Chapter 4
Iwalked down the wide hallway outside my bedroom the next morning feeling like I’d barely slept at all.
Mostly because I hadn’t. Not after Boston had weaselled his way into my psyche and was slowly sending me mad on a cocktail of anxiety and fear.
After the run-in at swim practice, he was in my head and I hated it. Boston was a problem I didn’t want or need, and fixating on him was ruining my life.
Why were there so many men determined to control me?
My father. Byron. My husband.
The only good things in my life right now were Dacre, Pres, and Sin, and the swim team.
The letters from my father had thankfully stopped since his failed abduction attempt. But he didn’t need letters anymore when he’d sent a walking, talking threat in the form of Boston. A dark-haired, dark-eyed thug who stalked me wherever I went was so much more intimidating than words on paper.
That didn’t stop the silence from my father being almost more unnerving than the letters had been.
I had no idea what his next move might be or what he was planning.
Was it only a matter of time before Boston snatched me up and dragged me back to the pits of hell they lived in or would my father do it first?
I needed an outlet for this nagging sense of dread.
I was giving these men power they didn’t deserve, but I didn’t know how to stop it.
Absently scrolling through my phone to distract my overactive mind, I walked through the house and down the stairs, stifling a yawn at the same time. Stepping into the dining room, I stopped short at the email I was reading on my phone.
I pulled a face as I read. “Damn it.”
“Dempsey,” my mother instantly chastised, and I glanced up to see her disappointed frown.
Kesia finished speaking to Byron and shot me a small smile as she left the room.
She was well aware of how I felt about my mother and my rapidly deteriorating relationship with her.
Kesia and I had developed a kind of understanding as a result, because Kesia knew better than anyone that dealing with my mother wasn’t always beer and skittles.
She also knew I wasn’t a liability who was likely to spill my true feelings to the press and create a PR nightmare she’d be left to clean up. Keeping my mouth shut around the press was the only play I had when I was one quarter of a secret scandal that could end the Aston name.
If I were to slip up in an interview and say something overly affectionate or even too familiar about one of my stepbrothers, I could ruin the Aston empire along with my own reputation and any hope Byron had of securing the governorship.
If that were to happen, living in fear of Boston Ivers would be the least of my problems. Byron would likely hire a contract killer to have me six feet under before we could blink if I dared get in the way of his success.
He couldn’t kill off his own sons; that would be too obvious.
But if his stepdaughter were to mysteriously disappear, he could no doubt explain it away with a substantial amount of cash to the right people.
With money, came power. And there was no limit to Byron Aston’s power in California if he chose to exert it. Especially if he became Governor.
“Bad morning?” Presley asked me, fighting a smile as he leaned back in his chair looking like a sleep-disheveled underwear model.
My fingers tightened around my phone, an attempt to stop myself from sliding across the table, ripping his clothes off and licking every delectable inch of him in front of his father and my mother.
“No, everything is fine, thank you,” I replied as demurely as possible, sliding into the empty seat at the dining table beside Sinclair.
Sin’s hand instantly glided over my bare thigh under the table, bringing me comfort. He didn’t miss a beat eating his breakfast, lifting his spoon to his mouth with his right hand, his usual picture of control giving nothing away.
I glanced at my mother and Byron. They were both so wrapped up in themselves that they were oblivious to my stepbrother stroking me almost in front of them.
“Kinda seems like something is up,” Dacre said from across the table. His tone was casual, but his eyes were firmly pinned on me in a way that gave me flashbacks to the other night.
The night where he’d trailed his mouth and hands over every inch of my body in what he claimed was research for the sculpture of me he was going to make.
I sighed. “A pair of really expensive designer boots I’ve been watching for ages have just gone on sale.”
All three of my hotter-than-the-sun stepbrothers frowned in my direction, failing to understand why that would be a bad thing.
“In Milan.”
Presley laughed and sat forward to take another bite of his breakfast, while Dacre shook his head as though all girls were crazy. Sinclair slid his gaze to me, then kept eating, his hand still resting on my thigh.
I shrugged. “I really like these boots. And they never go on sale. Like, ever.”
“Perhaps,” my mother said, her tone heavy with a mix of disdain and disappointment. “You could focus on more meaningful pursuits than shoes, Dempsey.”
While she had a point—thirsting after shoes when I had my violent husband stalking me and my unhinged father lurking somewhere nearby was beyond trivial—I still wanted to scoff at her.
Her days were currently filled with outfit planning for media events on the arm of her politically minded husband.
She wouldn’t know a meaningful pursuit if a disadvantaged child crawled into her lap and begged her for cash.
“I’ll take that into consideration, Mother. Thank you so much for your guidance.” I worked to keep the sarcastic lilt from my voice and shifted towards Sinclair when one of the maids leaned over my shoulder to place a bowl of my favorite gluten-free granola in front of me.
I thanked her, distracted by Sinclair moving so slightly in my direction to meet me that it was barely noticeable. Our shoulders brushed, his cologne invading my senses.
“Careful, Princess,” Sinclair murmured so only I could hear. “You pretend to be any nicer to your mother and people might start to think you actually like her.”
I screwed up my nose at that idea and regretfully pulled away to sit straight and pick up my spoon.
