Chapter 24 - Catherine #2
The firelight. His face. The ring on my finger—warm from his pocket, fitting like it was measured for exactly this hand.
Saoirse is already crying. She comes to us—wraps both of us in a hug that smells like candle wax and the particular warmth of a mother who has wanted this for her son since the night she watched him clean blood off my wrists.
My dad stands. Comes over. His face is doing the complicated thing—pride and grief and the particular emotion of a father watching his daughter receive a ring from a boy and deciding, in this firelit living room during a snowstorm, that the boy is the right one.
“We settled on the promise ring,” he says, smiling. “Instead of the other kind. Because you’re eighteen and I’m not ready for the other kind. But yes, princess. I’m happy.”
Callum comes last. Kisses my cheek. “Welcome to the family, Catherine. Officially.”
I look at the ring. At the fire. At the three parents and the boy and the storm outside and the candles making everything golden.
“I love you, Kaid.”
“I love you, Cat. Forever.”
He kisses me. Soft. The kind that tastes like firelight and promises and the particular certainty of two people who have survived things that should have destroyed them and instead built something the world can’t touch.
New Year’s Eve. The Monaghans’ annual party. The event of the Edgewood social calendar—the one that fills every room and requires valet parking and the kind of catering that arrives in refrigerated trucks.
I’m in our bathroom. Finishing my makeup.
The eyeliner is sharper than usual—party edition, the wings extended, the look that says “I am not approachable and I am not sorry about it.” My hair is down—soft curls, the way Kaiden likes it, not that I’d ever tell him that’s why I wear it this way.
The Claddagh ring catches the light every time my hand moves.
The dress is on the bed. Gold. Sequined overlay on nude fabric.
Deep V neckline. A slit up the left thigh that stops at mid-thigh.
Halter straps long enough to wrap around the waist. Saoirse and I picked it out together, and when I tried it on in the store, she said “oh, Catherine” in the voice she uses when something is simultaneously perfect and terrifying from a parental perspective.
Kaiden walks into the bathroom. All black—slacks, dress shirt, jacket. Gold cufflinks. Gold tie clip. His hair done, the mohawk sharp, the tattoos visible at his wrists below the cuffs. He looks like something dangerous that was dressed up for a party and isn’t fully domesticated.
He stops in the doorway. Looks at me. I’m in a nude bra and matching underwear, doing my mascara, because I haven’t put the dress on yet and the timing of his entrance is either terrible or perfect depending on your perspective.
“You’re not dressed.”
“Observant.”
He walks up behind me. His hands on my hips. His mouth on the back of my neck. I watch us in the mirror—his dark suit against my bare skin, his hands spanning my waist, his lips trailing down my shoulder.
“We have thirty minutes,” I say. Not moving away.
“I can work with thirty minutes.”
His hand slides from my hip to my stomach. Lower. His fingers trace the edge of my underwear. My breath hitches. I set the mascara wand down because my hand is not steady enough for precision application while his thumb is hooking into my waistband.
“Kaiden. Your parents are downstairs. The caterers are setting up. There are literally people in the house.”
“There are always people in the house. That’s the problem with living with our parents.” His teeth close on my earlobe. “Let me make you come before you put that dress on. Quick. Quiet. Nobody has to know.”
His fingers dip lower. My back arches against his chest. In the mirror, the image—his suited arm disappearing into my underwear, my mouth falling open, his eyes watching my reflection with dark, focused attention—is the kind of thing that gets people banned from homeowner associations.
The doorbell rings. Downstairs. Voices. The first guests. We both freeze.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I whisper.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder. His hand retreats from my underwear. A sound comes out of him that’s half groan, half laugh. “Later.”
“If you say ‘later’ one more time and don’t deliver, I’m filing a formal complaint.”
“Oh, I’m delivering tonight, Cat. That dress. This room. Midnight. Be ready.”
He steps back. Adjusts himself in his slacks with zero subtlety. Walks out. I stare at my flushed reflection and attempt to reassemble the ice princess from the wreckage of what his hand just did to my composure.
The dress goes on. The gold catches every light in the room. The slit reveals enough thigh to be dangerous. The halter straps wrap around my waist, cinching the fabric. I pair it with gold strappy heels and Saoirse’s jewelry—the Celtic knot necklace, the earrings, the bracelet. The Claddagh ring.
