A tear slipped down her cheek, and before I could think about it, I reached out and wiped it away with my thumb.
I’d been right. That same shock. That same stutter of my heart.
It didn’t feel quite as terrifying as it had that first time.
Then because she was staring at me with so much vulnerability, and because she seemed so sad, and because I wanted so much in that moment to be the person who fixed everything for her, and because I’d never had anyone look at me like she did, and because her skin was so soft under my thumb, I trailed it down her cheek and traced her jawline.
“That’s not love,” I said, softer than anything I’d said so far in our whispered conversation, but with more conviction. Which was saying something, because I didn’t have the slightest clue what love was, but I knew it wasn’t that. “That’s not—”
Another student came around the far end of the aisle, her eyes searching through the rows for a specific book.
My hand fell as Julianna instantly backed away from me, putting distance between us.
I hadn’t realized we’d been standing that close until the foot separating us felt too far apart. I hadn’t realized how good she smelled or how her bottom lip stuck out when she frowned, how it begged to be...
“It’s my senior year, okay?” she whispered, her eyes glancing cautiously toward the student. “I’m so close to getting out of here for good. Six months, and I turn eighteen. Then I’m gone. Please, don’t fuck it up by stirring shit now.”
At another time, I might have thought it was an unfair request. She wasn’t the one in his office every week, and if she’d really suffered at his hand in the past, then she had to know what a terrible thing it was she was asking.
Or I might have realized that I had other options. I could run away. I’d already turned eighteen in October, and even if Stark had the intention of paying for my college, I might have decided that it wasn’t worth another six months of abuse.
But right then, all I could think about was the way my thumb was still burning from the touch of Julianna’s skin and the trust she tried to hide in her eyes and the way that getting the chance to stand this close to her felt worth any price.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, storming off before she could stop me or ask any other impossible favor, terrified that next time, the only answer I’d be capable of giving her was yes.
Ten
Jolie
“...And I’m thankful to have a husband who supports and provides for us like he does. And I’m especially grateful that he’s made it possible to spend this holiday with my son, Cade…”
I was only half listening to Carla’s gratitude spiel and was busy concentrating on what version of I’m thankful for my father I’d give this year. It was the only reason he made us play this game of Go Around the Table and Be Grateful, so he could hear praise heaped on him. For years, it had just been me and him on Thanksgiving, and I was having a hard time getting past what I really wanted to say, which was I’m grateful to finally not have to bestow all the compliments myself.
There were other things I was grateful for. Surely.
Careful not to be too obvious about it, I shifted my gaze from Carla to Cade, and my heart stumbled when I found him already looking at me. His expression was stone, but I caught his quick eye roll over his mother’s profuse speech and found myself biting back a smile.
“Oh, is it my turn?” he said, quickly looking away from me to my father.
I hadn’t even noticed the pause in conversation.
My father’s irritation was apparent before he said a word. “It is.”
“Sorry about that, sir. I wasn’t sure of the order. Let’s see...” He was getting better at kissing ass, which was admirable, and hands down it was better for him to stay in line and keep his true self hidden.
But it also made me sad.
I liked his true self. I wanted to know more of it.
“I’m thankful for this food, obviously,” he said. “My mom’s a great cook.”
“And for the person who bought it for us,” Carla coached.
He ignored her. “I’m particularly grateful for it this year since I didn’t get to have it last year.”
I had to pinch my thigh so I wouldn’t laugh. He still got those digs in where he could, often to his detriment.
Thankfully, my father hadn’t seemed to notice or didn’t care since it hadn’t been aimed at him.
“Oh, and I’m really grateful for the drama trip tomorrow. It’s super cool of Ms. Stacey to arrange an opportunity to spend a night in New York and for our headmaster to approve it.” Cade always found a way to avoid addressing my father. He refused to call him Dad, and that was pretty much the only thing my father accepted besides sir.
But that wasn’t what had my attention. “Cade’s going on the drama trip?”
Dad’s eye sparked in that way it always did when he knew he’d upset me. I’d learned a long time ago that he liked me better unhappy, and I often performed that emotion just to stay on his good side.
These days, I rarely let him see any real pain he’d caused, but I’d been too surprised by this hurt to shield it in time.
With a slight smile, my father admonished me. “Wait your turn, Julianna. Cade isn’t finished yet.”
“Actually, I kind of—”
I stepped on top of his muttering. “Why does Cade get to go on the drama trip?”
The smile faded from my father’s lips. “Julianna. You’re being rude.”
It was a tone I recognized, and usually I was better at heeding the warning. “He said he’s done, which means it’s my turn, and I’d be grateful to know why Cade gets to go, and I don’t.”
“This isn’t the time to discuss this, Julianna.” No, he wanted to discuss it later, when we were alone. When he could punish me immediately for every word that came out of my mouth.
I didn’t know exactly what it was that made this battle worth fighting versus every other battle that I ignored, except that it had to do with Cade. Maybe it had been easier to accept that I was treated differently when I was the only child at the school from the Stark household. Or maybe it was because his going was more in my face than the usual extracurricular activities I’d been kept from.
