Cringe.
Internally and externally.
I just fucked that up, didn’t I?
My skin gets prune-y before I get out, and I’m dragging my feet like crazy. Leaving this room means all sorts of things that I don’t want to think about right now. Tess. My grandparents. Being kidnapped. Parrish.
I grit my teeth.
Fucking Parrish.
I scrub my hands over my face, thinking about Chasm and how comfortable I felt being around him last night. In reality, the last thing in the world I need or want is a romantic interest. Why do I have to be meeting all these people at once? I feel cursed.
“Okay, Dakota, let’s just get this over with.” I drop my arms to my sides, shaking out my hands and taking several deep breaths to make sure that I’m calm. Either Tess grounds me or she doesn’t. Either Parrish admits to the implications in his words last night or he doesn’t.
Parrish’s door is closed when I open my own, and a quick check down the hall shows me that Tess isn’t in her office. Fantastic. I head downstairs to the main area of the house, and there they all are, dressed and awake on a Sunday the same way they are on Mondays. Every single one of them—but me. Because, of course, I belong here like a fish belongs out of water.
“Good morning, Dakota,” Tess says, very prim and proper and closed-off. She came close to being human last night, but apparently when the moonlight goes, so does my bio mom’s feelings.
“Good morning.” I pause awkwardly in my shoe-less, prune-y pajama state, and I think about Chasm. Mostly, I think about the way he waited while I sat in the yard and did my own thing. For a minute there, I didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of me.
So I move over to the cabinet and start yanking things out. I have to improvise since the Vanguards don’t have the most well-stocked pantry in existence. I click a few buttons on the wall oven to get it preheating. Nobody says anything as I start recreating one of my grandfather’s recipes from scratch.
But they all are staring at me when I glance up from stirring a from-scratch bowl of cornbread batter.
“Would you like to discuss last night?” Tess asks, holding her coffee mug in one hand while the bottom rests in the palm of the other. From behind her, Parrish watches me, sitting at the table between his father and Kimber.
We make eye contact again, but all he does is blink at me, nice and slow.
“No, thank you,” I reply, because if she’s asking it as a question then I have a right to say no, don’t I?
Another long pause. The TV is playing a conservative news channel in the corner, but nobody’s paying much attention to it.
“Are you making cornbread for breakfast?” Tess asks as I spoon the yellow mixture into a pan.
“Why can’t I have cornbread for breakfast?” I reply, looking back up at her. Kimber’s back to scrolling on her phone while the three younger kids move on, chattering with each other. Paul, Parrish, and Tess are all still watching me though.
“Dakota, we need to talk,” Tess finally says, setting her coffee mug down hard on the counter. Coffee sloshes over the edge, but she makes no move to clean it up. She’ll leave it to Delphine, I’m sure.
“About what?” I’m purposely avoiding her eyes as I slip the cornbread into the preheated oven. After that, I wash my hands and start loading the dishwasher.
“You’re grounded for a month, starting today,” Tess begins, and I pause, turning slowly to look at her. Who is this person that’s trying to order me around? I don’t know her. I know the Banks, who, apparently lied to me. But who is this? Tess Vanguard, bestselling author. That’s all I really know.
“I’m grounded for which part, exactly?” I cross my arms over my chest and lean my butt against the edge of the counter. For the briefest of seconds, I swear I see the edge of Parrish’s lip curve up in a sardonic smile, but in the span of a blink, it’s gone and I’m left wondering if I’m only seeing what I want to see.
“For disappearing with Chasm all day and not contacting me.” She sounds resolute, sure of herself, like this is a rule crafted of iron, one that can never be broken.
“If you wanted me to contact you,” I start slowly, meeting her eyes, their color so like my own that it’s startling. I know we’re mother and daughter, but did we really need to look so similar? Lots of people don’t look like their biological parents, at least not to this degree. “Then you shouldn’t have taken away my phone. Or … planned to take my phone away.” I grin at her, which is maybe a bit cheeky but which I do anyway. “I lost it, but if I found it, you’d just take it anyway so …”
Tess takes her coffee mug from the counter and dumps it into the sink, frowning so hard it looks like she’s leaving permanent creases in her face.
“Don’t try to pretend that you didn’t at least have access to Kwang-seon’s phone.” Uh-oh. If she’s calling Chas by his real name, she must be extra pissed off. “And there’s no excuse for you leaving the studio without telling me and then staying out to all hours of the night.” The way her gaze sweeps me, I feel immediately judged. “Did something happen between you and him?”
My mouth drops open, and I just blink at her in surprise.
“Happen? Do you mean, did I have sex with him?” I ask, and Tess cringes. “Seriously? That’s what you’re concerned about? No, I didn’t have sex with him because I was too upset about finding out that one, my grandparents lied to me. And two, that you knew they’d be on the show and you didn’t care. You didn’t care that you’d make them look like monsters in front of the whole world.”
“They are monsters!” Tess screams at me, and the force of her anger causes me to take a step back. Both Paul and Parrish stand up from their seats as Kimber pries her eyes from the screen of her phone to stare. “They are monsters, Mia.”
Mia.
There it is, and very pointed, too.
“They’re my grandparents—” I start, but Tess isn’t in the mood today.
She moves across the kitchen to stand right in front of me, an imposing figure in her designer heels and skirt suit. I’m proud of myself for meeting her eyes and standing my ground, as if the heat of her fury isn’t searing my skin.
“They are not your grandparents. Your grandparents—my parents—are dead. The Banks are just … people. Strangers. Maybe they didn’t kidnap you with their own hands, but they aided and abetted that maniac; they knew the truth years ago, and yet they kept you from me. So I’m sorry, Mia, if I don’t feel any sympathy toward them.”
“Don’t call me Mia,” I choke out, but the words are caught behind a wave of emotion. They feel weak, and I don’t want to be weak. “And don’t call Saffron a maniac, she’s … sad. Her baby died—”
“Yes,” Tess says, her voice sharp as a knife as she stares down at me. Now I see how she’s become such a powerhouse in the publishing world; she’s fucking terrifying. Even if her manuscript sucked—they never do, her books are always painfully well-written—anyone publisher in their right mind would drop to their knees and beg for forgiveness if she looked at them this way. “Her baby died. Dakota Banks died of SIDS. And that’s very sad, but my baby didn’t die. My baby is standing right here.”