I look in the mirror. The ice princess in gold armor. Ready.
The house is full. Not a gathering—an event. Every room occupied. Music from a live band in the great room. Waitstaff moving through the crowd with trays. The kind of party where the champagne never stops flowing and the guest list reads like a who’s who of Massachusetts politics and old money.
I stand at the top of the stairs and the anxiety hits like a wave.
The crowd. The noise. The particular sensory overload of a hundred strangers in a space I’ve come to think of as home.
My fingers go to the Claddagh ring—spinning it on my finger, a grounding gesture I’ve developed without deciding to.
Kaiden appears at the bottom of the stairs. Looks up. His expression does the thing—the softening that becomes want that becomes something I don’t have a name for. He extends his hand. I take it. Walk down.
“You good?” he asks. Low. Just for me.
“Crowds are a lot.”
“I’m right here. The whole night. If you need to leave, we leave.”
His hand finds the small of my back. The particular pressure that says “I’m here” without requiring a response. We move into the crowd.
He stays close. Closer than necessary. His hand migrating from my back to my hip to the curve of my waist, maintaining contact because he’s learned that touch is my grounding wire.
People approach—his parents’ friends, political connections, the particular species of wealthy adults who shake hands too firmly and make eye contact too long.
Kaiden navigates them with the ease of a boy who’s been attending these parties since he was old enough to hold a glass, and I stand beside him and perform the ice princess and nobody knows that underneath the gold dress my nervous system is running at twice its normal speed.
An hour in, I spot my father across the room. He’s talking to a man I don’t recognize—tall, silver-haired, the particular grooming of wealth.
“I’m going to say hi to my dad,” I tell Kaiden. “Go find your boys. Five minutes.”
He kisses my temple. Releases me. I weave through the crowd. Dad smiles when he sees me. Puts his arm around me.
“Catherine, I’d like you to meet Calvin Whelan. Calvin, this is my daughter.”
Pleasantries. Compliments. The particular social performance that I’ve watched my father execute my entire life and have learned to replicate with surgical precision.
Calvin Whelan is charming and interested and says all the right things about MIT and my future, and I smile and respond and count the minutes until I can return to the person whose hand on my back makes the performing bearable.
I excuse myself. Turn toward the food table where I last saw Kaiden.
And stop.
A girl is standing next to him. Tall. Blonde.
The kind of blonde that comes from a bottle and a stylist and the particular commitment to maintenance that suggests her entire existence is a curated production.
She’s in a red dress that leaves almost nothing to interpretation. Her hand is on Kaiden’s arm.
His body language is closed—turned slightly away, one hand in his pocket, the particular posture of a man who is being touched without permission and is managing the situation through stillness rather than reaction.
He hasn’t pulled away because pulling away would cause a scene, and Kaiden Monaghan manages scenes rather than creates them. Usually.
I walk over. Smooth. Unhurried. The ice princess at full operational capacity.
“Hi.” I extend my hand to the blonde. “I’m Catherine.”
She looks at me. The particular up-and-down assessment that girls like this perform—the inventory of dress, shoes, jewelry, face, body, threat level. Her conclusion arrives quickly: not a threat.
Wrong.
“Valentina,” she says. Not taking my hand. Turning back to Kaiden. “I was just getting to know your brother here. My mother just married her newest husband—we moved to the neighborhood last month. She said this was the party to be at.”
Her hand hasn’t left his arm. Her fingers squeeze. Familiar. Proprietary.
Kaiden looks at me over her head. His expression says: “help.”
“Valentina.” I step closer. Not into her space—into his.
My body against Kaiden’s side, my hand on his chest, the particular physical claim that doesn’t require words but makes them redundant.
“Kaiden isn’t my brother. He’s my boyfriend.
And your hand is on his arm, which I’d appreciate you removing. ”
Valentina’s smile doesn’t waver. The particular resilience of a girl who has been competing for male attention since middle school and doesn’t register other women as obstacles—only as scenery.
“Oh, you’re the girlfriend.” She looks me up and down again. “How cute. Don’t worry, I’m just being friendly. No need to get territorial.”
She doesn’t remove her hand.
The ice princess goes cold. Not the performed kind—the real kind. The temperature that precedes the thing that made Jon Pennington flinch in a hallway and made Frannie Clarke walk away without finishing a sentence.