Isn’t it?”
“Theo—”
“My penis pays my bills.”
Laney’s gaping.
She’s gaping like I just broke her world, looking between me and her parents behind her.
And Emma—Emma makes a noise that’s even worse.
“You done here?” I ask my sister gently. Have to be gentle.
It’s Em.
Her dreams are falling apart right now . I don’t matter.
She matters.
Her eyes fill with tears.
My heart takes a punch to the nads.
“When you say porn star —” Laney starts.
“He’s the top fucking dog on GrippaPeen.com, and that’s not enough for him, the asshole,” Chandler says. “Should’ve known I couldn’t even ask him for a favor for his sister . He has to ruin everyone else’s—hey. Hey . Let me go, you dickwad.”
“Only doing this so Emma doesn’t hit you again and get arrested,” Lucky says as he hauls Chandler back from the trellis. “And the only reason I’m not hitting you for selling the fucking shop is because then I’d have to patch you up and that would piss me off.”
The minister’s standing there as a wall between the rest of the wedding party and Dad, Uncle Owen, and me, watching all of us like we’re the best reality TV show he’s ever seen.
Addison is cackling behind me, the fucking gossip.
I slowly become aware of the fact that there are phones pointed at me from all directions. Wedding guests. Family. Onlookers from the beach who stopped to see a wedding and got so much more.
And that’s it.
Game over.
My face will be on the news within the next hour. If it’s not Addison, it’ll be someone else.
You don’t get to be the highest-paid faceless artist on a site like GrippaPeen without the world wanting to know who you really are.
And they’re all about to find out.
“You told me you were a model,” Laney whispers. “I didn’t think you meant—that’s a lot different from— oh my god .”
It’s not just my shame I’m feeling.
It’s hers. Hers by association.
Date the bad boy in town? The fun guy who has his act together after struggles in school? Sure.
Date a porn star, even if he’s a solo act?
There are some things Kingstons don’t do.
And the absolute wrecked horror on her face while Sabrina stands next to her, tears streaming down her face over her own ruined dreams, is too much.
So I say the only thing I can think of. “Once a disappointment, always a disappointment. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Oh my god, you dick ,” Sabrina says.
This time to me.
Probably well-deserved.
“Oh, god,” Emma says, and then something even worse than tears in her eyes happens.
Emma, the sunshiniest sunshine in all of Snaggletooth Creek, starts sobbing.
Sabrina lunges for her.
Laney too.
Claire follows, almost plowing over Dad, who’s also rushing to get to Emma.
And I don’t.
I don’t know how to fix this for her, and I can’t stand the fact that she’s losing her dreams because she stuck up for me.
I love my sister.
She’s one of my favorite people in the world.
But I let her down.
She needs space.
I’ll check on her soon. After everyone else smothers her. When she’s alone.
“How dare you not tell our daughter?—”
I spin and look Gail Kingston straight in the eye. “She’s a grown-ass woman who’s smart, kind, generous, and gorgeous, and she deserves way better than all of us.”
The Kingstons gape at me.
“And don’t fucking throw stones when you live in a goddamn glass house,” I growl directly at Charles.
Both of the Kingstons go pale.
Uncle Owen claps.
Takes me a half-second to realize Aunt Brenda’s clapping too.
Doesn’t matter though.
When I look back at Emma, she’s gone.
So are her bridesmaids.
So is Dad.
“This is all your fault, you fucking?—”
Chandler doesn’t finish yelling at me either.
Don’t know if one of his disappointed family members got to him, or if I finally managed to train myself to not hear his voice.
All I know is that I’m done here.
Done .
It’s time to pack up my cats and go home.