Between Now and Heartbreak - Dylan Allen Page 0,100
got other people waiting to get in here.”
“Of course.” She flushes, and gives me an apologetic look before she rushes out of the room.
In the mirror, I can see Serene pause, her hands suspended with the shirt she was folding still clutched in them.
“You don’t have to be rude to everyone,” I say under my breath. Duke and I are going to become the new lord and lady of this manor and I don’t want a staff that’s afraid of me.
“Lesson number one, being nice leads to wasting time. You pay people to do a job for you and they do it. You don’t become friends, you don’t excuse them when they disappoint you.”
“You have a lot to learn still. I might come and stay with you for a few weeks to help you get settled in. Duke is going to expect you to maintain the household in a way he’s accustomed to.”
“We’ll be fine. Duke and I understand each other. We won’t need your help.”
She raises an eyebrow in surprise.
“Well, look who went and got a backbone. Good. You’re going to need it.” My grandmother glides out of her seat and across the room. “Keep to our schedule. Your father will be here to escort you down in an exactly one hour from now.”
The mention of my father makes my stomach turn. But this is the last time I’ll have to do what he says.
When the sun sets today, I’ll be the mistress of my own home. With a husband who, for all his faults, doesn’t have the same talent for discipline that my father does.
We aren’t in love.
But, we might be able to be partners.
Today, I’m going to walk down the aisle, marry Duke and give my father everything he’s always wanted. And in exchange, I get the chance to make sure my little sister grows up with someone putting her first. I glance at her sleeping on my bed, her sweet brown curls, stuck to her forehead by the sweet sweat of sleep.
Loving her is the only thing that makes me feel remotely close to normal and useful.
When my father tries to do to her what he did to me, I’ll do what James wanted to do for me. And if something happens to me, she’ll be taken care of.
I had been repeating this to myself every time I looked in the mirror for the last year.
I believed every word.
So why is there a wave of panic wrapping itself around my rib cage so tight I can’t breathe?
“Hey, can I come in?”
Phil sticks his head in the door and I can’t help the pinch of pain when I see him.
“Sure,” I say, and try to smile.
He comes into the room, but he looks distinctly uncomfortable.
“You almost ready?”
“Yes.” I say, and look anxiously over my shoulder at the door.
I try to hide my discomfort when I see him. I’ve never been good at pretending. But, for his sake, I make an effort. I can’t completely disguise it, and so I always appear a little ill at ease. I can tell it makes him sad, but it’s the best I can do.
If he knew the extent of it, he’d be devastated. The truth is, I find being near him unbearable.
He looks so much like Carter. Seeing him reminds me of what a fucking disaster I made of things when I was foolish enough to think I’d make it out of here.
He walks around the room and peers at my bookshelf. “I forgot how much you liked to read when you were a kid.” He says, picks a book and thumbs through it. It’s a casual gesture, but he’s all nervous energy. I try to make small talk, to put him at ease.
“How’s the restaurant?”
He whips around in surprise, like he can’t believe I initiated conversation. He puts the book down and sits.
“Uh— great. I closed it today, obviously. It’s a lot of work, but I love it.”
He opened a restaurant that is already one of the most popular for miles. When he left here all those years ago, he got a job on a cruise ship from Galveston and spent years traveling the world and learning to cook from some of the best chefs in the world.
He’s shared his pictures. In almost all of them, he’s shirtless and barefoot. His hair held off his sunburned forehead with a red bandana, and standing over an open flame in some remote part of the world. His smile is as wide and