Or maybe it was because I knew Amelia was going too, and thinking of him staying overnight in the city made my stomach turn to stone.
Whatever the reason, I pressed on. “You said it wouldn’t be appropriate. Remember? That there was ‘too much of an opportunity for corruption,’ and that you ‘couldn’t risk allowing a representative of the Stark name to be put in that environment.’ You treat him like he’s your son in every other situation. Nothing against you, Cade, but what’s different this time?”
“No offense taken,” Cade said a bit too cheerfully. I had a feeling he liked someone else being the dissenter for once.
“Is it because he’s a guy? Or because you don’t care what happens to him in a corrupt environment? Or because you just like seeing me miserable?”
Carla fidgeted at my side. “Julianna…” she cautioned.
“If you must know,” my father said over her—he hated when she tried to play peacemaker, preferring to be the one controlling emotions. “Carla signed the permission form without asking me.”
“Right. That was me,” she said, taking the blame.
Oh.
That’s what had been behind her squirming. I saw it now—her downcast eyes. It had been an argument between the two of them, and I felt a little guilty for bringing it up, except that it didn’t explain why Cade was still going. Why hadn’t my father overridden her permission?
He told me before I’d decided whether or not I was going to ask. “She understands her mistake, and to make up for it, she’s agreed to go as one of the chaperones. If Cade gets out of line, the fault will be Carla’s.”
Wow. I didn’t want to be in her position. Even if Cade behaved the entire time, my father would find a way to be angry wit
h his wife. She was set up to fail.
Which, of course, was her punishment. I wondered if she realized that too.
It didn’t do any good feeling sorry for her. Her bed had been made, and there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to take advantage of it. “If Carla’s going, then the problem is solved! She can chaperone me as well as Cade.”
Mostly Cade, though. She could keep him from sneaking out of his room to be with Amelia.
“No,” my father said. As expected. “I’m not going to put that much on Carla.”
“I really don’t mind—” she began.
“It’s too much responsibility for you.” Coming from someone else, it might have sounded like he was only looking out for his wife. From my father, it was clear to everyone that he didn’t believe she could handle it. That he wouldn’t even give her the opportunity to prove she could.
I wasn’t especially fond of my stepmother, but we did share an unspoken camaraderie. The only two women in a traditional household—it was impossible not to be somewhat bonded. “She could handle it,” I said, breaking one of the most important of my father’s rules—no ganging up on him. “I wouldn’t give her any trouble at all.”
“I said no.”
It was past the point of when I should have dropped it.
Still, I tried another of his favorite tactics: flattery. “You know what, Daddy? You should come too! Make it a family trip. You’re so committed to your work and to us. When do you get a break? You deserve a—”
“I said no!” The table shook from the force of his fist against it. “Cade and Carla will leave as planned in the morning, and while they are gone, it seems you and I will need to have a lengthy discussion about your behavior today.”
My stomach sank, taking my whole body with it. It had been a while since I’d had to suffer through “a lengthy discussion.” I’d gotten so incredibly good at following the rules, and having Carla and Cade around had given my father other targets. With the two of us alone, it would be especially bad.
My fault. I’d known better. I shouldn’t have pushed.
I couldn’t swallow past the ball in my throat to offer an apology, though, and I knew he was waiting for one.
He only gave it a few seconds before lashing out again. “You’ve ruined Thanksgiving, Julianna. I don’t even want to hear what you’re grateful for now, and the food is getting cold. Pass the yams, Carla. Hopefully, the cooking will salvage the meal.”
I tried to be thankful that I’d at least gotten out of the torture of that speech, but I knew it was another mark against me. Another thing I’d be “talked to” about this weekend. It was hard not to agree with him—I had ruined Thanksgiving. Not that the day was all that special to begin with. There wasn’t any day in this house that was special. There were just days that were easier to survive than others.
Today was looking like an “other.”
Heavy silence shrouded us for the rest of dinner. The cooking, it turned out, was not good enough to salvage anything. Not for me, anyway. Everything tasted the same, none of it very good, and soon I was moving things around on my plate more than I was putting them in my mouth. In the quiet, the rhythmic tick-tock of the grandfather clock sounded loud, boring into my head until I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t the clock at all, but the ticking of a bomb hidden deep inside me, getting closer and closer to going off.
The second my father put down his fork, I jumped up. “I’ll start cleanup.”
I gathered my dishes and Carla’s—she was busy loading my father up with a second plate, which thankfully I wasn’t required to sit through—and headed into the kitchen, but not before Cade jumped up as well. “I’m done too.”
“You aren’t going to eat more?” Carla sounded as hurt about this as if he’d turned down a hug. “It’s Thanksgiving!”
“Saving room for pie,” he said, then the door shut behind me, and I didn’t hear anything else until he was pushing into the kitchen with his own dishes. “Thank God that meal is over. How about adding that to my gratitude list?”
