Killian
The next day, I meet Caroline outside her work. She’s standing under the arched entrance, talking to her boss. I’ve met him once, when I came out for drinks on her first day. He seems like a nice guy.
I stand back as they finish their conversation, and Caroline walks to me.
“Please stop scowling at people,” she says, arching up to give me a kiss.
“I’m not scowling.” I was probably scowling. Being in love with her doesn’t mean I automatically like people now. I like her, and that’s it.
“Are you ready?” I take her laptop bag and pull it onto my shoulder.
“As I’ll ever be,” she says, as we turn and start walking. “Unless you want to run away. I’m very good at that.”
“Let’s just get this over with and we can move on with our lives.”
We’re only about a mile or so from The Plaza and we start walking in that direction. It’s a beautiful late July evening and I’d much rather take Caroline somewhere she’s never been before rather than to see our families.
But this is important. Caroline has spent the last four days stressing about this and she needs to put this behind her. I’m here for moral support.
She inhales deeply when the hotel comes into view.
“I’m freaking out, but I feel like that’s a good thing,” she says. “I need to be freaked out in order to face them.”
We walk into the hotel and take the elevator up to her parents suite. The door is opened by her brother, who scowls at me and doesn’t even glance at Caroline. Quietly, he turns and walks into the room, leaving the door open.
I squeeze Caroline’s hand. “There are probably less stuck up people around the King of England.”
Caroline makes a noise in the back of her throat which is probably a suppressed laugh. We walk into the room and the first people I see are my parents, sitting stiffly on the couch in the sitting room. Their faces are pinched and when their eyes meet mine, there’s no emotion there.
It’s almost depressing to admit that I don’t feel anything either. They’re complete strangers to me now, strangers I knew once and whose faces I recognize. But I have no feelings towards them.
The second person I see is my brother, his eyes locked on Caroline’s and mine joined hands.
“Gerry!” Caroline exclaims. She pulls her hand out of mine and it’s only then I swing my eyes to my grandmother, standing by the window looking out on Fifth Ave as she swirls a spoon in her tea.
She sets her tea down and gives Caroline a wide smile.
“Darling, sweet Caroline.”
Gran hugs Caroline like they haven’t seen each other in ages. She pulls back to hold Caroline at arm’s length.
“Oh, you look stunning. Like you’ve finally got some life in you.” I know the last part is meant as a dig at our families and it has the expected response. Our mothers scowl at Gran.
Not that she cares. Gran’s eyes swing to me and grow slightly misty.
I step forward and she puts her hands on my shoulders.
“Let me look at you.” Her still lively blue eyes look me up and down. “You look just like your grandfather. I’m glad someone in the family does.”
I hear a scoff behind me, and I’m not sure whether it’s my father or Beckett.
“Gran, it’s good to see you.”
I pull her into a hug and I have to remind myself to be careful. She’s fiery, but she’s getting old. Caroline smiles at me softly before the smile drops from her face and she turns to face her family.
“Mother. Father. Carter.”
I turn to face them, keeping an arm around Gran’s shoulders. Caroline’s mother, Elaine, looks just like her, except older and more reserved, like all the joy has been sucked out of her life. My Caroline is nothing like that.
“I guess if no one is going to say anything, then I will,” Elaine says, tugging on her suit dress even though it’s already straight.
“You have caused quite the stir, Caroline. Do you have any idea the amount of embarrassment you have wrought on our families because of your childish little act? How could you not think of us before doing something so foolish?”
“Don’t speak to her like that,” I snap, before Caroline can say anything.
Everyone stares at me in shock. Caroline puts a hand on my arm and I look at her in question. I came for moral support, but I’m not going to stand by and let them talk to her like that.
“I’ve got it,” she whispers. Taking a deep breath, she turns to face the room.
“I don’t want to marry Beckett,” Caroline says.
“I never wanted to marry Beckett. Frankly, why didn’t you consider the embarrassment it would cause me to be married to a man who thinks cheating is beneficial to the relationship?
Why didn’t you, for a minute, stop and think how hurtful it is to have my own parents tell me I should be thankful to marry a man who cheats on me? ”
“There’s no need to be so dramatic,” Elaine scoffs. “Beckett is a good boy. He made a mistake.”
“A mistake is forgetting which date you booked dinner reservations,” Caroline says. “Not fucking your secretary.”
