Enemy Dearest

I suck in a hard breath, but before I have a chance to utter some bullshit excuse, the back door swings open, and Dad walks in with an armful of groceries. His gaze passes between us and he lingers in the doorway, as if he’s afraid of stepping into a minefield.

“What’s … going on?” he asks.

“Apparently a Monreaux is paying for my nursing services,” Mama says to him, though her attention is very much on me.

Dad places the groceries on the counter, abandoning them to come examine the evidence himself.

“I couldn’t get a hold of Adriana earlier,” Mama says. “So I called her mother. She said you weren’t there, that they were in Chicago for a bridal shower this weekend. In fact, she told me she hadn’t seen you in weeks.”

“Sheridan, is this true?” Dad asks, as if he has any room to call me out for my web of lies.

My stomach clenches. For the first time in my life, two disappointed gazes anchor me to the ground. I’m no longer the apple of their eyes, I’m a rainstorm ruining their beautiful picnic.

“I knew it,” Mama says. “The way you walk around here with stars in your eyes, putting on that extra coat of lip gloss, curling your hair. I figured you were crushing on some boy—but never in a million years did I ever think it’d be a Monreaux.”

Disgust colors her tone.

Dad examines the statement again, his hand clamped over his mouth. “Sheridan, what did you do? Why is he paying for this? What kind of mess have you gotten us into with them? Is he blackmailing you? Does he have something he’s—”

“—no,” I say.

“Then explain it,” Mama rises from her chair—only to collapse back into it.

“You’re going to get yourself worked up,” Dad says to her. “Please, try to stay calm. Sheridan’s going to tell us everything, and then we’re going to figure this out.”

I grab Mama a glass of water and one of her “calming” pills and place them in front of her. If she reacts this way now, what’s going to happen when she finds out the truth? That I love him? That I want to be with him?

“I’m calling Dr. Smithson,” Dad says. “I think she’s having another spell. You stay here with her.”

I place a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not as bad as you think, Mama. I promise.”

Her eyes turn hazy, growing unfocused.

“She wants her to come in,” Dad says when he returns from the next room. “Immediately.”

We help her to the car and ride in silence, not a single utterance the entire trip. Knowing my father, he’s preparing his lecture in his head, saving it for when we’re alone and out of Mama’s earshot. We can’t risk upsetting her even more.

My father might be disappointed in me, but my mother could die of a broken heart.

I have to end it with August.

I have to accept once and for all that I can love him, but I can never be with him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

August

* * *

“Maybe it was shock,” I say over the phone after Sheridan fills me in later that night.

I’m sitting by the pool, in the very same chair she tossed her clothes onto the night she snuck in. The grotto is lit. The moon is full. And the crickets are in full effect. But on the other side of my phone, the situation is dire.

I can hardly hear her. Between the hum of the hospital vending machines she’s standing next to and the hushed tone of her voice, as if she’s afraid she’ll get caught talking to me.

“That’s my point,” she says. “It was shock. She was devastated at the mere fact that you’re paying for her nurse, that I’m associating with you—and she doesn’t know the half of what we’ve been up to.”

“Maybe when she calms down, you can talk to her about us? Maybe it won’t be as big of a shock next time? Since she’s already got some idea?”

“I don’t want to test that theory.”

I don’t blame her. I’d feel the same if it were my mother.

“I meant what I said earlier,” she says. “I love you. But I can never be yours, okay? Not in this life.” Her voice breaks. “Maybe we can try again in the next one. Maybe then we won’t be enemies?”

She chuckles, as if she knows how ridiculous she sounds, as if it could possibly soften the words that crush my soul.

But I’d live a thousand lifetimes if it meant I could spend just one of them with her.

“I need to go.” Her words are fractured. And so is my world. “Goodbye, August.”

I refuse to say goodbye.

“Goodbye, August,” she says again, slightly louder as if she thinks I didn’t hear her the first time.

But I can’t. I can’t repeat it. This isn’t goodbye. I won’t allow it.