1. Valentina #3
We separate with the practiced ease of two people who have been performing all evening, and the guests applaud around us.
Neither of us look at the other as we step apart.
My smile is perfect.
His expression is closed.
I excuse myself the first chance I get.
The ladies’ room is quiet and I stand at the marble sink and run cold water over my wrists.
I’ve been doing this since I was fifteen when the world gets too loud.
I look at my reflection.
You’re going to be fine. You’ve handled worse. You can handle this.
I’m not entirely sure I believe it, but the affirmation is part of the process.
The door opens and Emma comes in. She catches my eye in the mirror and stops.
“Oh,” she says, reading my face with those annoyingly perceptive green eyes. “That bad?”
“He,” I grouse, turning off the water, “is the most insufferable, patronizing, deliberately unpleasant person I have ever shared a room with. And I grew up with Leo.”
Emma’s mouth curves.
She comes to stand beside me at the mirror and touches up her lipstick. “He called you princess, didn’t he?”
I look at her, eyebrows furrowed. “He did. How did you know?”
“It’s his go-to,” Emma says, as she presses her lips together and admires her reflection.
“When he wants to get under someone’s skin and he doesn’t want to expend too much effort doing it.
” She drops the tube back in her clutch and shrugs.
“It’s lazy, honestly. He can do much better when he’s motivated.
” She pauses. “I say that as someone who has known him my entire life and loves him despite everything, so take it in the spirit it’s intended. ”
The image of Cillian Brennan as a child is deeply strange to me and I push it away. “He stepped on my foot on the dance floor,” I nearly whine.
“You stepped on his foot first,” Emma corrects, arching a brow at me.
I pause. “He deserved it.”
“Oh, completely,” Emma agrees as she sits down on the nearby bench, groaning with relief. “Cillian deserves a lot of shit right now.”
I look at her sideways. “How are you this composed about him right now?” I ask because I genuinely don’t get it. “He’s—Emma, he chose Connor over you.”
“I know what he did,” Emma says quietly and I hate to see how my normally strong and feisty best friend seems to wither a bit.
“And we’re—” She pauses, biting her lip as she drums her fingers over her large belly.
“It’s complicated. He was my favorite person in that whole family for most of my life but then he told me at my wedding—” She stops and swallows heavily.
When she continues her voice is steady, but I can hear what it’s covering.
“I know why he did it, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. ”
I think about her father at the bar, laughing with a guest, purposefully ignoring his own daughter, which then reminds me of Emma’s wedding. Connor didn’t attend because she’d made choices he couldn’t forgive. But then he’s here. At my wedding.
“Are you okay with your dad being here?” I ask before I can stop myself. “Has your mom even come up to you?”
Emma looks up at me and the hurt that flashes through those eyes pains me before she hides her feelings behind a wall.
“We’ve all made our choices,” she says carefully and my heart clenches at how neutral she sounds.
She’s protecting herself and I wish I could take her pain away. Emma doesn’t fucking deserve this.
“I can’t believe he’s not even said one thing to you,” I say angrily. “And your mom. How could she not talk to you when she came to your wedding and—”
“Val,” Emma says gently and it stops me in my tracks.
She stands up with a slight groan and touches my arm.
She meets my eyes in the mirror. “I know. I’ve—I know.
But tonight isn’t about me and my family drama.
Tonight is about you.” She looks at me carefully.
“And I’d rather talk about that if that’s okay. ”
I take a breath and let the anger sit where it is, unresolved, because it’s not mine to resolve tonight. “He’s awful,” I say, getting back on subject. “Cillian. I really want to take a plate and smash him in the face with it.”
Emma makes a sound that is trying very hard not to be a laugh and mostly failing. “He is currently, yes. To be fair to him—”
“I’d rather not be fair to him,” I respond, a little annoyed Emma is defending him. She’s supposed to be on my side.
“—he is also being forced into a marriage he didn’t choose with a woman his family has spent years treating as the enemy, so—”
“So am I,” I point out. “And need I remind you that the reason for this feud is because your father killed my brother.”
Emma winces at that reminder but continues on.
“My point is that he’s,” she searches for the word, “defensive. The worst version of himself when he’s cornered.
He’s always been like that. He’d rather bite than show you he’s scared.
” She pauses, as if realizing she made an error.
“Not that I’m suggesting he’s scared of you. But he’s also not not—”
“Emma,” I say impatiently, crossing my arms across my chest.
