Page 61 of Anger Bang
“Nice speech,” he said, covering all of the anticipatory agony with ten feet of sarcasm. “How long did it take you to come up with that? And the last line, leaving the ‘like I did’ left unsaid?” He pinched his fingers together and kissed the tips in the chef’s-kiss gesture. “It’s the kind of dialogue that sticks with the reader even after they’ve finished the book. You’ve got a real gift there. Have you thought about writing?”
Her shoulders slumped, and her gaze dropped to the table. “Kade.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom—oh, wait, let me try that again.” He flashed an angry smile at the camera on the table and continued, “Don’t worry about some random stranger giving me advice while we’re alone. I don’t need your advice. Never did. None of this matters.” He stood up and started pacing, all of the hurt energy needing an outlet. “Just like whatever is happening with Thea doesn’t matter. We’re just fucking to piss off her bridezilla of a sister.” It was true. She’d said it last night, but, like a fool, he’d convinced himself that he could change her mind, make her believe that staying with him was worth it. Even worse, with that kiss he’d thought he’d made it happen. Why did he do that? Why did he always think that this time would be different? No matter what he told himself, he hadn’t learned anything from years of his mom’s fake promises that everything would change. Like a fool, he always believed.
“After the wedding tomorrow, I’ll never see Thea again. I’ll probably even forget her name eventually. She’ll just be that one girl at Dex’s wedding—hopefully for his starter marriage, because there’s no way this is going to work out between him and Jackie.” The lies streamed out of him at full volume as he got closer and closer to his appearance of control disappearing so that the world could see who he really was. “And a few years after that, I probably won’t even recall that much. It’s a blip, a glitch, a weird coincidence—just like you showing up here.” He looked at his mother, who was now crying silent tears, and nearly stopped, but he couldn’t. He was too far gone. “None of it matters. None of it means a thing.”
Fuck. He needed some air. His entire body felt like it was filled with knives. He turned to get the fuck out of there, and that’s when he saw her.
He stopped dead in his tracks, and his chest felt like it was about to implode.
Thea stood in the doorway, her eyes wide with shock and her lips—the ones he’d spent hours kissing last night—pressed tightly together.
All of the air in his lungs whooshed out of him as if the entire universe had just sucker-punched him in the kidneys. Everything he’d just said, every lie, every bullshit word of it came rushing back to him. He wanted to sprint over to her, but he couldn’t fucking move. He was frozen to the spot, first by the raw hurt he saw in her eyes and then by the way she made it smooth out and disappear as if it had never been there, as if she’d always been this utterly calm and unflappable woman that no one could touch—especially not someone like him.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, each word clipped and cold. “It’s fine.”
“Thea,” he pleaded without even a hint of a clue about what he’d say next.
Not that it mattered.
If she heard him, she didn’t respond. At least not verbally. Instead, she turned around and walked away, her head held high, not even the tiniest bit of a falter in her step.
In all honesty, that was probably all of the response he deserved.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Once, when she was still acting, her foot had been run over by one of the golf carts that ferried the important people around the back lot. She’d had her nose in a book—it was her fourth or fifth rereading ofJurassic Park—and was walking to their mom’s car when Jackie grabbed her by the the shirt and yanked her back. It was enough to save Thea from getting plowed into but not enough to save two of her toes from being crushed.
Ever since then, whenever she got injured, she compared it to that. Did it hurt more or less than having a golf cart break her toes?
Hearing Kade hurt more. Way more.
She felt the ache everywhere, all the way down to the marrow of her bones. It burned. It was freezing. It was sharp jabs of agony. It was that low-level throb of pain that reminded you every moment exactly how many muscles you never thought about got used just to pull air into your lungs.
And she had about five minutes—tops—before shock’s gift of an outer shell of numbness wore off. After that? She was going to be a mess, and the last thing she wanted was for all of that to be caught on camera—which seemed to be everywhere.
She ignored the producer’s call about needing to do a quick on-camera pre-wedding interview and quickly walked away from the pavilion, berating herself with every step.
She’d been so full of stupid hope about what could happen after the wedding that she’d frozen completely in the door as Kade ranted. She didn’t matter.He wouldn’t even remember her name.She’d wanted to move when he’d said that. She’dtriedto move. But her feet refused to respond, though, and she was stuck there listening to all of those ugly words coming out of Kade’s mouth.
Thea stumbled over a small rock on the gravel path but quickly righted herself. Yeah, that was all she needed to go with all of the humiliations she’d endured during this wedding—to fall flat on her face.
She marched all the way to her RV, powered by a slowly waking fury and the instinctual urge to get as far away from every other living soul as she could. The cool air from the air conditioning hit her in the face as soon as she closed the door behind her. Leaning back against the hard metal, she clamped her jaw together tight, trying to give herself another few moments before she fell apart.
As soon as the knock came, though, she realized her mistake.
“Thea,” Justine the producer said in a sickly-sweet tone. “I know you may not want to talk right now, but it really could help. Let’s talk, just you and me. You won’t even see the cameras. I swear, it will help.”
Yeah, it will help their ratings and ruin her career. No one would take her seriously at the museum after an interview like that. She’d forever be that woman who cried like a baby on a reality TV show. Forget her PhD. Forget her years of experience. Forget the fact that she could name all three hundred stegosaurus bones and had published more articles than any man in her department. She’d just be the hysterical woman who couldn’t keep her shit together.
Desperate to get out of there but with her escape blocked, Thea scanned the RV.
Her gaze landed on the window above the bed, and an idea began to form.
Justine’s knocking grew more intense. “Thea, open the door.”
No. She wasn’t going to do that.