I feigned a laugh, still too upset to give him anything sincere, and started in on the dishwasher. It was my nightly chore to load. Cade’s chore was to help his mother clean up the table and then take out trash, and later he’d put the dishes away. Before he’d arrived, I’d been in charge of all of it and was generally happy with how the jobs had been divvied up, even if I found it a bit sexist.
Except it was a holiday.
Which meant we’d used a lot of cooking dishes plus the china. And that meant handwashing the china since it wasn’t dishwasher safe, as well as the dishes that didn’t fit in the first load since my father refused to let anything sit in the sink for more than the space of a meal.
So I was still elbows deep in suds by the time the dining room table was cleared and Cade had returned from his trip outside with the garbage.
I didn’t turn to look behind me when he came back in, but the hair stood up at the back of my neck, and I could swear he was staring at me.
“Want some help?” he said after a minute.
Teeth gritted, I shook my head, quite used to being alone in my misery.
“Let me rephrase—because I’m pretty sure you don’t know how to accept a favor—move over, and hand me a dish.” He was reaching for the rose-patterned china plate in my hand before I’d even noticed he was next to me, sleeves rolled up, ready to rinse.
I scowled, unpracticed at receiving anything good—he was right about me there—but I handed him the plate all the same, and with him by my side, I wondered if I’d been too hasty the week before in the library when I’d told him we couldn’t do anything about my father.
I hadn’t changed my mind about the inability to get away with it. But I was mad, and anger made the revenge fantasy so much sweeter.
I didn’t get even a full minute of daydreaming in before Cade interrupted it. “I’m sorry.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “For the trip. I hadn’t realized he was the reason you hadn’t signed up.”
I gave him an incredulous stare. “You can’t be that naive.”
He laughed. “I can be. Mostly because I didn’t think too much about it. And I didn’t think too much about it because I didn’t want to feel guilty about it. I’m sorry for that too.”
It helped, and it didn’t. I wasn’t ready to let go of my wrath, but it wasn’t him I was mad at. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.” I handed him another plate. “He could have said you couldn’t go anymore just because I brought it up.”
Of course, then he wouldn’t have the opportunity to administer a lengthy punishment. Not that having Carla or Cade around made much difference. When my father shut himself in a room with someone, everyone else knew better than to interrupt.
“Wouldn’t have been the end of the world,” he said with a shrug.
Again, the look I gave him said I didn’t believe him for one second.
He grinned. “All right. It would have sucked ass, but I get it. I didn’t take it personally at all.”
I hadn’t really been feeling guilty about it, but I did appreciate the permission not to.
“And you didn’t ruin Thanksgiving,” he continued. “It was terrible to begin with.”
“It was terrible to begin with,” I said at the exact same time.
We laughed, and I handed him another plate. “I’m not usually so bothered by how terrible it is,” I said when the amusement had faded. “I don’t look at it, really. But it all stacks up, and it’s like there must be a sensor in my brain that doesn’t register until the terribleness gets to a certain point, and then an alarm goes off, and I have to look, and when I do the only way I can react is to just...grrrr.” My grip tightened on the dish in my hand as I pretended I was shaking my father.
“I honestly don’t know how you do it. I think I would have gone crazy by now.”
“Who says I haven’t?”
“Even the way he talks to you is infuriating. ‘Julianna,
you’re being rude.’” He mocked my father with an accuracy that made me have to attempt the same.
“‘Julianna, don’t interrupt.’” I scrubbed at the cranberry stain. “‘Julianna, be perfect.’ I don’t know if it’s the way he says it or the name in general, but I hate it. I hate what it stands for. I hate who she is. Julianna Who Does Everything Right. Julianna Who Never Upsets Him. She’s so proper. So well behaved. What if that’s not who I really am? What if I’m really someone else? Someone not Julianna.”
“Julie,” he suggested.
I cringed. “Too close.”
“Jerico.”
“Too far off.” I sighed. “That’s the problem. I’ve been so trained to be Julianna, I’d never look up if anyone called me something else.”
I thought that had ended it, but then he said, “Jolie,” and something happened in my chest. A pinching of some kind, like grabby hands clutching onto a much-wanted gift, refusing to let it go.
“Yeah, that’s who I am. Jolie.” Whether I liked it because it fit me or because he’d chosen it, I didn’t know, but I instantly claimed it.
He tilted his head to study me. “Yeah? What are you like, Jolie?”
“Well, I’m not quiet, that’s for sure.” I passed the plate on, jolting at the zing through my body when I accidentally brushed his hand in the process. Hoping he didn’t see my reaction, I turned away to grab another from the stack. “I’m very loud. And I openly smoke. And I kiss whatever boy I want when I want to. And I say ‘fuck you’ at the dinner table. And when I’m mad, I show I’m mad.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said, encouraging me. “How do you show you’re mad?”
I let out an excited sort of giggle. Permission to express myself was not something anyone ever gave me, including myself, and it was empowering to imagine what I could do with that.
Wild War Page 8