Byron cleared his throat. “I’d like to remind each of you that we will all be attending Presley’s upcoming football game this weekend.”
The table stilled, except for my mother who smiled at Byron like she was besotted with every word he spoke. Because she was.
“We’re all going?” Dacre clarified.
I’d yet to go to one of Presley’s games and was excited to see it. But Pres and Sin had both told me that Byron never went to any of them. He’d gone occasionally back when he’d still been married to their mom, but not since the divorce. And definitely not since he’d married my mother.
“Did I stutter in some way, Dacre?” Byron asked, his expression devoid of all emotion. “We will all be attending, as will a media crew from one of the networks.”
“Ah, there it is,” Pres said, leaning back in his chair with a mug of coffee in his hand. “You haven’t attended one of my games for as long as I can remember, but you wouldn’t miss a photo op, would you, Byron?”
Byron’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond to the slight.
“The game is at seven pm. I expect you all there earlier so we can get set up in our seats,” he went on. “What time can we expect you from the office, Sinclair?”
Sin set his closed fists on the table on either side of his plate. The move didn’t look like much, but I knew that on the inside Sinclair was seething over Byron using Presley like this for the sake of a staged media appearance. It was the same anger burning in my stomach.
“I’ll do my best to make it at some point.”
Byron’s eyes twitched at the corners, gaze locked on Sinclair. Silence passed for a beat, then Byron returned to eating his breakfast, opting out of a confrontation with his eldest son.
Sinclair always opted for a silent kind of rebellion against his father.
He rarely went toe-to-toe with Byron the way Presley did.
Dacre kept his distance, withdrawing from any kind of confrontation with Byron wherever possible.
Not because he couldn’t handle it, but because he couldn’t bring himself to bother.
He’d shut down years ago when it came to Byron, around the time his father had sent Presley away.
And then again when he’d trashed his artistic aspirations.
The anger I was feeling threatened to consume me and I sucked in a deep breath through my nose.
You cannot punch your stepfather over breakfast.
You cannot punch your stepfather over breakfast.
You cannot punch your stepfather over breakfast.
It had become an all too familiar mantra these days.
One that applied just as easily to my mother as well.
Later that night when I returned from swim practice, I found Presley lying on a lounger out by the pool.
His eyes were hooded, his speech was slow, and a glass of whiskey dangled from between his fingers.
“Heyyyyy Sass,” he slurred, his head flopping in my direction. “Come over here and sit on my face.”
He snickered at his own drunken joke. On any other occasion I would have accepted the offer with a level of enthusiasm that rivalled a cheerleader, but not when he was like this. Not when he’d once again chosen alcohol as a method to mask his pain.
I perched on the side of the lounger, and he reached for me lazily, trying to cup my face, but missing and grasping at fresh air instead.
I took his outstretched hand in mine, my brow pinched with worry as I surveyed him. “Bad day?”
He shrugged almost in slow motion, mindlessly toying with my fingers.
“Did you go to football practice?”
His heavy gaze narrowed. “Nope,” he said vehemently, mouth popping on the P.
“Will you get in trouble with your coach? Will he bench you again?”
He laughed ruefully. “Unlikely. Not when the Byron Aston is attending this weekend’s game. I could probably nail Coach’s wife at this point, and I’d still manage to start.”
Annoyance woven with jealousy clouded my mind.
Presley smiled lazily. “You’re so cute when you’re jealous. You’re the only one I want, baby. Forever.”
“I’m not jealous.” A blatant lie, but his sweet words had placated me somewhat. “I worry about you when you’re drunk like this.”
He sighed, the sound weighted with pain.
“Don’t worry about me. Can’t you see I’m celebrating?
Byron is finally coming to one of my games.
” He lifted the glass to his mouth, taking a gulp of whiskey so big it made me wince.
“But only because it’ll make him look like a caring, invested father, and not because he actually gives even the slightest fuck about me. ”
I reached across him to take the whiskey glass from his hand. He didn’t protest, just watched as I brought the glass to my lips, then placed it on the ground at my feet and out of his reach.
I moved closer, and he shifted to make room for me so I could lie beside him. His arms came around me and he breathed deeply, as though having me in his arms gave him a deep sense of peace. We laid together silently, staring up at the stars.
“Life isn’t supposed to be this hard, Sass,” he said quietly. So quiet I could hear his pain. Could feel it in every breath, and with every word. “And parents? They’re supposed to love you, right?”
Sadness filled me on his behalf. But also my own too. Because while my parents might have stuck around, my childhood was riddled with more trauma than love, the same as his, just in a different way.
“Yeah, Pres. They’re supposed to love you.”
He tightened his arms around me, his voice heavy with drunken fatigue.
“I wonder what it’s like to have that. Sometimes it makes me really sad that I’ll never know.”
I don’t reply, mostly because I can’t work out what to say to comfort him that we hadn’t said before. My father wasn’t any better than Byron. Or my mother any better than the former Mrs Aston. And I had no idea what his birth parents had been like.
His quiet alcohol-induced snores filled my ears a moment later, and it made me realize that maybe me being here gave him all the comfort he needed.
So I held onto him tightly and cursed Byron’s name to every single deity who had ever existed in the world for harming one of my favorite people so thoroughly.