EPILOGUE 2
CRUZ
Our family’s estate looked exactly the same as it always did.
Massive iron gates. Perfect hedges trimmed with surgical precision. A fountain in the circular drive that probably cost more than most people’s houses. My mother believed subtlety was for poor people.
I handed my keys to her butler, Clarence, and walked inside.
Lunch with my mother happened once a month. She strong-armed me into it by saying it was the price of maintaining the illusion that we were a normal family, which, of course, we were not.
The dining room smelled like lemon polish and quiet judgment. Sunlight spilled through the tall windows, catching on crystal glasses and polished silver.
My mother sat at the head of the table like a queen waiting for her court. “Cruz,” she said coolly as I walked in, eyeing my latest baby blue suit distastefully.
“Mother.” I dropped into the chair across from her and immediately reached for the wine.
“It’s noon.”
I took a long drink. “Then I’m getting an early start.”
Her lips pursed, making her resemble a shriveled raisin. Fucking hell, I hated that expression.
Lunch had barely started before she launched into her favorite topic. The staff.
“I told her the napkins are folded incorrectly,” she was saying now, stabbing delicately at her salad as if the arugula was her worst enemy. “But apparently that instruction was too complex.”
“Tragic.”
She ignored me.
“The new girl clearly has no training. The linen closet is chaos. Chaos, Cruz.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Thoughts and prayers,” I drawled sarcastically.
She sighed heavily. “I don’t understand why people have no pride in their work anymore.”
I took another drink of wine and stared out the window. This was why I usually brought Jagger. He treated these lunches like a sport. He’d ask questions just to watch her spiral.
Once, he’d convinced her that the gardener was secretly sabotaging the rose bushes because he was working for the Russians.
I’d laughed for three straight days.
Unfortunately, Jagger was currently married and spending as much time as possible with his new wife.
Which meant I had to suffer through this alone.
She glanced at my leg as I shifted in my chair. “You were limping when you walked in.”
“I was shot, if you recall.”
She frowned slightly. “How careless.”
I stared at her. “Next time I’ll try to schedule it more conveniently.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Well, I assume it was something ridiculous that Jagger dragged you into.”
“It wasn’t.”
She ignored me. “I never understood why you associate with that boy. His family has absolutely no breeding.”
“Funny,” I said lazily. “He says the same thing about you.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I finished the last of my wine and pushed my chair back. Today was a good day for takeout.
“Well,” I said, standing, “this has been delightful.”
“You’re leaving?” she gasped. “We’ve just barely started our appetizer.”
“I have to get back to my life of crime.”
She sniffed as if that life didn’t pay for her mansion.
I grabbed my jacket, and she picked up her phone, probably to text all her friends about what a terrible son I was.
“Oh,” she said suddenly.
I paused halfway to the door. “What?”
She peered down at the phone. “The Hollis girl is getting married tomorrow. Her mother just posted it.”
Everything in my body went still. Slowly, I turned back around.
“What did you say?”
She looked up, annoyed. “The Hollis girl,” she repeated. “Rowan Hollis.”
My chair scraped loudly as I sat back down. My pulse had kicked into a sudden, violent rhythm.
Rowan Hollis.
My mother continued reading as if she hadn’t just dropped a grenade in the middle of the room.
“Lovely girl,” she said. “Her family always had excellent taste in art.”
I barely heard her. All I could see was Rowan standing under the streetlights outside the fraternity house years ago. Her face pale. Her voice shaking.
Telling me she never wanted to see me again.
Telling me to stay the hell away from her.
My fingers tightened slowly against the table. “Who,” I asked carefully, making sure she couldn’t read anything in my tone, “is she marrying?”
My mother pressed a few buttons. “Oh,” she said. “A senator’s son, apparently.”
For a second—I didn’t breathe. A strange pressure was building in my chest, slow and hot and violent, like something inside me had just been shoved awake after years of sleep.
“‘A senator’s son,’” I repeated. My voice didn’t sound like mine.
My mother glanced up then, faintly annoyed. “Yes. Very respectable family. His name is Samuel something.”
Samuel Englewood.
Of course.
Of course it was a bastard like that.
Rowan’s family had always had excellent taste in terrible decisions for their daughter.
The pressure in my chest twisted suddenly into something sharper.
Images started flashing through my head like someone had ripped open a locked room in my brain.
Rowan laughing in the library, sunlight in her hair.
Rowan in my bed, whispering my name.
Rowan standing under the streetlight that night, her face white with horror.
Don’t ever come near me again.
My hand slammed down on the table before I even realized I’d moved. The crystal glasses rattled violently, and my mother jumped.
“Cruz!”
I was already on my feet, and my chair skidded backward across the marble floor.
“Apologies, Mother,” I said stiffly. “I’m afraid I really do have to go now.”
Her lips tightened immediately. “Well, really, Cruz, there’s no need to behave like an animal. You could at least pretend to have manners.”
“I did,” I said, shoving one arm into the sleeve of my jacket. “For twenty-seven minutes.”
She set her phone down and once again pursed her lips. “You’re being incredibly rude.”
I paused long enough to look at her. “I learned from the best.”
Her eyes flashed, but I didn’t wait for a response; I was already walking out.
The doors slammed behind me as I stalked across the front steps and down the drive, the heat of the afternoon hitting me like a wall. My pulse was still pounding as I pulled my phone out and hit Jagger’s name.
He answered after two rings. “I just want you to know that I just threatened a contractor, and he didn’t even cry,” he growled. “I better not be losing my touch.”
“Can you spare a few minutes tomorrow?” I asked. “Or maybe an hour, actually.”
There was a short pause on the other end.
“Sure,” Jagger said slowly. “What for?”
I leaned against the car, staring out across the long drive of my mother’s estate, the fountain spraying quietly in the distance. All of it was a stark contrast to the detonation taking place inside my chest.
My mouth curved.
“We have a wedding to crash.”
Get Lincoln Daniels’ book, The Pucking Wrong Number: here.