with anyone, wasn’t something he was prepared to do.
When he didn’t answer, Cady grabbed his arm, her nails digging into his skin.
Beck jerked his arm away and forced himself to meet her eyes. Oh, damn, he wished he hadn’t because, as long as he lived, he’d remember the betrayal he saw within them, the pain he’d caused. Cady lifted her hand to grab the fabric of his shirt just above his heart, twisting it in her fist. “Don’t do this, Beck. Don’t throw us away, don’t toss me aside. We can fix this.”
“That’s the thing, Cades, I can’t be fixed.”
It was a special type of hell, Beck thought, to watch a heart break. It was even worse when you were responsible for it breaking.
Almost a decade later
Sitting at one of the many high tables in Bonnets, a swish cocktail bar just off Fifth Avenue, Cady Collins had to physically stop herself from appropriating the massive salt-rimmed margarita delivered to the table next to her. The taste buds on the back of her tongue tingled as she imagined the perfect combination of salt and the sugar-tinged tang of tequila.
It had been a tequila type of day and week. Year.
The waiter turned to her, lifted an eyebrow at her empty glass. “Another virgin Bloody Mary?”
God, Friday night and she was in the most reviewed cocktail bar in the city—the joke was that Bonnets had the license to serve cocktails to the angels—and she was drinking tomato juice.
How sad.
Cady saw the screen of her phone light up, saw the display say The Boss and sighed as she lifted the device to her ear. “Hi, Mom.”
“Cady, where are you?” Edna Collins asked in her best I’m-the-preacher’s-wife voice.
Cady resisted the urge to tell her that she was in a bar tucking dollar bills into the tiny thong of a muscled, oiled male stripper. You’re an adult. You don’t need to try to shock your parents anymore.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
Edna called her at precisely 8:00 p.m. every second Sunday. A call outside that time meant that something had rattled The Force.
“You might have heard that the preacher at our sister church in Wilton is retiring and the church has been looking for a suitable replacement.”
Not really. She didn’t keep up with what was happening in the exciting world of church politics in upstate New York.
Cady sent another look at the icy margarita and felt her mouth tingle. One little sip... How much damage could one sip do?
“Your father is being considered.”
“Good for him,” Cady replied because she was expected to say something.
“We need you to come home in two weeks,” Edna stated, her voice suggesting that an argument would not be tolerated.
“Me? Why?”
“Your father is undergoing a process of rigorous interviews. I will be interviewed, as well. As you are our only child, they want to meet you, too.”
Cady wanted to tell her mother that she wasn’t an only child, that she’d had a brother, that his life mattered, but as always she refrained. Will wasn’t someone they regularly discussed. Or at all.
“Mother, what possible bearing could I have on the proceedings? I live in New York City, and I rarely come home.”
“You never come home,” Edna corrected.
That might be because home was the place where she had no wiggle room, where there was no room for error. Home was a place of pressure, with a lot of interest shown but little love. After Will was sent away, she’d lived in constant fear that she would be, too.
Home was hymnal music and stockings, religious books and piety.
Cady shuddered. “Well, sorry. That’s not going to happen.”
Cady heard her mother’s shocked gasp. “But you have to! Not meeting with the interview committee would reflect very badly on your father and his chance to secure this position. It’s a big church, Cady, with a lot of resources. Since you put that traveling nonsense behind you, you’ve been a model daughter, a credit to us. Highly educated, with your own business. I have no doubt you are an example to others in that sin-filled city.”
Yeah, Cady Collins, the beacon for clean living. Oh, God, her mother was going to die when she heard her latest news. As for that traveling nonsense, her time in Thailand with Beck was the only time she felt completely herself. Free.
Loved. For a brief moment in time, she’d felt so loved.
“It would be a huge step up for him,” her mother droned on. “And when they meet you, they’ll have the proof that we have raised a God-fearing, smart young woman who has her feet firmly on the ground.”
If the statement wasn’t so sad, she’d roll on the floor and wet herself laughing. “Mom, trust me, you really don’t want me there. Find an excuse and we’ll save a lot of trouble.”
“I have no idea what you’re rambling about and I don’t have the time to argue with you. We have guests for dinner. Do not disappoint us, Cady,” Edna snapped before she disconnected.
Cady gently tapped the corner of her phone against the tabletop. She’d left home more than a decade ago, but the urge to please her parents was still strong. In their small rural town in upstate New York, she’d been the popular pastor’s kid. Honor student, cheerleader, student council president, homecoming queen. Pretty, popular, nice. As perfect as she could possibly be.
She said “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” and ran errands and never missed church. She didn’t smoke or drink or party or date because she was an “example.” She’d never had the chance to be a regular kid, to mess up, to fail.
The pressure to be perfect was immense and it was generally accepted that she became an overachiever because that was what her parents expected. Sure, that was part of the reason, but no one knew that she was terrified of messing up, of doing or saying the wrong thing.
Of being banished like Will, her older brother.
As a result, her desire to please her parents still lingered. They wouldn’t be very impressed with her now, she thought, reflecting on the trouble she’d landed herself in. Then again, she was fairly sure that Edna and Bill Collins had been expecting her to mess up again since she’d run off to Southeast Asia with Beck Ballantyne nine years before. She’d wanted to be with Beck more than she’d wanted to please her mom and dad and...boom! Fireworks.
This latest bombshell would rock their world again. Cady pushed the tips of her fingers into her forehead and held back a whimper. And that was without telling them that her business was rocky and she was running out of options to keep it on the rails.
“Cady?”
Cady
