by Staci Hart
Again, nothing. No flip-flopping stomach or squeeze in my heart when both had been present dancing with Darcy.
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped out and toward the exit. “Wyatt, I—”
“Wait,” he said quietly. “Wait to answer until I get back. Tonight was a mistake, and I don’t want you to refuse because my timing was terrible. You’re rattled. Darcy does that.”
God, if that wasn’t the truth.
“I’m sorry I showed up. I’m so sorry I caused problems with Liam too. The last thing I want is to see the Darcys, and I definitely don’t want to put you in the middle of it. You know that, right?”
“I do.” I didn’t.
We stopped on the sidewalk as a cab pulled up.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll text you when I get there, okay? And we’ll talk when I get back.”
With a kiss on my cheek and a shared goodbye, he climbed into the cab and rode away.
I didn’t want to talk to him when he got back. I’d much prefer to ghost him, to stop whatever this was without giving him a chance to argue. Because I’d realized his showing up tonight had been engineered by him. For what purpose, I didn’t know. But showing up at a cocktail party with his suitcase smelled like bullshit, and asking me to go steady like we were in middle school didn’t make it smell any better.
But now wasn’t the time to get into that.
Because I needed to face whatever waited for me inside.
17
Control
LIAM
I stood in front of the elevators, staring at the doors for far too long.
I couldn’t figure out what infuriated me more. Wickham’s presence was usually enough. The likelihood that he was going to Atlantic City, not Chicago, maybe. The lie that he hadn’t known what he was walking into. He knew. I’d bet every penny I had, I was so sure. He didn’t come for Laney—he came for some purpose I didn’t yet know.
But I’d find out.
None of those offenses struck me like the sight of her hand in his. Watching them walk to the elevators, her eyes locked on mine until we were cut off by closing doors.
Part of the reason I stood there so long was in an unconscious attempt to will her back to me. I wanted to talk to her, to warn her. To explain who he was and what he wanted. I wanted to protect her from his lies. Because though he’d told her something, I very seriously doubted it was the truth.
Truth wasn’t in Wickham’s nature.
Depending on what he’d told her, she probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. But the words charged through my mind all the same, fighting to get out.
I had forgotten myself completely.
I forced myself to walk away, marching to the bar for a scotch in the hopes it would calm my nerves. A few minutes later, Laney walked back into the party, and the whole of me sighed its relief.
I was struck by the vision, just as I had been when I first saw her tonight. She was blinding in her beauty, wearing a dress black as pitch, threaded with gold, just enough to catch the light every once in a while, gleaming over the curves of her body. I’d never seen her in a dress this short, and coupled with her gold heels, her legs seemed to go on forever. Her face, small and determined as ever, though tonight, her lips were crimson and her eyes lined with smoky kohl. The effect it had on the blue of her eyes was miraculous, an otherworldly shade I could only compare to sapphire. But I’d never seen a gem lit from within, with depthless layers of color that were certain to drown me, if I wasn’t careful.
When she stopped in front of me, I couldn’t read her expression.
“I’m sorry about that. I don’t know why he was here.”
“I do.”
A pause. “Care to share with the class, Mr. Darcy?”
“He wants me to see him. To know he’s with you. That he’s this close to Georgie.”
She folded her arms, her lips flattening in offense. “Nowhere in there did you mention that he might have come for me.”
“I’m sure that was part of it too.”
“Are you really so egomaniacal to think the only possible reason he could have come here was to fuck with you?”
“You don’t know him like I do,” I said.
She shook her head in disbelief. “Wow. You know, Liam, sometimes a spade is just a spade. But you can’t even fathom taking someone at face value, can you?”
“Are you arguing with me because you believe that or because you can’t help but argue?”
“You are unbelievable,” she ground out, but her flush told me I’d pressed a bruise. “What if he did come here for me? What if you’re wrong and he’s telling the truth? Because you don’t know for a fact what his intentions were.”
My jaw was clamped so tight, my teeth ached. The bitter taste of my anger couldn’t be washed away, not even when I kicked back the end of my scotch.
She’d believe what she wanted to believe. She’d hear what she wanted and say what she felt without thinking about anyone but herself. She would disregard me no matter what I said because somehow, against all reason, she trusted Wickham over me.
“If you believe him, you’re a fool.” I set the glass on the bar with a shaking hand, knowing I’d done it again, knowing I’d buried that little sliver of possibility again.
But as I walked away from her, the things I couldn’t say gnashed and snarled in my rib cage.
I scanned the crowd for Georgie but didn’t find her. The party had lost its luster, the grime and dinge of the night no longer covered by the spell of hope. What I wanted was to leave, not to small-talk with Cooper or mingle with everyone. Not to avoid Laney, because there was nothing else to say, not tonight. I wanted quiet. Solitude. A space where I could think, and standing in a bar with Cardi B on blast was not that space.
I was so in my head, I didn’t notice Caroline sidle up next to me with a scotch of her own in her hand.
