“That’s not for you to say.” I rejected his sentiment with a defiant brusqueness. “Do you think you deserve me, if that’s what you’re after?”
No longer rigid, he showcased his signature confident and subdued demeanor, returning to the man I had gotten to know over the past few months. “I don’t think anyone truly deserves you.”
“Braedan? Keaton?” My mother called from the dining room and startled me out of my descent into a bottomless cavity, blackened with polarizing emotions. “We’ll give you plenty of time alone after dinner. I don’t want you two to be stuck with a cold entrée.”
Quickly checking the mirror above the mantel, I adjusted my makeup with my fingertips, concealing the evidence of Braedan’s strong influence over me.
Braedan headed toward the formal dining area. I followed long after him, and immediately paused at the scene greeting me inside the white on white formal room. Braedan rounded the table and pulled out my chair, beating me to my seat. It brought to mind a similar act during our private dinner in his room at the Rebirth compound. He shocked me by revealing pieces of a character he’d never exemplified in front of an audience.
I never discovered the purpose of the dinner, and it felt out of place with his prior actions toward me. It seemed more odd since shortly after, Noah gave me the only positive experience I could hold onto, while residing in a place that obliterated what remained of me.
All the things Braedan had said to me that night had returned to make sense of the man in front of me. At the time, I thought he was manipulating my mind, but I couldn’t have been sure. Was he really clueless to the morals of right and wrong?
On the other hand, Braedan was convincing as tyrannical leader of a sex cult. So convincing I believed he was the master of all when the man I clung to for safety—Noah—was truly the man responsible. I wondered if Braedan, like everyone else, became Noah’s puppet. Was every action Braedan took at Rebirth adhering to a script he was given by Noah?
Too many contradictions and nuanced statements left me feeling distressed. I escaped Rebirth only to run to the waiting arms of who could’ve arguably been the worst of the two brothers: Noah.
I sat in the seat offered and gave Braedan a pleasant thank you. My attention never left him as he moved to the other side of the table to sit directly across from me.
“Braedan, where are you originally from?” my father asked, taking more joy in the bourbon in his glass than my mother’s “prepared” meal.
“I grew up in a place outside of Bruce, South Dakota.” Braedan appeared at ease with the question. “My parents died when I was twenty-three.” The sorrow in his admission reached out to grasp the piece of me that held on to what we once had, and I felt what he felt: enveloped in sadness.
Instinctively, I wanted to reach out to him and soothe away the pain. I pressed my lips together, stifling the need to comfort him.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” My mother put on a face of sympathy as she pouted.
“I miss them every day.” Braedan was calm in his sentiments, but something in his eyes drew me. Pain rested behind them and pointed to a cause beyond the loss of his parents.
I couldn’t shake the ideas cluttering up my mind; his parents had done something to him, and it wasn’t what I was told by Nadine and Noah—it was something deplorable.
“My husband’s parents are both alive,” my mother informed Braedan. “My parents passed when Keaton was a child. I know how awful it must be. Especially since you lost them when you were so young.”
“I think it would’ve been harder if I had been a child.” Braedan thumbed his untouched glass of wine. “The vacancy their deaths left, gets a little fuller every year.”
“Does it?” My words spilled forward without my permission. Remembering my friend Sonja, I couldn’t help myself. We’d missed time we could’ve spent together because I was afraid. I abandoned her, and she forgave me. She gave her life to save mine by being fearless. I could only hope to live up to what she wanted for me and become a sliver of the incredible person she always was.
“Do you remember what I said to you, Keaton?” Braedan spoke as though we were the only two people in the room. “Honor her memory, don’t lament over it. Over time, it will get easier for you, too.”
My mother leaned over and touched Braedan’s shoulder with a sullen smile. “We should change the subject.”
His glossy hazel eyes spoke wordless statements of empathy as I swept the tears from my cheeks. His fists clenched as they rested on the table, fighting against the unknown. His eyes were steady and seemed less than inclined to leave sight of me until I gave him a silent indication that I was okay.
“And where did you go to school?” my mother asked, pulling Braedan and me out of a world made for two.
“The name isn’t worthy of mentioning.” His chin pointed to my mother, but his gaze had trouble following. “It was a school set up specifically for the children in the community.”
My mother’s usual straight posture curved at the mention. “Did you grow up in a very strict household?”
“Very,” Braedan answered. “My father’s life was the church where he served as pastor—he was also the leader of the community. Attending service without fail three times a day and five times a week was a requirement he and many others reinforced. Bible school was mandatory shortly after general education—which was another version of Bible school. I became a Sunday school teacher at fourteen and it continued for two years before I began courses online for college.”
“You sound like a perfect angel, Mr. Michaels,” my mother intoned.
On a sip of my water, I choked and brought the attention of the entire table onto me. “I’m sorry,” I stated into my glass of water. “I’m still not feeling well.”
My mother grew tense as she sat in her cream brocade wingback chair, looking me over with concern contorting her face. “Run and get the pills from my bedroom.”
