disregard me no matter what I said because somehow, against all reason, she trusted Wickham over me.
“If you believe him, you’re a fool.” I set the glass on the bar with a shaking hand, knowing I’d done it again, knowing I’d buried that little sliver of possibility again.
But as I walked away from her, the things I couldn’t say gnashed and snarled in my rib cage.
I scanned the crowd for Georgie but didn’t find her. The party had lost its luster, the grime and dinge of the night no longer covered by the spell of hope. What I wanted was to leave, not to small-talk with Cooper or mingle with everyone. Not to avoid Laney, because there was nothing else to say, not tonight. I wanted quiet. Solitude. A space where I could think, and standing in a bar with Cardi B on blast was not that space.
I was so in my head, I didn’t notice Caroline sidle up next to me with a scotch of her own in her hand.
“God, these Bennets are terrible. Your aunt is right. We’ll be better off when we can be rid of them. Laney bringing Wyatt? I mean, how cruel could she be?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“She didn’t know he was coming.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yes,” was all I said, because forming sentences over ten words was impossible.
“They’re just so tacky,” she said, sneering a little. “Even this party. It’s like a misfit prom, not a cocktail party. You can tell who’s with whom just by looking.”
“Who cares, Caroline?”
“I care. Mingling with them is almost insulting. But those Bennets are the worst kind of interlopers.” She leaned in. “The kind you never see coming. Like that Jett boy kissing your sister behind the bar.”
Caroline kept talking, but I couldn’t hear her over the ringing in my ears.
“Where are they?” I ground out.
And she smiled like a cat with a mousetail dangling from its lips. “Just behind the bar, down the hallway.”
I was off before she finished, my thoughts like a hail of bullets in my head. Why Georgie had done it —and after she’d promised me she wouldn’t—was a mystery I was about to solve. And here, at a company function, where assholes like Caroline were watching her. Why now? Why tonight? Or had it been going on under my nose?
I didn’t even know if the answers mattered as I flew down the hallway behind the bar where the bathrooms were. Several hallways spurred off the main drag. I found them in the very last one.
They were caught in an embrace, their kiss oblivious to my presence, and the sight of her pinned to the wall by his hips broke some crucial tether in me, letting something loose that was better left chained.
I didn’t realize I’d stormed toward them, not until my hand was on Jett’s closest shoulder. With a shove, he stumbled backward almost too hard to catch himself. But when he did, he rose like a wave, and I drew myself up to my full height, barely hearing Georgie calling my name.
“Stop!” she shouted, putting herself between us.
The connection of her hands on my chest snapped me back.
“Liam! Jesus!” she said. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? What the fuck is this, George?” I motioned to Jett, who looked as ready to beat the shit out of me as I was him.
“It’s exactly what the fuck you think it is,” she shot, pushing me when she realized I was still locked on Jett. “Liam!”
I shifted my gaze onto her at an equal intensity. To her credit, she barely flinched.
I gestured to them. “This? This isn’t happening.”
“Listen, Liam—” Jett started, and I took a step toward him, only stopped by Georgie’s full body weight.
“No you listen,” I snapped. “I don’t think you realize what kind of danger you’re putting her in. Her job. Her standing. Our aunt—our last living relative and the owner of the fucking company—can’t even stand your sister being in the building, never mind if she finds out a Bennet is fucking her niece.”
“Liam. That is enough,” Georgie yelled, pushing me with enough force that although it didn’t budge me, it got my attention. The fury on her face was set off by the sparkling tears in her eyes. “You promised to trust me. You swore you’d try.”
“And I never should have made a promise I knew I couldn’t keep.”
“I cannot believe you.”
“That makes two of us.”
The words hit their mark. Jett squared up again when he saw the