“Caroline, you will not speak to your mother that way!” William Sinclair roars.
“I wish you had the same sense of protectiveness towards me as your daughter,” Caroline replies, her voice cold.
“I don’t want your life. I don’t want to play these games.
I don’t want the fake perfection and opulence.
I just want to be happy. It never even occurred to you that I might want something different, that trying to be perfect and have you constantly remind me that I can never be was slowly killing me. ”
“This is your revenge plan, then,” Dad speaks for the first time, waving a hand between me and Caroline. “Leaving one brother for another.”
“This was fate intervening,” Gran says, winking at Caroline.
“Mother, please stay out of this. You’ve made your position clear,” Dad says.
I grab Caroline’s hand and pull her towards me, sliding my arm around her waist. I do it partly because I need her by my side and partly to see the vein throb in Beckett’s forehead.
I know my brother. He doesn’t love Caroline, but he also doesn’t want anyone else to have her.
In his fucked up mind, she’s his to do with as he wants, and I’m never going to let that happen.
She’s my butterfly. My beautiful chaos. And she’s going to fly freely.
“This isn’t revenge,” I say. “Caroline and I love each other. Something you would have realized a lot sooner if you hadn’t built up this idea of Caroline and Beckett in your minds.”
Beckett opens his mouth and Caroline holds up her hand. “Please don’t talk unless you want to get stabbed again.”
“Is that what you want?” Mom cries. “You think that’s the answer to solving problems. I guess we should just start stabbing one another when we have a minor disagreement.”
She picks up a knife from the table and waves it around.
“I mean, you can,” Caroline says slowly. “But that’s a butter knife. It’s not going to do much. You need something sharper.”
I have to hold in a laugh at the outrageousness of her reply.
“Caroline!” Elaine snaps sharply.
“If all else fails you can just use your tongues,” I say.
Now Caroline is the one suppressing her laughter. This conversation is quickly deteriorating.
Caroline tucks her hair behind her ears. “Look, I know you’re all disappointed. What I did wasn’t right, but please understand when I say I felt I was pushed to my limits. I’m clearly a disappointment and no matter how hard I try, nothing is ever going to be enough. I decided to stop fighting.”
She takes a breath. “I know it matters very little to any of you, except for Gerry, but I am happy. I finally feel like there isn’t a giant rock sitting on my chest. If my happiness bothers you, that’s fine.
I understand I’m not living the life you want, but it’s the life I want.
I’m finally realizing that’s more important. ”
I kiss her temple as silence follows her speech.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Carter asks.
Caroline laughs dryly. “To whom? No one cares. Admit it to yourself. All my choices have always been wrong even when I've tried making the right ones. This was the catalyst.”
She waves a hand towards Beckett.
“Caroline, if you walk through this door now, you cannot come back,” William Sinclair says.
Jesus fuck, these people will never understand, will they?
I expect her to break and I pull her close, but all she does is smile sadly and nod in acceptance.
“I knew that when I left home,” she says.
“Fuck all of you,” I say.
“Killian, you don’t have to do this,” Caroline whispers.
I ignore her. “All Caroline wants is your love and acceptance and you can’t even be bothered to give her that.
She’s funny, smart, and capable of achieving anything she wants but you can’t look past your goddamn demands and proprieties to see her clearly.
It’s unbelievable to me that she actually felt guilty over upsetting you, the same people who don’t give a single fuck about her happiness. You don’t deserve her.”
Beckett laughs. “You can’t be fucking serious. You’re going to get bored of her in two months and she’s going to come back to me.”
“Fuck you, Beckett. We might share DNA, but I’m nothing like you. See, I actually know I’m the luckiest bastard alive because I get to spend the rest of my life with the most amazing woman.”
Beckett’s face turns red. “I’m going to sue her. I can have her arrested. She fucking assaulted me.”
Caroline opens her mouth to argue and I squeeze her hand to let me handle this. Distance really does give perspective because I see clearly I never belonged in their world. I would’ve been fucking miserable.
“You can try,” I tell Beckett. “Go ahead and make a spectacle of the family. Before you do, just know that I have a lot of footage of you and your assistant doing a lot of things that are out of her job description.”
Beckett’s eyes are wide in horror and a dawning realization that I’m not joking.
