Chapter 1 #2
“Addy,” I start as the acid in my stomach churns and I fight the urge to throw up. “What’s Harrison’s last name?”
“Hayes. Why?”
I hold in the breath of relief as the nausea fades. That isn’t Owen’s last name. It’s a bizarre coincidence, but at least I won’t have to come clean about what we did or make a scene at her wedding.
I shake my head dismissively, and she watches me, her face pinching.
She has the same strong, dark brows and thick brown hair as our mother.
With her lightly tanned skin, she’d fit right in with the Greek family that gave us our last name, even if we have no real connection to any of them.
I, on the other hand, inherited my father’s bright blond hair, or so my mother said when I was little.
I remember resenting that Addy looks so much like Mom when I only got her dark brown eyes.
I spent hours staring in the mirror after she died, like it was a portal to the next life, and if my gaze didn’t stray it would actually be her looking back.
Addy’s lips purse, and I know she’s chewing on the inside of her mouth, a tell she’s had since childhood.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She immediately stops, then sighs. “I just want it all to be perfect. He has this giant extended family, and I haven’t met them yet. What if they don’t like me?” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “What if I lose him?”
I know where the fear stems from. It was all those families over the years who told us they couldn’t afford to keep us, or handle the work of keeping us, or just straight up didn’t want to keep us.
But what she doesn’t realize—or never admits out loud—is that she was never the problem.
Addy was smart, well-behaved, rational to the point of unemotional.
I drove away every family stable enough to keep us long-term, and since the Florida foster system doesn’t separate siblings except in extreme cases, I dragged her right along with me.
I won’t cost her another family.
“How could anyone not love you?” I ask.
Her lips pinch again. “His mom doesn’t.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“She … I don’t know how to explain it. She just kind of ignores me. I can’t break through. This is my chance to change all that. We’ll have a week in North Carolina to prepare wedding stuff and you can help me win her over. You’ll be there? Right?”
My stomach churns over the idea of being away for a week. This isn’t like Addy’s cushy salaried job with paid time off, but she’s looking at me with so much desperation that I already know I’ll take extra shifts over the next few weeks to make it work.
“I’ll be with you the whole time. It’ll be perfect. I won’t let it be any other way.”
Tears fill her eyes. “Promise?”
“Yes. No one can stop the Pappas sisters, right?”
Addy kindly doesn’t correct me, even though we both know the invitation will say Adelaide Fischer, not Adelaide Pappas.
She hooks her pinky through mine and lets out a relieved breath.
“Pappas,” a loud voice echoes through the restaurant, making patrons jump. I jump, too, flying out of my seat. This time, the chair does tip over, smacking into the back of another patron’s chair and earning me a scowl over her shoulder.
My boss, Gordon, barrels over. “My office. Now.”
I glance around at my colleagues, who quickly avert their gazes. Addy grabs my hand but I pull away, giving her a shaky smile before following Gordon.
The door has barely closed when Gordon says, “You’re fired.”
I expected to be scolded for sitting down at one of my tables. Not fired.
“But … but I’ve worked here for over a decade.”
“We both know you’ve been trouble for over a decade, too.”
I refuse to let him see me react, even if his words cut. He’s the worst, but Cibare has been the closest thing to a home, the only constant in my life besides Addy and Vaughn.
I was difficult when I started here at sixteen, an angry kid just looking to save some money for when I aged out of the system.
And, I guess, at seventeen, too. Fine, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty weren’t pretty either.
I’ve always been quick to anger, and spending the last ten years of my childhood moving from home to home only heightened my fight reflex.
I’d have been fired years ago if the owner—Stella—hadn’t taken a liking to me.
But I’d fought like hell to get under control and became the perfect employee.
But in Gordon’s eyes, I’ll always be the sixteen-year-old girl who screamed at a set of parents that if they didn’t want to take care of their kid—who they let wander into the dangerous kitchen—they shouldn’t have had her in the first place.
I lay my hand over my stomach and force in a calming breath from my diaphragm—a coping mechanism from therapist number two set up by foster mom number five.
“What we both know is that I’ve been a great employee. I’ve given my entire adult life to this restaurant, and I think I deserve an explanation.”
“A great employee?” he scoffs, and I bite my tongue to hold back my response. “You think a great employee would sit at a table during their shift?”
I swallow my pride—at great personal cost. “Please, Gordon. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry, but is that worth firing me over?”
Gordon’s lips twist in a deranged smile. He’s getting off on the power, wants to see me beg, and it sets my blood on fire.
“I’ve been telling Stella for years that you don’t pull your weight,” he says, clucking his tongue. A lie, and we both know it. “Sitting down while poor Lindsey’s managing eight tables.”
“Lindsey’s managing eight tables tonight—just like me—because you fired everyone,” I say through gritted teeth.
He shrugs. “The restaurant industry’s tough.”
The fucking audacity. A couple of days after he let go over half the staff, he was bragging to Lindsey about his raise and promising if she said yes, their date would be epic. Gordon’s two specialties—selfishness and sexual harassment.
“If by ‘tough’ you mean full of dicks who fire hardworking staff to give themselves raises, you’re right,” I spit out. “Pathetic.”
He stands abruptly, knocking over the Coke Zero on the edge of his desk. I get a perverse sort of pleasure watching him scramble to right it while the dark brown liquid soaks through his papers.
But the frantic moment fades, leaving him towering over me with a sinister glee in his eyes. “I can tell you I’m of greater value than a bitchy waitress who thinks too highly of herself.”
My eyebrows shoot up my forehead. He wants bitchy? I can give him bitchy. “Not sure why I’m surprised. Useless assholes always put others down to make themselves feel better.”
Gordon’s face turns a satisfying shade of puce. “Get out! If I see you on this property again, I’m going to send your ass to jail where you belong.”
“Don’t worry about that, Gordo,” I say. “I doubt any woman comes back for seconds after an interaction with you.”
His growl of irritation is like a balm to the open wound of losing Cibare. I turn my back and force my head high, letting the back door close behind me with a dramatic final thud.
I’m left in the alley behind the building with nothing but the hole in my heart where Cibare had been. Another home lost because of my temper. Like all those times I picked fights that led to Addy and I being moved again.
The thought of Addy brings me crashing back down to reality.
Addy, still sitting in the restaurant daydreaming about her too-soon wedding.
How am I supposed to help her connect with her new family when I’m a mess who can’t control her temper?
No matter how hard I try, I always end up blowing up my happiness, and nine times out of ten, the blast goes wide enough to hit Addy, too. I refuse to let it happen again.
I can do this. I’ll be the perfect, drama-free maid of honor at the perfect, drama-free wedding.
I’ll get her the family she’s always deserved.