“I’ll take them after dinner. I’m fine.” I tried to focus on my barely touched food. The magnetizing pull of Braedan’s focus on me made it impossible.
“I’m not a saint, Keaton.” Braedan’s lush lashes darkened his eyes. “Not many of us are. All we can do is atone for our sins. As for what my environment was like”—his regard returned to my mother—“I wasn’t aware at the time. We called our small neighborhood a community. Men of a certain age were known as fathers, and the women were considered to be mothers to all the children.
“Every member under the age of eighteen was considered brothers or sisters to one another—no matter who their real parents were. I thought it truly was a community for a very long time. But now?” He glanced back at me. “I was raised in a cult.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was lying or telling the truth. Nothing in his expression raised flags of alarm. Noah rarely spoke about his family. Nor did he ever seem inclined to share any tidbits outside of what I was told by others when we were at Rebirth.
I excused Noah’s secretive nature about his past by thinking it was too painful for him to share all of it. Braedan being here, disclosing things that might’ve been true about both brothers’ upbringings, made me question what I assumed of Noah’s past.
No longer feeling well enough to sit across from him and placate my parents, I pushed my chair back and steadied myself on the reflective surface of the bleached and heavily lacquered cherrywood table, preparing to leave.
My mother jolted out of her seat and hurried around the table to approach me. “Keaton, why don’t you help me get the dessert?” Taking my arm, she guided me into the kitchen.
After she closed the door, she darted around the kitchen, slamming dishware down on the marble counter hard enough to shatter it. Somehow, she didn’t manage to crack a single piece of her treasured china.
She stabbed at the pie, set to cool on the kitchen island, with a cake knife and cut jagged lines into the crust. “What happened between you two? Why are you suddenly giving Braedan such a dif
ficult time?”
I gripped the edge of the island and stared at the designs in the marble as I tried to hold it together.
“Keaton?” Her voice pulled me to stand upright and reply.
“I’m not giving him a hard time.”
“Don’t play games with me, baby girl. I know what you’re doing. You’re pushing him away for a reason I can’t fathom.” She plated a crumbling heap of pie and slid it across the counter toward me. “Despite his upbringing inside a cult, he’s made a name for himself. He’s of a good stature.
“Do I need to remind you of how much he saved this family from the vultures otherwise known as the media and the horrible man who spread lies about you and took Sonja away from the world? What about how he foiled another kidnapping? I wouldn’t be in the running if he hadn’t made things possible for you—for us. I'm not sure what changed between you two, but you have to work it out. He’s perfect for you.”
“He’d be the perfect addition to the family for your campaign,” I muttered, swirling the gelled apples around the plate with my finger.
With her eyes narrowing into slits, she focused on me instead of cutting another piece of pie. “I don’t have to tell you how finely the media, the party, and investors comb through me and everyone associated with me. Victoria vetted him and he came up absolutely clean. Noah on the other hand? The monster who scarred up the body I blessed you with and tried to steal you away from us again? We both know how uncouth and unclean his past is.” Staring at the knife, she shook her head as though she realized it was the wrong utensil.
She dropped the cake knife onto an empty plate and exhaled. “He’s a gorgeous man who will give you beautiful babies and is absolutely smitten with you. I can see it in his eyes every time he looks at you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he knew you in a past life. There’s so much in those eyes of his. Stop letting grief and past experiences allow you to push this nice man away. Men like him only come along once in a lifetime.”
I thought I shuddered inwardly. Given the expression on my mother’s face, it was apparently physical and very dramatic. “Mom, and I’m saying this with love, you thought Gregory was a nice guy. You thought Noah was perfect for me after you met him in Quebec City.”
She huffed and threw her hands on her hips. “I’m not pretending to be perfect, Keaton. Let me remind you, I never pushed you to originally date any of those men.”
“Of them all, you hated Reese.”
“I don’t have it in my heart to hate anyone, or at least I never used to. But Noah? If I could get my hands on him, you would see the extent of my hatred for him.”
“I want to help you have whatever you want,” I conceded. “I don’t want to be the weak link in what it takes to get you where you want to go. I just…would rather not have to be with someone to get you there.”
“It’s how politics works, Keaton.” Her voice shook with emphasis and slight annoyance as she gestured toward me. “And I admit I was wrong about the men before. I feel different about this one. I haven’t felt this little patter in my heart since I met your dad.” She balled her fingers and placed them over her heart. “He’s the one for you. I can feel it. I’ve never seen a man look at you the way he does. Not one.” She commenced to cutting the pie into neater slices. She paused and looked at the knife. Shaking her head in dismay, she reached into the drawer of the kitchen island and retrieved a pie knife.
“And I see the look on your face when he's around, too.” She simpered with an unusual amount of coyness. “I’ve watched you two when you thought you were alone in the sitting room. There’s so much passion and emotion between the two of you.”
The instant I had a rebuttal on my lips, to remind her of what she said about Noah when she first met him, she interrupted me. “With the way the therapist failed at her job to help you and his history with being in a cult—possibly like the one you were in—fate brought him here. And did you see the way his sports jacket fit him? Oh, your father used to have a gorgeous body like that once.”
