“Hey, she’s been through a lot,” Alexander said and put his arm around me protectively. He lifted me up and helped me to my feet. “She doesn’t deserve your derision.”
“You’re back on my side?” I asked, smiling wanly as I looked up at him expectantly.
I shouldn’t have reminded him. His eyes clouded over with anger, and he got that distant look in them again.
“We’ll talk about it,” he said simply, dismissing me with that simple command. “We have to go see him first.”
He meant his father. Of course, he meant his father.
He turned to leave, expecting me to come with him, and we all did. Harlow walked close to me and whispered, “I was just shit talking, you know that, right? I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know,” I whispered back. “Alexander’s processing a lot right now, and his father is a dark blot on his world, so he’s probably feeling some pretty fucked up emotions.”
“He definitely is. His father is a fucking scary old guy,” Luke said, joining in on our whispered conversation behind Alexander’s back.
“You know I can hear you, right?” Alexander asked, but he didn’t sound angry. His shoulders were tense. I could see the collar of his polo shirt moving up and down as he clenched them and released them, then clenched them again. He was still dressed in the uniform most male students of Crimson chose to adopt. It wasn’t anything official, but almost all of them wore a light-colored polo shirt tucked into cleanly pressed khakis.
Their shoes could be anything from leather dress shoes to expensive, custom-made basketball shoes. I never paid much attention. The new me apparently didn’t care for fashion as much as pre-coma Willow had.
“We know,” I said, and I leaned forward to take his hand. He drew me up to walk beside him, leaving Luke and Harlow behind us. “You have our support. That was the point we were all making. We know you’re under a lot of pressure because of who you are and who your father is.”
“Thank you for that,” he said, pulling me close and kissing me on the forehead.
We went downstairs, descending from the upper floor on a wide, curved marble staircase. I could imagine myself in a gown here, floating down with it billowing out all around me. It was an appealing thought. Maybe being rich wasn’t without its privileges, such as looking like a princess on my wedding day.
“There he is,” Mr. Remington said as we entered the dining room. He was seated at the head of the long, carved oak dining table in a chair that resembled a throne. How fitting to his egotistic personality. “My son, the man of the hour.”
He stood and embraced Alexander, clapping him on the shoulder. He released him and turned to me.
“And there she is, my beautiful future daughter-in-law,” he said, and the look he gave me sent shivers down my spine. It felt like he already owned me, like he knew he could command my death and hold it over my life like an ax in front of the forest. A warning. He pulled me close for a tight embrace, and his arms wrapped around me, holding me tight enough that my breath was squeezed from my body and my rib felt bruised as he didn’t let up. “My beautiful, sexy daughter. I can’t wait until you’re here under our roof for good, and I can sample all the delicious things my son brings to me.”
I shuddered, and he exhaled a moan in my ear before releasing me.
I felt sick to my stomach, and the edges of my vision grew dark again. The darkness tugged at me, begging me to fall into it and let myself go.
I shook my head and smiled at him. “We’ll be living elsewhere, Mr. Remington,” I replied in a cheerful tone.
“Call me daddy,” he replied and wiggled his eyebrows.
“As I said, Mr. Remington,” I reiterated. “We’ll be looking for accommodations in the city. I can’t imagine being trapped out here, so far away from everything.”
“That’s what I said!” a buxom blonde from the other end of the table exclaimed in a sugary, high-pitched voice. She snapped a bubble with her gum and continued chewing. “I kept telling Robbie here that I can’t live like this. This house is great, but what the hell are Blakey and Bertie supposed to do out here?”
She gestured to identical twin boys, both blond and bored, looking like carbon copies of their mother, and both staring at the electronic devices in their hands like nothing else existed. Typical kids, I thought, but there was something off-putting at how dismissive they were of the adults in the room. Like they already knew they were too important to give a fuck about anything other than their own needs.
“Wow, twins,” Harlow said under her breath. “That costs mega dollars.”
I wanted to ask for more information, but Mr. Remington asked us for specifics about our plans and demanded information about our lives. We didn’t have much to give him, though, so it wound up with us deflecting his attacks and rolling our eyes at his empty threats.
“At the end of the day, you don’t have a say if I marry Willow or not,” Alexander told him one last time. “I have money from my grandparents, more than enough for us to have a well-funded life if we so choose. I don’t need your approval.”
“Then you’ll marry her without it,” his father said, and my heart dropped immediately. “I refuse to endorse such a union unless you prove to me why I should.”
I looked over at Alexander and prayed he had an answer because I didn’t have anything off the top of my head. Sometimes I could muster up a fight at the drop of a hat, but for some reason, at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single reason to stand up for our union.
“Because I love her,” Alexander said. “And that’s more than enough, god dammit.”
“Well then, you told me,” Alexander’s father said with a booming laugh. “Now, can we please get off these topics and sit down to eat?”