“Tell me,” I demand in a low voice, squeezing my clasped hands together tighter so I’m not tempted to grab something breakable and throw it across the room.
Palmer lets out a deep sigh, mirroring me to rest his arms on the table and fold his hands together, while Bodhi pulls something up on his phone and then turns the screen around so I can see.
“Meet Kevin Stratford. Handsome little fuck, ain’t he?” Bodhi snorts as I get my first good look at the man I’ve hated since before I knew anything about him.
I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until it comes out of me in a shaky rasp while I study his face, seeing absolutely no sign of Owen except for the dark-brown hair. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, wondering if that sweet, amazing young man would look anything like his piece-of-shit father. Maybe because I know how much that would suck for Wren, having to look at a small replica of the man who has made her feel less than what she is for so many years, on the body of the person she loves more than anyone or anything else in the world. It eases a little of my anxiety, knowing my initial assessment was right, and Owen is a perfect mini-me of Wren.
Kevin Stratford is a handsome little fuck; I’ll give Bodhi that. He’s good-looking in a clean-cut, douchebag, frat boy way, wearing his light-pink chinos with a white button-down and a pale-blue linen jacket, standing on the deck of a mega-yacht in the middle of the ocean, holding a designer pair of sunglasses up to his mouth so he can douchebagily hold one of the earpieces in his teeth.
What a dumb fuck.
“He’s loaded, but not really,” Palmer starts. “It’s all Daddy’s money. And before you lose your shit that he’s never given Wren anything, that’s because she wouldn’t let him, even if he offered, which he never has anyway. His parents have never met Owen, but they mail him $200 every year in March for his birthday, so at least Wren has never had to pay for a pair of his cleats.”
“Except Owen’s birthday is in October.” Bodhi snorts humorlessly.
“He’s a hedge fund manager at his dad’s company in North Carolina,” Palmer goes on, while I continue staring at this asshole, already calculating how much money his plastic surgeon will make fixing Kevin’s pretty face when I’m done with him. “Which is just a fancy title for ‘I don’t do jack shit to earn a paycheck, and my daddy bails me out of every problem I have.’ I actually met him the same night Wren did. I’ll be honest with you; he was a charming motherfucker. Said all the right things, only had eyes for Wren all night long. Shit, I almost wanted to sleep with him by the end of the night. And then the stick turned pink and he showed his true colors. I only saw him one other time right after Owen was born and I was home for a visit. That was more than enough. He’s a condescending prick.”
“I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard plenty from Tess, and we’ve both seen all the screenshots of the texts he’s sent and listened to the raging voicemails he’s left over the years,” Bodhi adds, finally pulling the phone away. “Last time he was here, the first thing he said to her was ‘You’re looking a little fat. Maybe lay off the ice cream.’”
A vision of Kevin’s pristine, pale-blue linen jacket covered in blood suddenly forms in my head as they continue, putting me through a special kind of hell that I know pales in comparison to Wren actually having to go through it.
“Always tells her she’s a shitty mother because she works too much,” Palmer says, my arms starting to shake with how hard I’m squeezing my hands together on top of the table, while also trying not to vomit the stacks and stacks of pumpkin pancakes I inhaled, as I sit here listening to what Wren had to endure all this time.
“Remember the text he sent on Christmas Day that one year, telling her it must suck to spend another holiday alone because no one wants her?”
“Don’t forget the five-minute voicemail where he called her a C-U-Next-Tuesday, because she wouldn’t let Owen fly to Vegas alone for Kevin’s fourth wedding.”
“He always blames her for why he never sees Owen. He literally just called her a bitch yesterday, because she wouldn’t give him the ferry schedule.”
“He tells her she’s dumb and stupid all the time.”
“Always saying things to her like, ‘If you really loved our son, you wouldn’t…’ dot-dot-dot, fill in the blank. Every decision she makes is always the wrong one, according to Kevin.”
“I can’t even say the last thing…”