Volition (30 page)

“Thank you! Tate, you remember my
fiancé
, Emmett.”

She gestures at the man following behind her, and although he’s older, I recognize him from several society events I was forced to attend.

I smile curtly like I’m supposed to, and although I know Cece is madly in love with Emmett, she’s standing there, looking at Hayden with her jaw on the pebbled driveway.

“Are you—” She shakes her head as if she knows she’s being rude. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you look an awful lot like Hayden Rockefeller.”

I roll my eyes. This has just reached a new level of awkward as Hayden narrows his eyes slightly at me because I know he hates it when people recognize him. I throw a look back at him because if he didn’t want that, he shouldn’t have come here. This is all the next two days will bring.

“Cece,” I say because now it’s my job to fix the situation, “this is in fact Hayden Rockefeller.”

She grips his hand like he’s a piece of David Yurman jewelry.

“Cecelia Hale,” she says shyly. “This is my fiancé.”

Emmett steps up and takes Hayden’s grip as he introduces himself like he’s trying to be better than a Rockefeller, but he knows he never will be.

I’ve won.

If this is a battle that Lara created and expected Cece to win by a landslide, I’ve won because unless I married a prince, there would be no topping a Rockefeller. And even then, I’m sure Hayden wins in Lara’s opinion since he’s an American, and any prince would be foreign-born and therefore tainted in her conservative eyes.

I shouldn’t take glee in this, but I do. I take disgusting satisfaction in the fact that he makes me better than all of them, and suddenly, I’m above and not beneath. I can now act the way I’ve always acted, but now, I have an excuse, and I’ll just be sophisticated instead of angsty or troubled.

I’ve won, and Hayden is my weapon.

Old Tate is sweeping back into me, and I let her in like Louisiana welcomes a hurricane—resentfully but without alternative.

New Tate never stood a chance.

Now

WE’RE HERDED LIKE cats into the reception area set up for Cece’s rehearsal dinner, and I walk myself in behind my sister and Emmett while Lara takes Hayden’s arm. He obliges because she’s biologically my grandmother, but he doesn’t know that she’s really a snake in human guise.

Of course she’s clinging to him.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Julian dropped dead by her hand, so she’d become available for Hayden instead of me.

I’m annoyed that I’m all alone, snacking on little cheeses to keep myself from clawing her eyes out. Cece comes to my rescue and pulls Hayden out of Lara’s grasp, so she and Emmett can speak with him instead. It’s then that I’m completely shocked as Lara pulls me aside and into one of the smaller rooms.

“Who would have thought you had it in you to seduce a Rockefeller, Tate?”

She doesn’t whisper, and if people weren’t talking so loudly in the other room, everyone would hear her. I half-think she
wants
them to hear her.

“I didn’t seduce him,” I say icily.

I’m watching my words because I don’t want to say anything that she can use against me later. She’s particularly fond of that trick.

I watch as little wrinkles form at the corner of her eyes, and I wonder if mine will look the same. We share a resemblance through my mother—her eyes, my hair. It’s there underneath all that evil.

“Are you sure? It’s a good thing you got your mother’s good fortune. If you’d taken after that Denny, I would have committed you to a European convent.”

I’m surprised she’s being so candid since her quips are usually beneath the surface. She’s trying to get a rise out of me. There’s no other explanation.

“You can have it, you know,” she continues. “If you marry him, you can have the rest of your inheritance.”

“I highly doubt I’d need the money if I married him, Lara. And that’s only
if
.”

“Think of your family,” she says. Her voice drips honey, but her eyes shoot daggers. “Think of what it would mean to us.”

She’s reached the end of my patience.

“I will not light myself on fire to keep you warm.”

I’ve wanted to say it for years, but I’ve never had an opening quite like this one.

Lara’s eyes narrow, and her cheeks form a victorious smile as she directs her gaze behind me. I turn, but I already know what she’s done.

Hayden’s standing behind me in the doorframe, holding two glasses of wine—white for me, red for him.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Lara says. She makes her exit, but I know she’s just going to wait around the corner to hear what’s about to come next.

“Light yourself on fire?” he asks. I can see the hurt in his eyes—genuine pain, not just confusion at my statement. “Being with me is the equivalent of lighting yourself on fire?”

I don’t tell him to stop. I don’t tell him to listen to me. I don’t have anything to say because he’s right. That’s what I’ve just said because of my lifetime feud with my own flesh and blood and my ill-favored quest for vengeance.

Yes.

I’ve hurt him.

Deeply.

I run. I run like the night of cotillion when I ran away from Jesse.

I’ve dragged Hayden into this mess of a life that I have, and this is the breaking point. My mind is spinning from lack of sleep, so I run out of the house and down the steps to where we left the car.

