“I suspect this is more my fault than it is Maddi’s.”
Evie’s lips quiver when Nelly presses the icing between her lips to taste.
“Mm, yummy. I upset a family back when I was in high school, and that family finally got their payback today.” She slides her finger through more icing, but this time offers it to Evie. “We don’t let spilled cake hurt us, do we?”
“We’ve had way worse,” Evie murmurs. “There could be a bomb strapped to my chest.”
“Smalls,” Aiden groans.
“Could be a heart attack,” she continues.
“Could be a smashed skull,” Mac helpfully adds.
Nelly grins. “We’ve had way worse.”
“They ruined her dress!” Ben booms indignantly. “Twice!”
“Sasquatch?” Evie draws his attention. Grins. “It’s just cake. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine! You worked so hard for this!”
“Here.” She grabs his ears and pulls him down until he gets a taste of the cake. “Taste’s good, huh?”
“Fuck.” Ben wraps his arms around her hips, and dives back in for more.
Maddi
Money Can’t Buy Love
“How could you?” The moment I walk through my front door and find them all sitting in the parlor – the fucking “parlor” – I lose it.
My dress is still sticky. It smells of sugar. I have a headache from rage-eating too much cake from Bry’s hands. But most of all, worst of all, I have a broken heart.
Hannah sits beside Jenna. Jenna sits beside Jackson. My grandfather sits in a wingback chair on his own, and taps a cigar against a crystal ashtray; to his right, my dad sits and does the same.
“I’m disgusted with you all!”
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” My father tilts his head to the side with curiosity, but when he does it, it’s nothing like how Nelly or Bry do it. The Kincaids are genuinely curious to hear more. My father is merely taunting. “You look an awful mess.”
“Because I have cake all over me!” I screech. “Cake! From a wedding you ruined.”
My grandfather lifts both brows and studies me. “You’re making a scene, young lady. And seeing the hour, I’d really prefer you didn’t do that.”
“You connived! You got together, held your secret fucking meetings, and thought up ways to ruin someone’s wedding. For what? So you could feel superior? Because you hold a stupid fucking grudge against a family simply because they didn’t want you?” I look into my grandfather’s eyes. “A girl didn’t want you in high school, so you spend the rest of your life waiting for petty retribution?”
“Young lady, watch your to—”
“You wasted your entire life!” I roar. “All of these years, everything you have, you’re blind to it all, because you hold a grudge about something inconsequential. You think about them every day, but guess what, Grandpa? They never think of you!”
His lips firm to flat lines.
“You wasted your entire fucking life on this, and you created an asshole out of my father,” I look to him, then to Jackson, Jenna, and Hannah, “then you passed your poison on to my friends. All for payback against a family that literally never thinks of you.”
“They thought of me tonight.” Grandpa blows out a long plume of smoke. “Didn’t they?”
“With pity,” I hiss. “Then they laughed. They laughed at all of you and ate cake from Evie’s boobs, because they don’t give a single fuck about you and your perceived slights. I’ve met Nelly,” I look to Grandpa, “the woman you wanted. I’ve met her, I’ve eaten with her, I’ve discussed love and forevers with her. And you know what?” I stab my clutch in his direction. “She was always way too fucking good for you. She would choose to love and lose Bryan a million times, rather than spend even a second with the likes of you.”
I look to my “friends”. “I’m disgusted with all of you. And I’m done. I will not associate with assholes. I’m sorry I let it go on so long.” I turn on my heel, and move toward the parlor doors.
“Where are you going, sweetheart?” My father’s voice is sweet like honey, but cold. So fucking cold.
I spin back. “To pack a bag. I refuse to sleep under this roof tonight. You make me sick.”
“If you pack your bag with a single night’s worth of clothes, then be sure to pack for the rest. You’re not welcome back here if you go there tonight.”
Broken hearted, I lift my chin anyway. “Fine. It’s time I became independent anyway.”
“If you leave this home, Madilyn, you will no longer be Monaco’s PR Manager.”
That brings me back around with a whimper. “You would demote me? I worked my ass off for that job!”
“Not demote, honey.” My grandfather grins behind a plume of smoke. “You would become unemployed. To be a Tosky means to be loyal. If you walk away tonight, then we know you’re not loyal to the family.”
Tears track over my face. They squeeze through my lashes and dribble over my cheeks, until they hit my lips. “I don’t think you have the slightest clue what it means to be loyal. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
I turn and dart up the stairs of what is quite literally a mansion. I grew up in a fucking mansion. But money doesn’t buy hugs, it doesn’t buy love.
Or loyalty, it would seem.
I push through my bedroom door with a cry, and snatch a suitcase from my walk-in closet. Blinded by my tears, I begin tugging clothes from the drawers. Jeans. Jeans. I have so many pairs of jeans.
I move to the shirts. Then I snatch a couple dresses, because they hang in my line of sight. The suitcase fills quickly, far too quickly, so I grab a second and work on that. I shove in a couple pairs of sneakers, some sweaters, then I move into my room and snag the sweet teddy bear my mother gave me when I was a child.
She was dying, but she still gave me the bear, told me to hold on tight, and to believe that soon she would be the bear. Each night in bed, we could snuggle, we could talk and tell our secrets. She was living a death sentence, but she made sure to tell me I had a friend right there in a stuffed teddy.
I shove my laptop into the second case, my other electronics. I snag a pair of pyjamas – because leaving home with dozens of pairs of jeans and only one pair of pjs is a totally reasonable ratio. When I clear out what I need, I shed my dress, drop it to my bedroom floor, then I shrug into a sweater, pull on a pair of jeans I didn’t pack, and slip my feet into a pair of sneakers. I snag the hat – Bry’s hat – from my dressing table, drop it on my head, then I look around my childhood bedroom and feel… empty.
There’s no nostalgia, no sense of home. There’s no longing, and no gut-dropping at the thought of leaving. There’s just a room that shows absolutely none of my personality. A bed that I never chose, a bedspread that I had no say in.
Swallowing, I take my bags and push my shoulders back, then I walk into the hall. Down the stairs. Past the fucking parlor, and outside into the cold.
“Oh, sweetheart?” My father follows me outside and stands at the top of the steps. “Would you like me to call you a cab?”