Shoving my legs into my pants, I staggered out of her room.
Now wasn’t the time to start catching feelings.
“Hallie! Come here, please. They need another family photo!” My mother’s overtly cheerful lilt grated from under the arched, white columns of the Art Museum of Dallas. It had been converted into a wedding venue for the day. A school trip had to be canceled to accommodate the event.
I tugged the green sage bridesmaid dress from the pebbled floor, stomping in Mom’s direction. Craig had been MIA so far—an hour into the pre-wedding photos—and Hera, in her Cowen Original ivory silk asymmetric ball gown, was in advanced stages of losing her mind.
As I made my way to my parents and sister, my inner thighs still sore, my center throbbing from my encounter with Ransom last night, I heard Hera billowing into her phone: “I don’t care if he’s dead, Braxton! If he’s not here, looking like a million bucks, in exactly twenty minutes I’m calling the whole thing off. See who’s going to pay off his student debt now. The useless bastard has been freeloading for years. He’s not going to make me look like an idiot.”
“Ship’s sailed,” Ransom murmured, in his black Armani suit as I passed by him on my way to my family, his eyes stuck to his phone. My heart skipped a beat, and I whipped my head around to see if he’d make eye contact. He did.
We shared a moment. A smile. An understanding.
Yesterday was the first time I’d climaxed with a man.
The first time I’d had sex.Realsex.
It planted a seed of hope inside of me. That maybe I could be happy.
I slipped between my parents. Hera stood next to Dad. She flung her phone into one of the bridesmaid’s hands. “Let’s get this shit over with.”
We were standing on the stairway leading up to the Spanish colonial revival-style museum.
Hera swung her gaze toward me. “Covering those tattoos with makeup would be too much to ask, huh?”
“Hera,enough,” my mother chided, wrapping her fingers around my shoulder protectively.
“I don’t understand what got Hera’s panties in such a twist.” I flipped my hair, grinning seductively to the camera as the photographer began to click away. “If aesthetics meant so much to her, she wouldn’t marry a man who looks like a pug.”
“You jealous bitch!”
With a savage mewl, Hera flung her bouquet, launching herself on me. Her fingers were about to encircle my neck when Ransom stepped between us, serving as a human wall. He didn’t touch her, but didn’t let her near me, either.
“Get out of my way!” Hera raked his chest with her French manicured nails.
“Hera, please!” Mom tugged her elder daughter’s arm, trying to pull her away. Dad grabbed her other arm. They exchanged exasperated looks, dragging her down the stairs kicking and screaming.
It was nice not to be the designated troubled child for a change.
“I’ll give you five.” The photographer winced, stumbling back. “I know what it’s like.”
Did he have a narcissistic sister, too?
“You need to calm down,” Mom said to Hera. “You haven’t been yourself in a while. I understand the pressure, but you mustn’t lash out at all of us, least of all Hallie.”
“Your mother is right. We cannot afford a scene, sweetheart. These people signed an NDA, but if something leaked…” Dad added.
I continued hiding behind Ransom’s back, my gaze scraping the back of his neck. Half-mooned red marks of fingernails—myfingernails—adorned his skin, and every fiber of my body itched to touch him again.
“Groom’s here!” A douchehead in suspenders and Adrien Oxford shoes weaved through the white, round dining tables arranged around the garden, knocking over garlands and centerpieces.
Saved by the sexual abuser.
Craig trailed behind him, in a suit and over-moussed hair. Even through his thick layer of makeup, I could tell he was pale. I stiffened at the sight of him. Ransom took a step back, so we were shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Think he’s mad?” I whispered.
“I think I’ll grind every bone in his body into flour if he acts on it,” Ransom replied.