What I saw were his brothers, his dad, and him watching me go. Cole looked as if he couldn’t quite believe I was walking away.
His father and brothers were looking on as if their favorite plaything was disappearing right out of their lives.
Gross.
I got in my car and plugged my phone into my dash, because I still needed the fucking GPS to lead me out of the hellhole where Cole lived with his backwoods family.
Pressing Dad on my favorites, I started heading toward his house, shaking my head and muttering to myself the entire way.
I got home—and yes, I still thought of my dad’s place as home even though I’d moved out four years ago when I’d started college—and slammed my car door a little too hard.
Causing my grandfather to startle from the nap he’d been taking on the front porch.
“Whoa there, darlin’,” Gramps called in his frail voice. “What on Earth has your knickers in a twist?”
I gritted my teeth as I all but stomped up the walkway to the porch.
“I’ll only be able to repeat this once,” I said. “Let me go get Dad and a beer, he’s gonna need one. Do you want one?”
“Of course,” Gramps supplied.
The moment I breached the door to the house, my father looked up from the table, where he was crushing peanut shells with his fingers and tossing the nuts into his mouth.
He had a massive mess of shells and stuff all over his lap and the floor around him—something that would’ve made my mother apoplectic if she were still around—and he was looking at me with surprise.
“You’re early,” he said.
I’d intended on staying the night with him tonight, as was the usual for a bride on the night before her wedding.
I sighed. “I need a beer, STAT. I also want to talk to you. Gramps wants to know, too, so we have to go out to the porch.”
Dad stood up and snatched two beers out of the fridge door and jerked his head toward me.
I took the beer, and he seized the bag of peanuts as he followed close behind.
Only when we were all situated, and I exacted a promise out of my dad, did I start the story of how my night had gone.
When I was finished explaining what had happened, my dad was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“Let me get this straight,” Dad gaped. “Your fiancé, and his dad, as well as his brothers, wanted to check to make sure you were still a virgin?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“And he does know that hymens are practically a myth nowadays, correct?” he challenged.
I smirked.
My dad was a ladies’ doctor.
He looked at the female anatomy for a living.
Or he used to. Now he focused on aging women’s hormones, and how to help them live a better life after they’d gone through menopause or had hysterectomies.
If anybody would know what they’re talking about, it was my dad.
“I have no clue,” I admitted. “At first, I thought he was joking. Then I jokingly suggested he let you look at his asshole, since that was basically the same thing he wanted to look at on me. When he started to lose his temper, I took that as my sign to leave. He told me on the way out the door that if I left, I wasn’t welcomed back… so it looks like we’re not getting married tomorrow after all.”
My dad started to chuckle.
My grandfather followed shortly behind.
“It’s a good thing that it’s my birthday tomorrow, too,” Gramps took a sip of his beer. “And it’s my ninetieth. That means that since the invitations said come celebrate a special event, everyone can just assume it was my birthday they were coming for, not your wedding. You got that cheap wedding dress from the warehouse, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”
I’d gotten it because I didn’t see the point in making my dad spend a thousand bucks on a dress for me that I’d only wear once.
Luckily, I’d literally spent thirty-nine dollars. It was a white sheath dress that looked like it could be worn for anything, from prom to weddings, to quinceañeras.
I’d be able to save it for a different occasion, that was for sure.
“You don’t seem that upset.”
I looked at my gramps.
“I’m… ambivalent,” I admitted. “I should’ve seen that we were falling apart a long time ago. I mean, I thought about it when I was driving home, and I realized there were a lot of things that I hated about him. If I hate that many things… why would I marry him?”
Because I was stupid, that’s why.
“You thought that was what you were supposed to do,” Dad said. “You’ve been with him for six years. He’s safe. Marriage is the next logical step. But… yeah. I’ve been trying to tell you for years he was a weirdo.”
I laughed, relieved.
“You’re not mad that I wasted your money?” I asked carefully.
Dad snorted, then cracked into another peanut.
He held the shell out to me with the nuts in it, and only when I held my hand out, and he dumped them into my palm, did he answer.
I popped them into my mouth as he said, “Sabrina, baby. You’re a worrywart. Everything that I bought—I mean sure, it’s thirty cases of beer—will eventually be drunk. Food can be eaten. Party favors can be returned, because you bet your ass I was hoping you’d come to your senses. But overall, I don’t give a fuck that we just wasted about twenty-five hundred bucks. All I care about is you. Don’t you see?”
I sighed, holding my hand out for another nut, which he gave me.
“Have you told Faye yet?” Gramps wondered.
I groaned. “I’ll tell her after her chemo treatment tomorrow.”
“Maybe you could go with her now that you’re not getting married,” Dad suggested.
I grinned.
“I can!” I clapped. “I’ll head that way. If I leave now, I can spend the night at her place, and together we can head to the doctor’s office.”
Dad stood up. Gramps stayed where he was.
Only after I got hugs from both of them did Dad say, “I love you, baby girl. Don’t ever forget that.”
I wouldn’t.
Not ever.
• • •
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Faye looked at me wide eyed.
I started to laugh. “That’s the exact same thing that I said!”
“I just don’t know what to say,” Faye admitted. “But I have to be honest. I was pretty ticked off that your fiancé wouldn’t allow you to wait to get married. I mean, I’m your best friend. I should be there. He should’ve been willing to wait.”
That’d been another red flag.
Cole didn’t like Faye.
Not even a little bit.
And, since Cole wasn’t willing to wait a year so Faye could come to a wedding with a lot of people, allowing her immune system to improve, Faye had suggested I just go ahead and have my wedding. As long as I allowed her to watch over FaceTime.
It hadn’t sat well with me that Cole hadn’t been willing to wait until she was okay to get married.
But I’d chalked so many of his oddities up to him being excited and ready to get married that I’d been blinded.
But I was no longer covering my eyes with cotton wool.