“Fiancée?” Dad bellows. First, his face turns red, then his neck, and pretty soon his hands that are clenched at his sides have turned an unnatural combination of red and white.
“You heard a single word I said?” he screams. Holly jumps back half a foot, her eyes flutter closed and her entire frame goes rigid. While I don’t suffer such a violent physical reaction, I certainly feel his disapproval deep in my heart. “You are throwing your entire fucking future away for a little bit of a dick. I raised you better than that, Cheyenne. I don’t fucking understand where I went so wrong that you are this intent on destroying not just your future but his as well.”
Staring at him numbly, I try to figure out exactly what he’s telling me. It feels like he’s not so subtly dancing around what he really wants to say, which is surprising. He’s never been a man known for self-control.
“I’m going to marry him because I love him. Because the future you want for me isn’t the future I want for myself,” I say. The words fly from my mouth in a pathetic whine I can’t really control.
“Not without my vote, he won’t,” Dad says.
Very slowly, Jeremy turns his attention toward me. He shakes his head slowly and mouths, “Just stop.”
“It doesn’t take a club vote to get married,” I say. It’s his club—he should know the rules little bit better than that.
“No, but it does take the club to vote in an old lady. And as long as you keep acting like a spoiled fucking brat, I won’t ever allow you to be voted in.”
“Grady, man,” Jeremy says. His voice wavers, careful not to insult my dad, but fearful and pleading.
“No. I’m fucking done with this shit. I am the only one who’s noticed you can’t keep your dick on straight. You want to be Forsaken? You want to marry my girl? Only fucking way either of those is ever going to happen is if you can get your shit together long enough to not fuck up your entire future.”
“Wow, you can’t even be a little bit happy for me, can you?” I say. I fight back the tears that threaten to slip down my cheeks. I’m an adult, and I’m strong. I refuse to let any of them see how weak I really feel inside.
“It’s not about being happy for you, baby girl. It’s about doing right by you, and right now that means giving you some hard truths. You need to know that if you keep going like this, you’re going to cost that boy his patch. Best thing you can do for him is to just go to that goddamn school I told you I’d fucking pay for and let the kid earned his top rocker in peace.”
Dad raises an eyebrow, daring me to keep arguing. Honestly, I could argue with him for days. We’ve done it before, and I’m not afraid to do it again. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any point in it. He’s got himself convinced that our relationship is going to destroy both our lives, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change that. So instead, I let my frustration get the better of me—I throw my hands in the air and stomp away.
Jeremy follows after me and pulls me aside into Alex’s room. I only know it’s her room because while there are posters of naked women on the walls, there are also competing department store photographs of flowers, the beach, and even one 5x7 of Ryan and Alex together. I never wondered what Ryan’s decorating style was, but now that I know, I’m really grateful that tiny little crush I had on him years ago has since faded and that nothing ever came of it. I totally couldn’t live with waking up every day to a woman’s fake rack.
“This is so fucked up,” Jeremy says. He’s scrubs his face with his hands and groans. “Maybe he’s right. I’ve been spending so much time trying to keep your ass out of trouble that I haven’t even been worried about mine.”
I have to turn away from him to stop myself from totally breaking down. We’ve been engaged for, what, three days? And he’s already got cold feet and changed his mind. I was afraid of this, even if I never wanted to admit it. Something in the back of my mind told me that this is what boys do. They make commitments they can’t keep. They tell you they’ll be with you forever, when what they really mean is that they’ll be with you until it’s no longer convenient. Because that’s all this is with my dad—inconvenient.
“Are you serious? Are you really going to let one argument stop us from being together the way we want to be?” I think I already have my answer, but I’m not willing to accept it.
“You heard him,” he says. “When have you ever known Grady to threaten shit he doesn’t mean?”
“So this is it? Our relationship means so little to you that you can just throw us away at the first sign of trouble? Well, I guess it’s better to find this out now.”
“No, I’m not throwing us away. I’m fucking telling you that we’re rushing into shit.”
“So, what—you asked me to marry you and you didn’t mean it?”