“No one is suing anyone,” my father says. “We’re ending this matter here.”
“But–” Beckett argues. Dad holds up his hand and Beckett falls silent.
“A line has been drawn, Beckett, and you’ve lost the game. Learn to accept defeat.”
I almost laugh since he’s the one who always taught us never to accept defeat. The only reason he’s doing it now is because he doesn’t want photos of Beckett and his assistant splattered across social media and the family’s name to be fodder for gossip.
I look at Caroline and she’s watching me with a small smile and unshed tears shimmering in her eyes.
“Anything you want to add, butterfly?”
“I’m good.” Caroline shakes her head. Turning to Gran, she whispers, “Thank you, fate.”
Gran grins, reaching out to hug Caroline and then me. “I’ll be back soon,” she promises.
“Caroline, you can’t be serious about this,” Elaine cries. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”
“Mom, I’m not running off to join a cult,” Caroline says. “I’m living my life my way. I have a job at a top law firm and I’m in a relationship with a man who loves me. Maybe you need to ask yourself why you think that’s not the life I should live.”
I take Caroline out of the room before our families can say anything else. Caroline is quiet as we make our back down to the lobby. Just as we’re about to walk out of the hotel, someone yells out for us.
“Wait!”
We both turn around to see Carter jogging towards us. I immediately step in front of Caroline because she doesn’t need to hear any more of their shit. Carter stops in front of her, his hands raised in surrender.
“I just want to talk to my sister for a minute,” he says.
Caroline places a hand on my back. “It’s okay.”
Stepping around me, she looks up at her brother. “If you’re here to talk some sense into me, it’s not going to happen because I’m not making a mistake.”
“I didn’t know about Beckett,” he says.
I scoff at that, but don’t say anything else. Carter gives me a look.
“I’m serious. I didn’t fucking know that Beckett cheated. All they told me was that you two had a disagreement and you left,” he says. “Honestly, Caroline, I thought you wanted all this, that's why I never said anything.”
Caroline laughs dryly. “You think I wanted this? What would you have done anyway? You’re the perfect child.”
“Care-bear, I’m not the perfect child. I just don’t give a fuck and just because I work at the firm doesn’t mean I let them control my life. I show up to play pretend and then I go no contact.”
Caroline opens and closes her mouth. “Are you serious? I thought you liked being their perfect son.”
“Hell no, who can live under those expectations?” Sighing, he places his hands on her shoulders. “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything. Just between you and me, okay? It has nothing to do with them. I know I’ve been a horrible brother, and I’d like to fix it.”
I can tell Caroline is getting overwhelmed by the emotions because she just nods, her eyes glassy. She hugs Carter tightly and he kisses the top of her head before he returns to the suite. I grab her hand, kissing the back of it.
We start walking down Fifth Ave, hand in hand. Caroline is quiet, lost in her thoughts.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Do you really have evidence of Beckett with his assistant?” She looks up at me in question.
“Yeah, I wasn’t walking in there without backup.”
“How?”
“Wes,” I say with a smirk. Sometimes his less than…sanitary activities really come in handy.
“What the hell does he do exactly?” Caroline asks.
“He works in cyber security.”
I kiss her before she can ask anything else. I told her once to not ask questions to maintain plausible deniability. I still meant it.
I was never fucking worried about our families, but when I pull back, I can see there’s a lightness in her eyes which wasn’t there before. The guilt of leaving and going against her family’s expectations was really eating at her.
“I’ll never be able to walk past here without thinking of you,” she says, absent mindedly.
We’re walking past the designer store outside of which I told her I’m in love with her.
“Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic spot,” I admit.
“No, it was romantic. It was honest.”
Pushing her arm through mine, she rests her head on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” I kiss the top of her head.
“Yeah. I think I always expected it to end the same way,” she says. “I spent so long feeling guilty even when I knew they wouldn’t accept it. Now, I don’t feel guilty anymore.”
“But you are sad.” It’s not a question because I’ve been through the same thing. Knowing your family, your parents, can never accept you because they love their social status more is always a hard blow. I learned it over years so by the time I left, it was easier.
“A little,” Caroline admits. “I’ve always known they won’t accept anything other than what they want for me. It’s difficult to finally face it.” She tilts her head up to look at me, eyes soft. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, butterfly.”
“Let’s go home, Killian.”