Under the Crimson Sky (Hawthorne Ranch #2)

CHAPTER 1

Summer

The brownies hit the bottom of the trash can with a dull thud, and Mia’s face crumples.

“Sugar is bad,” Kevin snaps, brushing past us like we’re inconveniences instead of his family.

I pull my daughter close, her little hands still dusted with flour, her tears soaking my blouse. The scent of chocolate hangs in the air, warm, sweet, comforting. Everything this house isn’t.

“It’s ok pumpkin, you did nothing wrong do you hear me? Daddy is just mad at mommy, not at you ok?” I smooth her hair.

Mia nods but she doesn’t look convinced.

Twenty minutes later, he walks back into the kitchen, dressed for dinner at my parents’ like he didn’t just make his four-year-old cry.

“I told the cook to stop using sugar and gluten. Mia could have your genes, and it’s better if she learns to eat healthy early on,” Kevin says while fastening his tie. He glances at his watch. “I have an appointment with a client in fifteen minutes, so I’ll meet you at your parent’s place.”

Not a question, an announcement.

I don’t respond, though the urge to throw a shoe at him pulses through my veins.

Kevin wasn’t always… this.

Once, he was my best friend.

Our parents were business partners, practically raising us in the same rooms, the same clubs, the same suffocating social circles where everyone smiled with their teeth and judged with their eyes.

We bonded over hating all of it, two kids hiding behind banquet tables, making fun of the adults we were expected to become.

For years, we were inseparable: same schools, same friends, the same pressure to be perfect heirs to perfect families.

Then sixteen hit, and so did the matchmaking.

“We’re just friends,” we both said.

“That will change,” our parents insisted.

Neither of us had the spine back then to fight the expectations.

Kevin proposed on my eighteenth birthday, public, flashy, orchestrated down to the last camera flash.

Our parents beamed like they’d just merged two empires.

We married that summer, only weeks before I was supposed to start college.

I told myself it was fine, that I could still study, still build a life.

We even got an apartment near campus, just the two of us.

But Kevin changed as soon as we started living together. The more money he made, the more he put distance between us. We used to make fun of the adults, always talking business, always wearing suits. Now he’s exactly like them.

A month into our marriage, two pink lines appeared.

I can still feel the cold bathroom tile under my knees, the way my breath stuttered when I realized my life had just…

shifted. I told Kevin first. He didn’t panic or yell.

He just went blank, quiet in that way that says he’s already somewhere else.

Already planning how this fit into the Masters family narrative.

My parents reacted like I’d delivered them a royal heir. A grandchild with the Masters name? Perfection. Destiny. A headline they could parade around town.

College plans dissolved overnight. I threw myself into baking, one small oven, one tray of cookies at a time.

Flour dusted my hands, sugar coated my cheeks, and the warmth of the kitchen felt like a hug I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.

Each loaf of bread, each pie, each cupcake I decorated became my small rebellion, a tiny act of love and joy in a world that seemed determined to deny me both.

And then Mia was born. Kevin didn’t pick her up. Not once. He stood near the window, talking about quarterly numbers while I held our newborn daughter against my chest. Her tiny fingers curled around mine, anchoring me to a world that finally made sense.

In that moment, everything changed.

Motherhood rewrote my perspective. Every smile, every laugh, every chocolate-stained finger taught me more about love than I’d learned in eighteen years of society’s rules. Mia didn’t care about perfect dresses, flawless behavior, or table manners. She just loved, fully and fiercely.

Time passed. I stayed home with Mia while Kevin graduated and stepped into the Masters empire.

He was rarely home, only appearing at dinners or business events to maintain the perfect couple illusion.

Meanwhile, Mia and I built our own little world, filled with laughter, sugar, and love, and I clung to it like a lifeline.

My chest tightens as I smooth Mia’s hair. “Ready, pumpkin?”

She nods, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Can we make brownies again tomorrow?”

Her voice is small, hopeful.

“Yes,” I whisper, lifting her face so she can see my smile. “We’ll make them again. And we’ll even use colored frosting this time.”

Her eyes brighten. “Okay!”

I help her into her pink dress, the one she twirls in until she gets dizzy. She looks like a miniature burst of sunshine in a house painted entirely in shades of white, black, and grey.