“God, these Bennets are terrible. Your aunt is right. We’ll be better off when we can be rid of them. Laney bringing Wyatt? I mean, how cruel could she be?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“She didn’t know he was coming.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yes,” was all I said, because forming sentences over ten words was impossible.
“They’re just so tacky,” she said, sneering a little. “Even this party. It’s like a misfit prom, not a cocktail party. You can tell who’s with whom just by looking.”
“Who cares, Caroline?”
“I care. Mingling with them is almost insulting. But those Bennets are the worst kind of interlopers.” She leaned in. “The kind you never see coming. Like that Jett boy kissing your sister behind the bar.”
Caroline kept talking, but I couldn’t hear her over the ringing in my ears.
“Where are they?” I ground out.
And she smiled like a cat with a mousetail dangling from its lips. “Just behind the bar, down the hallway.”
I was off before she finished, my thoughts like a hail of bullets in my head. Why Georgie had done it —and after she’d promised me she wouldn’t—was a mystery I was about to solve. And here, at a company function, where assholes like Caroline were watching her. Why now? Why tonight? Or had it been going on under my nose?
I didn’t even know if the answers mattered as I flew down the hallway behind the bar where the bathrooms were. Several hallways spurred off the main drag. I found them in the very last one.
They were caught in an embrace, their kiss oblivious to my presence, and the sight of her pinned to the wall by his hips broke some crucial tether in me, letting something loose that was better left chained.
I didn’t realize I’d stormed toward them, not until my hand was on Jett’s closest shoulder. With a shove, he stumbled backward almost too hard to catch himself. But when he did, he rose like a wave, and I drew myself up to my full height, barely hearing Georgie calling my name.
“Stop!” she shouted, putting
herself between us.
The connection of her hands on my chest snapped me back.
“Liam! Jesus!” she said. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? What the fuck is this, George?” I motioned to Jett, who looked as ready to beat the shit out of me as I was him.
“It’s exactly what the fuck you think it is,” she shot, pushing me when she realized I was still locked on Jett. “Liam!”
I shifted my gaze onto her at an equal intensity. To her credit, she barely flinched.
I gestured to them. “This? This isn’t happening.”
“Listen, Liam—” Jett started, and I took a step toward him, only stopped by Georgie’s full body weight.
“No you listen,” I snapped. “I don’t think you realize what kind of danger you’re putting her in. Her job. Her standing. Our aunt—our last living relative and the owner of the fucking company—can’t even stand your sister being in the building, never mind if she finds out a Bennet is fucking her niece.”
“Liam. That is enough,” Georgie yelled, pushing me with enough force that although it didn’t budge me, it got my attention. The fury on her face was set off by the sparkling tears in her eyes. “You promised to trust me. You swore you’d try.”
“And I never should have made a promise I knew I couldn’t keep.”
“I cannot believe you.”
“That makes two of us.”
The words hit their mark. Jett squared up again when he saw the rise of emotion in her. I would have respected him for it if I wasn’t an inch away from turning him inside out.
“This ends,” I commanded, addressing Jett. “Whatever it is, it stops before you both end up under Catherine’s thumb. Because if you think I’m bad, you have no idea what she’ll do to you.”
Georgie shook her head at me, her face shifting from rage to bald anguish. “Fuck you,” she said, the words trembling, soft. But they cut all the same.
I watched her take Jett’s hand, he and I leveling each other as they passed me. When they reached the mouth of the hallway, she turned and met my eyes.
“You’re not stopping me. Not this time, Liam. This time, it’s all me.”
A heartbeat, and she was gone.
I stared at that empty space for a long time, the distant thump of bass the only sound. I’d walked through the door tonight in control, but when I sank onto a stack of cases of beer and dropped my head into my hands, I had none. Not over my sister. Not over Laney or Wickham. Not over anything in my life that mattered or meant anything.
I’d lost it all.
And I didn’t know how I’d get it back.
18
Hello, Goodbye
LANEY
I’d never wished for a hangover more than I did that morning.
At least if I’d had a hangover, there would have been a chance I wouldn’t remember last night. And if I’d happened to remember, at least my outsides would’ve matched my insides, which by all accounts were miserable.
When Liam had looked at me with such contempt in his eyes and told me what a fool I was, the pain and humiliation hit me like an open palm. Even though I believed he was wrong about what he’d said to me—and how he’d said it—the truth of what he thought of me hurt so much worse than I could have imagined. Maybe because something had shifted between us over the last week, and the tilt had slid me in his direction. Maybe because I’d caught a glimpse of something in him I wanted to unearth.
Maybe because I wanted him to see something more in me.
But I was a fool, and he was omnipotent—same as it ever was.
I left the second Liam gave me his back, too upset to pretend. Too proud to let anyone see my angry tears. Too wounded for anything but retreat.
I’d just washed my face for bed when the door opened, and Jett and Georgie tumbled in, wrapped up in each other like frantic flames. I’d stopped in the hallway, blinking at them to make sure of what I was seeing. They were well into the room before they noticed me and parted, panting. After a brief overview of what Liam had done, they excused themselves, taking off hand in hand for his bedroom.
