Page 22 of Anger Bang
“What?” Thea twisted the hem of her oversize hoodie, more than ready to turtle up inside it. “No. That can’t be right.”
Jackie sucked her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I’m a liar now?”
“That’s not what I mean, I just—” She stopped herself in the middle of what would have been her usual placating speech to calm her sister down and get everything back onto an even keel.
She inhaled a deep breath and checked herself. Her heart was going a million miles an hour. Her palms were sweaty. She didnothave mom’s spaghetti all over her shirt, but that old anthem from Eminem was stuck in her head anyway because she was having those kinds of nerves. She let the song roll in her head for a bit, the steady beat keeping her from spinning out with the overthinker’s urge to find each and every problem and a possible solution. She didn’t need all of that. She had options. Fawn wasn’t it. Freeze wasn’t getting her anywhere. Flight? Yeah, in the middle of nowhere Wyoming with her sister (who was a lot stronger than she looked, thanks to multiple hardcore workout sessions a week) between Thea and freedom? Wasn’t going to happen. That left fight. But did that mean battling, or could it just be standing up for herself?
She let out the breath she’d been holding and leveled a steady gaze at her sister.
“That’s not fair, and you know it,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible despite how much she was shaking on the inside. “I’m the last person to ever want any kind of headlines.”
Okay, it was just a baby step to not wearing a metaphorical neon sign that saidwalk all over me, but it was enough forward momentum to have her lungs so tight it was like she’d just sprinted up a flight of stairs. In a horror movie. With a headless ghoul hot on her heels.
Jackie opened her mouth, no doubt with a burning hot retort that was going to leave Thea a pile of ashes. But instead of slinging flaming hot sarcasm, her sister just closed her mouth and let out a frustrated sigh.
“I know,” Jackie said almost apologetically, her shoulders sinking. “I gotta go talk to Mom. We have a lot riding on this, and she’ll know a way to recenter things.”
Without waiting for any kind of response, her sister turned and started toward their mom’s RV while Thea told herself that all of this would blow over. Everyone was having a good laugh at the dorky paleontologist who obviously didn’t fit in making a fool of herself. All she needed to do was stay away from the cameras for a while. Then, the producers would go back to focusing on Jackie and Dex as the happy couple, and Thea could remain in the background like she always wanted and where she needed to be to stay off her boss’s radar at the museum so he didn’t yank her permission to go on the dig after the wedding.
Easy fix.
She was about to go back inside her RV to hunker down for the day when Jackie stopped mid-stride and turned back to face Thea. Her sister lifted her hand to her forehead to block out the sun as if she didn’t still have her ginormous sunglasses on her head.
“Don’t even think of flaking out on the hike this morning,” she said, smacking her gum with gusto. “All of the bridesmaids have to go, and if you don’t show up the only question anyone will have is where you are.”
Thea bit back a groan. The hike. So much for hiding out from the cameras. “I’ll be there.”
Jackie stared at her as she blew a humongous bubble and then slid her sunglasses down into place before walking away.
This was just perfect. Flight was pretty damn tempting right about now. But Thea had made a commitment to be a part of this wedding, and she was going to keep it, even if her sister never wanted her there in the first place.
What F-word stress response was petty stubbornness? Fuck-you-ity? Yeah, that’s what she’d be going with today.
An hour later, she was in the eighties-theme-compliant neon-green workout gear that matched all of the other bridesmaids. Unlike Jackie in her blindingly bright neon leggings and sports bra, though, she and the grumbling bridesmaids were in high-cut leotards over shiny leggings with a cropped sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder. They looked like Jackie’s backup singers in a demented new wave cover band.
Forget fuck-you-ity—flight seemed the much better choice right now. Before she could figure out how to fake an illness, however, the air shifted as someone moved to stand next to her. A big someone who came up so close to her that her hip was right up against his.
“If you go anywhere and leave me alone with these jokers wearingthis,” Kade said, his gravelly voice sending a shiver of anticipation through her, “I will find a way to get my revenge—one you’ll love and hate at the same time.”
She pivoted so she could take in what he was wearing that had annoyed him so much.
A better woman would have kept the grin off her face. Thea was not that woman.
Kade was wearing a tight white tank and a pair of bright-yellow short shorts with white piping around the edges that showcased his hard, muscular thighs to perfection. That was the first thing she noticed about his shorts. Then her brain processed the fit. They were tight, hugging his ass and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination about what he was packing in his jockeys—there was no way he could wear anything else without it showing so the only other option possible was free-balling, which in those shorts was just asking for a wardrobe malfunction.
Was it wrong to be both hopeful and afraid at the same time? Because she totally was. Yeah, she was a bad person. She could live with that.
“You are wearing underwear, aren’t you?” she asked, blurting out the question before she could stop herself.
He raised an eyebrow, his gaze dropping to her mouth a half second before he reached out and tucked a stray hair from her side ponytail behind her ear, gliding his fingertips ever so slowly down the side of her neck. “Of all the things you could say right now, that’s what you gave the go-ahead to?”
Her lungs tightened as she tried to remember what in the fuck they were talking about when her whole body was tingling with awareness. Kade. Wedding. Eighties workout clothes. That was it!
“They’re tiny shorts,” she managed to get out, her gaze dropping to the baseball cap he held in his free hand.
“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled. “They make me look like an asshole. I think your sister took her revenge for the fact that she despised me on sight by ordering my clothes a size smaller than needed.”
“No way. That would only get you more camera time,” Thea said, knowing that would be the last thing her sister would ever want to share. “I know I’d have a hard time looking away if I was watching at home.”
