He shakes his head like he’s been personally affronted. I glance down at Sugar and although her face is set like marble, her cheeks bloom red under the cold. I start to place my hand on her lower back but stop myself, curling my fingers into a fist.
It’s hard to focus on anything else after that. Not the flowers or the nice words from the chaplain. I watch Doug, studying his movements, his disposition. His shoulders are broad. There’s an impatience rolling off of him—not dissimilar to my own—but there’s something else. An air of superiority. The kind that hasn’t been earned, but still claimed. Fuck, the way it makes my blood simmer, thinking of those hands hurting my girl. I wonder if he beats his wife, too. A guy like that? Probably the only way he can feel like a real man.
I’m so tense with it that by the time the final prayer comes, my muscles are stiff and aching. Marie predictably invites everyone back to the house for lunch, an offer everyone seems willing to take.
Sugar is quiet on the way to the car, quieter still once we’re inside. I pause before cranking the engine, trying to tamp down the rage that’s trapped in my chest. When I notice him staring back at my car, eyes narrowed, I can’t help but grind out, “What the fuck is wrong with that guy?”
She follows my gaze through the windshield, instantly swinging her eyes away. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of me.”
“Trying to get a rise out of you?” I take the keys out of the ignition, gripping them too tight in my hand. “He’s the one, isn’t he.”
She doesn’t even look surprised that I figured it out. She just rests her elbow on the door, fingers digging into her temple. “Sebastian, please, just—”
“He’s the piece of shit who hurt you.”
Finally, there’s some fire in her eyes. “I can’t handle you starting shit with him. Do you understand? I want to get through this, and then leave and preferably never fucking come back again.”
I stare back at her in disbelief. “You can’t expect me to be near this guy, knowing what he’s done, and just—”
“I do,” she says, voice firm. “If you can’t handle it, then you can leave. I’ll get another ride back to school.”
“I made a promise to you back there,” I insist, pointing back toward the bridge. “I’m not saying I’ll start shit with him, but if he touches you? I’m going to light his ass the fuck up.”
“Don’t you get it!” she cries, finally turning to me. Her chin wobbles, eyes shining with unshed tears, but her face is twisted bitterly. “This is hard enough! Having to worry about him, having to walk on all those fucking eggshells just to avoid—” She clamps her mouth shut and a tear spills over, leaving a track down her pale cheek. “It’s hard enough without having to manage you, too. I can’t do it, Sebastian. Either I handle him, or I handle—” she gestures wildly to me, lip curling, “—all this. The fucked-up way you’ve been treating me all morning, and the fact you’re obviously spoiling for a fight. I can handle one, but I can’t do it all. I can’t.” She shakes her head, swatting at another wayward tear. “So if you can’t keep yourself in check, then get out of here, because that’s the only way you can help me.”
I watch her, knowing that she’s wrong, but completely unable to argue. Isn’t this what I do with Heston? I manage him like a sickness, keeping people away, begging them not to make shit worse—not to let it spread.
I reach out to brush a tear from her cheek and she flinches back—hard.
“Please don’t touch me,” she says, face falling. “Not… not now. I’m sorry. Just not now.”
My hand drops heavily, but the sound of her voice like that, the fact that just being in this place means I can’t touch her… it just cements what I already know.
There’s absolutely no way I can promise not to protect her.
But there’s also no fucking way I’m leaving her alone at this house or with these people, especially him. I shove the keys into the ignition, cranking the engine. I make the only promise I know I can keep.
“I’ll try.”
I learn a lot about Sugar Voss when I step foot in her house. Probably as much as she learned about me