storm.
Utterly and totally still. Composed. Even though I seethed.
He was in there. Sitting at the piano.
Wearing those fucking glasses!
My head hit the wall with a quiet thunk.
“Slightly overdressed, aren’t you?” Margot’s voice accompanied a hand at my shoulder and I shrugged it away.
Just as I tried to shrug away memories of his hands and lips, his kiss.
“I’m cold,” I said, pulling the edges of my cardigan around my waist. A cardigan over a turtleneck was overkill for summer in Bonne Terre, but there was no way I was showing that man an inch of my flesh.
“Your hair—” Margot reached up to touch the tight bun at the back of my neck but I stepped away.
“It’s fine. Everything is fine. Let’s get this done with.”
I stepped toward the door, ready to face down the devil if it meant Matt whatever-his-name-was would be leaving, but Margot put a hand on my shoulder.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Margot asked.
“No.” I laughed. “I definitely do not.”
“You slept with him.”
“Not…entirely.”
“You like him.”
I snorted. “Liked, maybe.”
“After Eric—Don’t glare at me, Savannah.”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Margot.”
“You never want to talk about this,” Margot snapped.
“Lower your voice, for crying out loud.”
“You didn’t want to talk about Katie’s father when it was happening, or when he left, or when you got pregnant or—”
“Mom?”
I whirled to find both Katie and Matt standing in the doorway.
“Honey?” The word sounded like a croak. I hoped the expression on my face was a smile, I wanted it to be, but judging by Katie’s confusion and Matt’s horror, I wasn’t quite hitting the mark.
“What are you talking about?” Katie asked, her voice so small, her eyes so worried as they darted between Margot and Savannah.
I glared hard at Margot. This wasn’t something they talked about. Ever. Katie had never even heard the name Eric.
“Mom?”
“Ah—” My mind was a wilderness, nothing but bears and dark and fear. Lots of fear. I didn’t want to cry, or scream, or slap the glasses off Matt’s handsome face, but I felt dangerously close to all three.
At some point this conversation was inevitable, I understood that. I wasn’t stupid. But in the few times I’d been brave enough to imagine a scenario, Katie was older, I was more prepared and it didn’t take place in front of another man who’d lied to me.
When my world fell apart, it really fell apart.
“Me,” Matt said, quietly, his eyes dark and serious behind his glasses. “They’re talking about me.”
Katie’s gaze darted to him, fury sending out sparks.
I didn’t—couldn’t—say anything. Looking at him, at his sympathetic eyes, I had no words. He had proven he was no knight in shining armor, he no longer needed to act the part.
Regardless, he’d given me a way out of this much-dreaded conversation.
Perhaps I’d thank him by not smacking him blind.
“Why don’t you go play games on my laptop,” I said to Katie—a rare treat the girl would never be able to resist.
“Okay,” she said warily, knowing something was up.
We all watched Katie climb the steps.
“We should go inside,” Margot said, as if inviting everyone to tea.
“Absolutely,” I said and stormed past Matt, determined not to smell him or feel his heat.
Juliette stood inside, milky sunshine splashed across her face as she stared down at a framed photo in her hand, picked up from the table chock-full of family pictures.
“What are you looking at?” Margot asked.
“Nothing,” Juliette said quickly, practically throwing the picture back on the table. “Old pictures.” She turned with a bright smile. “Are we ready for the firing squad?”
I didn’t believe that smile for a moment, because it was Tyler grinning up from that photo, looking wild and handsome and totally capable of breaking a young Juliette’s heart.
However, the moment didn’t have room for Juliette’s old pain—it was practically bleeding with recent hurt. I could feel everyone behind me, watching me, and I hardened my heart, surrounded it in glass and cement and buried everything I felt about last night and Matt as deep inside of myself as I could.
When I was blank and cool and detached I turned and pinned Matt to the wall with my gaze. He appeared startled for a moment, as if he hadn’t expected me to fight, but then his own face got hard, his eyes cold. The handyman vanished. The musician, the man I kissed, the man who tied my wrists in silk, were all gone.
Someone I wasn’t the slightest bit attracted to stared back at me.
Good.
I was ready for a fight.
“Why don’t