I change quickly in the bathroom, pearls, soft curls, the body-covering dress my mother says is “flattering for my body type,” whatever that means. My reflection looks back at me with tired eyes. A woman trying too hard to be too many things to too many people.

Mia slips her hand into mine as we step out into the hallway.

“Mommy, are we going to the grandparents’ home?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She looks down at her shoes. “Ok.”

My stomach twists with the familiar dread that comes every time we drive to my parents’ house. Their world is polished, curated, immaculate, and I am the fingerprint on the glass.

But Mia squeezes my hand, grounding me.

For her, I’ll walk into that house again.

I’ll smile. I’ll pretend.

I’ll survive.

Because for Mia, I would do anything.

◆◆◆

We arrive at my parents’ estate, a sprawling Southern mansion that looks more like a small kingdom than a home.

White columns gleam in the fading light, manicured lawns stretch endlessly, and a fountain gurgles in the centre of the drive, the kind of wealth that doesn’t whisper; it announces itself.

The butler opens the door, and I take a deep breath before stepping inside, slipping on my over worn mask of composure.

Lately, it’s been cracking, and whenever pieces of my real self peek through, the looks I get could curdle milk.

I glance down at Mia. Her small hand is tucked into mine, her face serious, almost too knowing for an almost four-year-old.

“Everything okay, pumpkin?” I ask softly.

She sighs and nods, too wise for her age. Even she knows this place doesn’t allow laughter. I scrunch up my face in the silliest expression I can manage, and it works. She giggles, a fragile, fleeting sound that makes my chest ache with both love and sorrow.

Then I look up. My mother is standing in the foyer, all sharp angles and judgment.

“Summer, please don’t teach that child your awful mannerisms.”

My smile dies on the spot. “Of course, Mother.” I replace it with my best fake one, the one I’ve worn my whole life, and in my head, I give her the finger.

Let’s get this over with.

I hand our coats to the butler and follow Mother into the sitting room for brandy. Kevin is already there, cigar in hand, laughing with my Father about his latest business conquests. He doesn’t notice me, or maybe he just doesn’t care.

“Summer,” Father says as I slide into the chair beside my husband, “when are you two going to produce a male heir for us?”

He looks at me as though it’s my fault we haven’t.

“Soon, I hope,” Mother adds, as if my body were a calendar she could mark.

“Of course,” Kevin says, wearing the practiced smile of a man who has never had to be small.

I hold back a snort. That’s not going to happen, not when he hasn’t touched me in two years.

Not that I’m complaining. I lost interest the night of our wedding, when he told me to turn the lights off and didn’t notice the tears streaming down my cheeks afterward.

Three minutes. That’s all it took. He fell asleep while I lay awake, crying as I realized I’d signed up for a loveless, lonely life.

We tried a few more times after that, but it felt more like a chore then ‘making love’. And then he gave me the best thing he ever could: Mia.

I glance at her now, fidgeting with the hem of her dress. One day, I’ll give her the freedom she deserves, to get dirty, to laugh, to eat sweets without shame. A life unburdened by perfection.

Karen and her fiancé arrive: tall, thin, blonde Karen, my mother’s favorite, and Thomas, who comes from money and was chosen as strategically for my sister as Kevin was for me.

“Karen!” my parents gush, hopping up to greet them. Karen takes her seat and sneers at me before I can even speak. I nod and sit.

Nobody has ever said it, but the vibes in the room, their faces, the way my mother’s lips turn down when she looks at me, scream it. I am the misfit, the imperfect one, the one who just cannot seem to be what they want me to be.

I have always been chubby, not overweight, just not thin.

My mother made sure I knew it from the age of six.

I tried every diet, every program, every torturous regimen she insisted on.

None of it worked. She loved to remind me that I had inherited my grandmother’s “rotten genes,” her mother-in-law, whom she loathed with a passion.

I spent my life competing with Karen for our mother’s approval and losing. Every single time.

“Summer, why can’t you join a gym like Karen did?” my mother asked when I was sixteen.

So I did. Every second was misery. But I was desperate for her approval.

If I had a penny for every time someone in our society, Kevin included, said, “You have such a gorgeous face. And those eyes. If you could just lose some weight, you would be stunning.” I would have enough money to buy my parents out.

◆◆◆

Dinner is an exercise in polite torture. When dessert comes around, I decline, knowing my mother will diagnose every missing calorie as a moral failing.