She holds up her hands placatingly. “I’m just saying. Under the insufferable exterior there is a person. I’ve met him. He’s still in there somewhere.” She looks at me warmly. “Give it time.”
I stare at her. “He told me I was a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.”
Emma winces then bites her lip. “Okay, that’s—” She pauses then sighs heavily, shaking her head. “Well, that was shitty of him.”
Finally. “Thank you,” I tell her, pleased that she also sees it the same way I do.
“He really can be terrible,” she admits, a fond smile on her face along with a touch exasperated. It only makes sense if you’ve loved someone since childhood and had that love thoroughly complicated by circumstance. “It’s almost impressive.”
“It’s a talent,” I say bitterly. “A genuine gift.”
Emma laughs, the warm full sound she has when something actually gets her, and I feel my own mouth twitch despite everything.
The laugh is contagious and always has been.
It’s one of the things Leo fell in love with first, I’m pretty sure.
“Give it time,” Emma says again, softer. “I know you don’t want to hear that. But—” She touches my arm briefly. “Leo looked at me the same way, like I was a problem he had to deal with.”
“Leo kidnapped you,” I remind her. “There was passion underneath the terrible decisions. Cillian married me because Connor issued an instruction and Cillian—Emma, he doesn’t even push back. He just does it. Whatever Connor wants. He doesn’t—” I stop.
Emma is quiet for a moment. “You don’t know why he does that,” she says carefully. “What it costs him. What the alternative looks like from where he’s standing.”
I look at her in disbelief. Why is she playing both sides? “You’re defending him,” I say, unable to hide the hurt in my voice.
“I’m—” She pauses, trying to carefully choose her words. “I’m saying there are things you don’t know yet.” She turns back to the mirror and smooths her dress over her stomach. “I’m not saying he’s not being horrible. He absolutely is. All I’m saying is people are usually horrible for a reason.”
Cillian watching Emma for that second before his expression shuttered crosses my mind, along with a version of him that Emma remembers from childhood.
He was someone who was Emma’s favorite, and I think about what it must cost to be who he is now.
Then I remind myself that he called me a spoiled child throwing a tantrum and I feel considerably less charitable.
“I’m not you,” I tell her not unkindly. “I’m not going to—I’m not going to develop feelings because we’re trapped together.”
“Of course not,” Emma agrees, too quickly, mind you. It sounds like she doesn’t believe me at all but is choosing to be nice about it.
I scowl at her. “I mean it.”
“I know you do,” she says, just as serenely.
My scowl sharpens. “Emma.”
She gives me her most innocent look I have ever seen. “I’m just agreeing with you.”
“You’re doing the thing where you agree with me and mean the opposite.”
“I’m ten million years pregnant,” she sighs, “I don’t have the energy for subtext.” She tugs at my arm. “Come on. Leo’s going to come looking for me if I’m gone too long.”
She starts for the door, then pauses with her hand on it, turning back.
“Val. For whatever it’s worth—you’re the strongest person I know, outside of Leo.
Whatever this looks like right now—” She glances briefly at the door, in the direction of the ballroom as if she can see her parents. “You’ll survive it. And so will I.”
There’s a weight underneath those words that has nothing to do with me, and the anger on her behalf burns clean and bright for a moment before I swallow it back down.
“I know,” I say.
She nods.
Then she’s gone and I’m alone in the ladies’ room again.
I look at my reflection, and breathe, before I put myself back together the way I always do—carefully, piece by piece, from the outside in—and I go back out.
The next hour passes in the particular kind of suspended misery that looks, from the outside, like a very lovely party.
I circulate.
I talk to relatives and allies who want to assess the new Santoro-Brennan bridge and find out what she’s like up close.
I say the right things, ask the right questions, and make people feel seen, because that’s a skill I have.
In the meantime, I keep a close eye on Cillian.
He’s talking to Connor near the bar when I drift close enough to observe.
Connor is speaking with authority and Cillian is standing there listening.
Connor says something.
Cillian nods.
Connor says something else.
Cillian’s jaw tightens for less than a second then it’s smooth again.
Connor walks away.
Cillian picks up his drink and stands there alone.
He looks toward Emma’s table again and it’s a quick, involuntary movement of his eyes, gone before anyone who wasn’t watching closely would catch it.
Something moves through his face then he’s back to being stone.