I check the kitchen and the bathroom, then mine and Jax’s room, and then his room. There’s no one here. “It’s okay, kiddo,” I call out, and then turn back to look at Dad’s room again, noticing for the first time what’s missing.
His clothes. His phone charger.
The keys to the only car we have.
Dread claws its way up to my spine—dread just as terrible and carnivorous as standing in a church waiting for a groom who will never come—and I go back into my room and lift up my mattress.
My meager savings—scraped together from working at a café near my school and stuffed into a worn envelope—are gone. I don’t need to look at my banking app to know that my account—shared with my dad—is cleaned out too. The shared account was the very reason I’d needed to stuff money under the bed, in case there came a month when we needed extra to cover rent or food because Dad had spent everything else on booze or bets or worse. It happened regularly enough that I never could build up a healthy reserve, but still, I’d managed to put enough under the mattress to supplement my tuition fees for next semester.
And now there won’t be enough. Not for school, and maybe not for rent either, and oh God. I haven’t just lost Church today, I think maybe...
Maybe I’ve lost everything.
Not just a future with him, but a future at all.
What am I going to do?
Focus. Focus for Jax.
“Is Dad gone?” Jax asks, his voice too solemn for such a sweet boy. “He...left?”
It’s too much. I nod, my chin quavering and my throat aching, and then I sink onto my bed. The white skirts of my wedding dress rustle and fluff around me.
“Do you want a hug?” Jax asks, looking like he needs it more than me.
Openly crying now, I open my arms and draw my little brother into the world’s longest, teariest hug, no longer able to stop the sobs from tearing through my body.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I will be brave. Tomorrow, I will focus.
I’ll unenroll from UCL, I’ll quit volunteering at the British Museum because a resume for a career that needs a graduate degree to get started is now the least of my worries.
I’ll get a job, or two or three. I’ll find us a cheaper flat and buy us good food and make sure Jax is on time to school every day. I’ll be the sister and guardian Jax deserves.
And I will never, ever forgive Church Cason.
But all of that is tomorrow, and right now it’s today, and so I weep. I clutch my brother close and I let every single moment of agony rip through my chest and out of my throat. I give in to every horrible, self-hating thought I have, I curse myself for being stupid and poor and plain, and I curse Church for being perfect and cruel and wealthy enough to send a driver when he couldn’t be bothered to show up himself. I cry until I’m lightheaded and swollen-eyed and exhausted. I cry a thousand tears for every second I stood alone waiting for Church and for every pound note my asshole father stole from me and for every class I won’t get to take.
Tomorrow, I’ll be furious. Tomorrow, I’ll become the icy warrior I’ll need to survive.
But today, when I cry, I cry for a broken heart.
And for a man with dark, dark blue eyes and a voice like smoke and sin.
1
Charley
Four years later
“Stop chatting and go faster on the champagne,” Martin snaps as he shoves by. “They’re drinking it faster than you’re serving it.”
“It’s a gala for celebrities and society twats, what do you expect?” Twyla mutters, rolling her eyes at me and obviously not caring if he sees. She’s a server with Hart Catering like me, but she’s only doing it as a nights-and-weekends gig when she’s not in class, and really, it’s only to prove some kind of point to her parents, who are always begging to send her money. She only needs this job in an abstract sense, and so she tends to get mouthy with Martin The Boss.
Not me. As much as I’d love to give Martin a piece of my mind, I need Hart Catering because it dovetails perfectly with my days working at a supermarket—and I require both to keep paying bills.
Ergo, I keep my eyes down and my mouth shut.