My cheeks began to heat. I fought against showcasing a smile and lost. “Mom,” I whined, mildly embarrassed.
“I’m old, it doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes.”
Putting them through months of agony where I lived on the streets and was later stolen away to North Dakota was partially to blame for what I felt compelled to do. I could never rid myself of feeling like I had to make it up to them because I distrusted their ability to protect me and made them worry over me.
I looped my arms around my mother as I stood behind her and rested my chin on her shoulder. “You’re not old, Mom. You are ageless and still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“There’s my baby girl.”
I swallowed hard, having trouble solidifying my decision to make a promise to her. “If I make appearances with him at events until your campaign is over, would it make you happy?”
“Oh, baby girl.” Swiveling around, she grasped my hands and kissed them like she used to when I was five years old and overly clumsy. “It would make me happy to see you happy again.” She held my face in her delicate, soft hands. “You can tell me anything, Keaton. Anything.”
I closed my eyes, shutting out the memories I hid away in the lightless pieces of my mind: My chest against the desk. My eyes welling up with tears as Shiloh viciously assaulted me. His evil words looped inside my ears—words to ensure I was hurt, demeaned, and attacked. The visions used to only include Shiloh, because I was once able to excuse Noah’s behavior. This time there weren’t any excuses. Noah’s brutal hand and poisoned words were heavily featured in my waking nightmare.
My mother reached up and blotted the tears from my cheeks. “When you’re ready, I’ve found a better therapist for you. I’ve been assured she’ll definitely be able to help you.”
My father peeked his head in the doorway of the kitchen. “Sorry to interrupt. Our guest is leaving.”
“So soon?” Disappointment etched itself all over my mother’s gorgeous face. She quickly wrapped up a few slices of pie. “See him out, would you, Keaton?” She shoved the covered plates at me and shuffled me on my way.
I met Braedan at the front door while he was in the middle of pulling it open. He turned to me with his hand clutching the brass doorknob. “There’s no need for you to see me off.”
I looked over my shoulder at my smiling parents. Placing my attention back on him, I said through my teeth, “I kind of have to.”
Without a coat, figuring I wouldn’t have to walk far, I stepped out of the door and down the steps, striding along the sidewalk with Braedan while keeping a comfortable distance away from him. The street lights illuminated the pitch black night.
“I don’t want you to walk any farther without a jacket.” White clouds of condensation clouded his features. “I’m parked in a garage several blocks away.”
I glanced over my shoulder back at the Victorian row home lined up with others in variant shades of red brick, cream, and white. Standing on the stoop, my parents watched us and waved.
Reaching the fourth house down, I stopped my stride, ensuring my parents could spy me.
“Are they always this way?” Braedan moved to stand in front of the view of my mother and father.
“They weren’t this bad before I was kidnapped.” Cold and fear assaulted my body with its frigidness. Receding from him, I clutched the pie in my trembling hands. I fought against the chattering of my teeth. “They are scared it’s going to happen again. You were right in what you said to me at Rebirth. Losing the things you might’ve taken for granted makes you appreciate them more.”
“I was reading a script, Keaton. I didn’t believe more than half of anything I said to you.”
My gaze wandered off to the cars parallel parked along the narrow street. I failed to make my mind follow. It was too interested in the purpose and the practicality of everything surrounding Braedan’s reappearance. How had he survived? Why was he here? Was the history he disclosed
to my parents really the truth? I had many questions but hadn’t yet figured out how to receive the answers.
“What you’d refer to as dates—categorized as mate-searching in my community—were always chaperoned by my mother or father. That magnified by a thousand”—he pointed back in the direction of the front of my parents’ house—“was my reality for a very long time.”
“If you really grew up in a cult, how were you or Noah able to attend a prestigious Catholic school?” I asked, leaning back on the railing lining the stairs leading up to a neighbor’s home.
“Prestigious and Catholic?”
“You claimed it was venerable and Catholic.”
“I attended school in my community. It might’ve been venerable to a town with the population of two hundred who were all a part of the cult. Noah always had the best. The schools my parents sent him to were always private Catholic military boarding schools.” His dense eyelashes made his hazel eyes merely slits. “If you are trying to apply veracity to anything my brother said to you about me, you’ll fail.”
“If I believe you and what you said today, you were also a liar.” The winter wind kicked up a frigid chill. Shivering violently, I threw my arm across my chest to shield myself from the bitter cold.
He stepped forward and I sidestepped to stand apart from him. Taking the plate of pie from my hands, he set it down on the stoop. He slipped off his sports coat and placed it on my shoulders. “You need it more than I do.” Holding it closed across my breasts with his hands, he tugged, bringing us closer. He bowed forward and brushed his lips across my hairline.
I could barely breathe. My heart thumped at such a violent pace my chest burned. Reality shocked my brain and pulled me back into a truth I wanted to ignore. I wanted to believe this was all a bad dream and the man standing before me wasn’t the man I’d fallen for. “But you’ll be cold.”
Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3) Page 3