“Keys!” I shout at one of the valets like I’m Marie Antoinette.

He produces them from his pocket and tries to run to get Hayden’s rental car, but I’m faster. I wrench them out of his hand as I start the car with the remote, so no one can stop me.

I get in and shut the driver’s side with such force that I’m shocked when all the sound immediately stops. This car is like a bubble, and all I can hear is the clicking of the seat as I move it forward since Hayden is significantly taller than me.

I hate driving. I hate this car. I’m not registered on the rental agreement because I wasn’t expecting to be behind the wheel. I don’t know where my driver’s license is because all I have in the pocket of my dress is my phone.

It’s ringing as I pull out of the driveway and onto the back road that will take me into the city, and I don’t pull it out to check who is calling me. I’m betting it’s not Hayden.

Lack of sleep does something to you. You start to see the world in different ways. The edges of everything start to blur—not in a calming soft way, but more like there’s a buzz to the air, and you can’t stop any of it until it invades your mind, too.

It’s like living in another layer of life. It can’t be reached unless you bring yourself to the brink of torture that is facing a second sun without rest. I assume it’s what a caffeine overdose feels like when the anxiety sets in, and nothing will fix it but time.

I’m fully aware that I shouldn’t be behind the wheel for a multitude of reasons as I make my way into the city. I have no idea where I’m going or how long I’ve been gone.

Highway hypnosis is apparently worse when you’re sleep deprived. I don’t remember the drive from point A to here, only that I am here now.

I stop at a light, only to be distracted by the trees. I’m the first car, and I probably won’t notice when it’s time to go. I’ll be honked at several times.

I look down.

There’s a car in front of me. It’s idling in the middle of the intersection, waiting for the oncoming cars so that it can turn left. It’s taking too long. It’s still sitting there. My light hasn’t turned green yet, but I have the desire to move my foot from the brake to the acceleration pedal and slam my car into the side of it.

It’s like the overwhelming desire that I have to pull a fire alarm whenever I see one.

It’s that morbid curiosity of what would happen.

Or is it the actual act?

I imagine myself careening toward it.

I would hit the driver’s side and crush the driver. My windshield might shatter, and the airbag would deploy, but I would survive.

The light turns green.

Then

I DIDN’T FALL asleep while I was in the muddy mess of the hole, but I wasn’t lucid either. My thoughts went in and out of reality while I waited for the sun to come up. I wished I had just passed out, but it never happened.

The night is darkest before the dawn.

I knew that to be true in this instance, both metaphorically and literally. I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard footsteps approaching.

Something hit me square on top of my head, and it was a moment before I realized what it was. I grasped at it with my fingers until I knew what I was feeling was the end of a rope. I pulled on it with my good hand, and it didn’t budge.

“Climb up.”

His voice hit me square in the heart. He’d just told me he wouldn’t pull me up, and here he was, throwing me a rope. This was how we worked. Back and forth, back and forth. We never moved forward. We’d never move forward.

How long had it been since he’d left me sitting here? Minutes? Hours?

I was so exhausted that I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull myself up even if I wanted to. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saving me or knowing that I shouldn’t have let Colin leave me here to begin with. I was too stubborn for my own good. I’d always known that.

I’d just never fixed it.

“No.”

I said no, but we both knew I was going to climb out. He waited for me like I was some kind of wild animal that would run away if he moved whatsoever.

I knew he wasn’t strong enough to pull me out of this muddy hole, so I was going to have to do it myself. My finger was throbbing with every beat of my heart, which was increasing the closer I got to Jesse, but I didn’t have a choice.

I pulled on the rope once more to check that it was secure. I had no idea what Jesse had tied it to, so I couldn’t be sure I could trust it.

Hand over hand, I managed to pull myself up, using the mushy sides of the wall as footholds. He reached out for me, and I reluctantly took his hand in my right one as I came over the edge. My face went to the grass, and for a few moments, I just breathed in dirt as I shut my eyes, relieved I was quite literally out of that hellhole.

I was so stupid.

A few deep breaths later, I sat up and turned to Jesse, who was now standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite place.

We hated each other because we felt this way. We hadn’t spoken since the terrible kiss in the back of the cab, and until tonight, I was quite certain we’d never speak again.

He didn’t hold his hand out to help me up, so I brushed myself off and faced him. He was considerably taller than the last time I’d seen him. No, he wasn’t just taller. He towered over me.

I wasn’t expecting that either. The boy that I knew was slowly disappearing, but what I felt for him wasn’t.

I regretted that.

“I don’t want to go home.”

He just stood there.

“This isn’t your home.”

“No. But I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t want to go back tonight.”

I couldn’t stand to spend another night under a roof with people who hated me.