Page 6 of Bombshell

I open my mouth to protest, but the words aren’t there. I take a second to find my voice, and when it comes out I am surprised how calm it sounds. “I’m not the one who has to control everything.”

“No. You’re the one who has to destroy everything. Nothing can exist if it doesn’t perfectly please you, right? Not Thanksgiving dinner with our families. Not even a conversation with your brother or father.”

Does she think her shiny, new wedding ring gives her the right to order me around? Has she always seen behind the curtains to the ugliness we keep hidden until now? I’d always thought she was naive—maybe willfully so. I thought she was too focused on the perfect wedding and blind to the harsh reality. Now? I wonder how much she’s willing to ignore in search of her perfect life.

“I understand you don’t like your family, Adair. And I know your father is…very difficult—”

“—that doesn’t begin to cover it—”

“—but it still doesn’t excuse your behavior. You’ve never had to do chores. Never had to work for anything. You may be able to treat everyone else like that, but not your family.” Her words suck the air out of my lungs. She is just like them. I can’t believe I never saw it before. “You’re just a brat,” she finishes with an exasperated sigh.

My arm spasms toward her, and my whole body jerks from the effort of stopping my hand from slapping her.

She flinches, sending a gasp throughout the crowd that has gathered around us. I can tell at once that she is going to behave like I actually hit her, making me wonder why I didn’t just go ahead and do it. Somehow, through the red haze fogging my vision, I realize hitting her would prove her point.

She flinches again as I throw my hand around her shoulder and pretend to hug her, while dropping my mouth to her ear.

“You know nothing, Ginny,” I whisper coldly. “You have girlish dreams of what life in my house is like. But your dad didn’t scream at you every day of your life. You didn’t have to watch yours get drunk, wondering how long it would be before he went after your every flaw, real or imagined. And you didn’t have to sit in a hospital, waiting for them to come out and tell you that your drunk father killed your mother.”

She pulls back. I expect her to be cowed, to look sheepish, but she doesn’t. It’s the sorrow in her eyes that catches me off guard, making me feel the size of a pea. “I’m sorry that happened to you. And I’m sorry you’re so angry—”

“But I’m ruining your perfect wedding, right?”

“What would your mother say right now?”

The weight of a boulder lands on my chest. What am I supposed to say to that? I hate her. That’s what I want to say. How dare she use my mother against me? She barely knew her, never got to see all the pain my father caused her. She thinks a few wedding planning sessions gave her deep insight? It barely gave her a glimpse. A few hours into being a MacLaine, and she’s already an expert. And that’s just it. I don’t know why I worried about Ginny joining the family. She fits in better than I ever will.

“She’d tell you to make the best of your life. To take your advantage of wealth, your family connections, and make a good life from it. She wouldn’t want you to be so full of rage. Because she would see what I see—that the anger is hurting you most of all.”

Her words are sharp and pointed, delivering a precise prick that deflates me like a carefully popped balloon. She’s right, isn’t she? I can say she didn’t know my mother well enough, but that’s exactly the kind of thing my mother was always telling me.

Maybe I’m so accustomed to expecting the worst that I’m seeing it now. I’m ready to forgive Ginny—admit that I’m wrong—until she adds, “Instead, you’re going to burn it all down. Fight with everyone, every chance you get. You’re just like your father, actually. No compromises. No consideration. You don’t even realize you’re lashing out. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Adair, you’re dating some piece of trash orphan who’s only out for our money!”

Her words sting, and I recoil, stepping back from her.

That’s what this is about. It was coordinated. She is a MacLaine. Even today, my family can’t relax and celebrate. They have to plot and manipulate and control. She planned this with my father. How else could she know about Sterling’s past? My father is having the opposite version of this conversation with Sterling, right now. I know it. Did they plan it, or is Ginny so perfect for my family that she didn’t have to be told? Is this a role she has chosen, or the one she was born to play?

I don’t even realize my palm is swinging toward her face until my eyes lock with her panicked ones. It’s too late to stop it. I might as well enjoy it. She deserves it. She made her wedding a battle zone. She deserves a little friendly fire.

“Kindly do not hit my wife,” Malcolm says, catching my arm an inch from her perfectly made up face.

Ginny collapses into him, blubbering and teary, a jumbled mixture of what I said and a lot that I didn’t spilling out of her mouth. I see her eyes peek up at him through wet lashes, trying to gauge his reaction so she can calibrate her performance. So he will remember me as a monster who tried to take her perfect day from her, instead of what really happened. Somewhere in her babbling I hear her mention my mother again.

“Don’t ever talk to me about my mother again,” I snarl, gathering up the hem of my dress, kicking off my heels, and running through the doors.

There is only wait staff in the hallway, but they are stopped dead, looking at the door on the far end of the hallway. I know the look people get when my father has been truly nasty, and it’s on every face I see.

The eyes in the hall turn away from me when I meet them, pointing instead at a door down the hall. I hold my chin as high as it will go, and march through the door, gasping at the sight of the overturned desk, its lamp casting light upward from the floor, throwing my father’s form into a strange, demented relief.

“What did you do?” I demand.

“I told your boyfriend what I thought of him.” My father looks at me coldly, his voice breaking in a way I’ve never quite heard before.

I can see beads of sweat on his forehead, and that his hand shakes if he doesn’t continuously grip the arm of his chair. Whatever happened, Sterling scared my father—something I thought no one could do. But whatever satisfaction it might have given me—I’m still a MacLaine, after all—I know it will come with a cost. “You don’t know him enough to judge him.”

“I know more than you. Do you know his record? What he came from?” Inflicting psychological pain is my father’s true joy, and some of his wicked glee seems to return as he hangs on my answer.

“I know what happened to Sterling as a kid,” I say, hoping he doesn’t catch the quiver in my voice. “Hate to break it to you.”