And I went to mine with a fresh wave of fury at Darcy.
I’d wished I’d been drunk enough to pass out then too.
But I wasn’t. Emotion had sharpened me to a razor’s edge as I imagined the scene. Liam in a rage. Jett in defense. Georgie between them. I was surprised no one had thrown a punch—as angry as Liam had been about Wyatt, I suspected he had more steam behind him than Jett and Georgie had built on their own. I wanted to believe some of his blowup on Jett had been misplaced, and maybe a bit of it was. But Darcy had been openly defied, and by my encouragement.
Which meant at least some of this mess was my fault.
What little sleep I got was plagued with anxiety dreams. In one, I was trying to get to the airport, but I kept forgetting things. Like my passport. Then my tickets, because in my dream, there was apparently no such thing as the internet. In another, I couldn’t get to the De Bourgh offices for a meeting with Liam. Something was always in my way—a train broke down on the tracks, a traffic jam stopped my cab indefinitely, lights wouldn’t turn green so I could cross the street, my shoes broke. Not one—both heels snapped like chopsticks within five steps of each other.
Between bursts of sleep, I’d tossed and turned, my brain clicking on the instant I rolled over. My thoughts had cycled on a loop, starting with how happy Georgie and Jett had looked despite the fight with Liam. Wyatt showing up at the party, Liam confronting him. Liam dancing with me. Liam telling me I was an idiot. What Liam would do when he found out Georgie had spent the night here with my brother. They were literally the only good thing to come out of last night, and even that was tainted by Darcy.
Basically, all I thought about was Liam. He was the wind licking the waves, and I was in a boat with no oars, riding the swells made by his presence.
He made me feel helpless, not only to the vortex of his mercurial behavior, but to my heart. Because try as I might, I couldn’t keep that part of me safe from the tumult. I had no defenses, not when it came to him.
And that made me very, very mad.
When the sun was high enough to change my room from a wash of purples to cheerful golds, I gave up the fight, peeling myself out of bed with coffee as my only motivation. Today’s plan was dinner with our family, and I was glad I had a date with Mom in the greenhouse. Sitting around here thinking about Darcy wasn’t going to help me sort things out. A distraction would give me some distance, which I desperately needed. Mostly because Liam was impossible to escape. He’d infiltrated every corner of my life except my family, and I’m sure he had designs to ruin that for me too.
I heard Jett and Georgie talking for a while, nothing but muffled intonations floating into the living room as I finished my first cup of coffee. When my second was in hand, I sat in the breakfast nook and stared out the window at the fiery treetops of Central Park, the burning auburn of fall. The last bit of color before the gray of winter settled in. Soon, it would be a field of skeletons, a colorless wash of sleeping trees waiting for spring. And I wondered where I’d be when the last leaf fell. Because change was upon me too, though I didn’t know what it was. I could feel the transition, feel myself pushing against the confines of it.
Jett’s bedroom door opened, and out they came, him in sleep pants and Georgie in her dress from last night, heels hanging on her fingers. And my heart ached with happiness at the joy on their faces.
I recognized the rightness of them just as I’d seen it in my brothers and their partners and with my parents. It was rare—that unbreakable click of belonging. The indescribable sense that you’d just seen something monumental in two people’s lives, and neither would be the same.
I smiled and stood, heading for the coffeepot. “Morning. Coffee?”
Georgie’s smile fell, her face softening with longing. “I wish I could. But I have to face the music.” She held up her phone, which I assumed was stacked with angry te
xts and missed calls from her brother.
Jett didn’t look any happier at the reminder she was heading into the mouth of the beast. “I asked her to stay. Face him at work tomorrow. But she said—”
“He’ll come find me, and this time, we’re not going to get out of it without violence,” Georgie said. “Best to just get it over with.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Listen. Let him yell. Yell back. And then do whatever I want,” she said.
“You make it sound so easy,” I joked.
“I’m under no illusions, trust me.” She sighed, turning to face Jett, and I might as well have disappeared.
The way they looked at each other made me feel so much, a blossom of pain opened up in my chest. He took her small face in his hands and kissed her, and when the kiss broke, he pulled her into his chest. For a long moment, he held her there with his chin on her crown and his eyes closed. His brow was creased with worry, and I realized he didn’t want to let her go. Not from his arms, not from our apartment. Because even though she’d said she’d do what she wanted, we all knew enough of her brother to know it would never be that simple.
But eventually, Georgie stepped back. Gathered her things. Jett walked her to the door and kissed her goodbye, and this time when my heart ached, it was with sadness.
When the door was closed, he sighed through his nose, eyes to the ground and hand scrubbing his hair. I extended a fresh cup of coffee, which he took, and silently, we sat at the table and stared at the park without seeing much of anything.
“This is bad,” he finally said.
Confused, I swiveled my face in his direction. “Nothing about that looked bad.”
“Not me and her. Her and him.”
I didn’t disagree. I never could lie, especially not to Jett. “She’s a grown woman. He can’t stop her from seeing you.”
