“How’s that exactly?”
“Daddy was sick and I was so scared, Kyrs. I thought . . . I needed to be a good daughter. And I . . . I blamed him some. We’d spent the summer together, but my father was lying unconscious, while he was heading back to his fairy-tale life at college. It wasn’t fair. It was easier to believe that there wasn’t any chance for us to—”
“Enough melodrama. You need a plan,” said Kyrstin, dabbing at her lips. “You talked to him since?”
“He tried to call me at King Triton in September, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I told him to stop bothering me. Eventually he stopped.”
“So you’ve had no contact with him in two months, but you’re gonna walk up to his house, tell him you’re pregnant, and ask him to marry you?” She laughed the way Laire had laughed in the doctor’s office—high-pitched and a little crazy. “That’s not a plan.”
“What other choice do I have, Kyrstin?”
Kyrstin locked her eyes with her little sister’s, her lips thin and white. When she spoke, her voice was low and merciless. “Forget the governor’s son. Find an island boy and fuck him fast.”
Laire’s eyes widened in horror and she recoiled in her seat. “No.”
Kyrstin nodded. “Brodie’s still up for grabs. Drinks a lot. You’d just have to seduce him once.”
“No!” Laire sobbed. “I don’t want Brodie! I love Erik!”
“Who cares?” growled Kyrstin in a furious whisper. “You need a solution and I’m givin’ you one.”
“I can’t do that,” she said, weeping.
“Laire!” said Kyrstin fiercely, reaching for her sister’s hands. “You gotta get married fast. Fast, you hear? You gotta get married and make this right . . .” She searched Laire’s eyes frantically as her grip tightened painfully. “. . . or you can’t never come home. You know that? You understand that? Never, ever. You’d be dead to us. Forever.”
Laire clenched her jaw as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Kyrstin continued, her tone and fingers merciless. “So you figure out what you have to do and you do it. You got yourself in this mess. You need to make it right.”
“I get it,” sobbed Laire, wresting her hands free and rubbing the feeling back into them. “I get it.”
“I ain’t feelin’ sorry for you, Laire,” said Kyrstin, though her voice, edged with concern, betrayed her. “You don’t wanna take a swing at Brodie Walsh? Fine. Then after our Thanksgivin’ dinner with Daddy, we’ll say you’re stayin’ the night at my house, and Remy can run you up to Buxton. You can tell your . . . boyfriend what’s happened, tell him he has to marry you—much good it’ll do you.”
“Why don’t you think he will?” asked Laire, her voice soft and broken. “Why can’t you be positive?”
“Because I’m not a goddamned idiot. Because those people ain’t our people. They don’t live their lives the same way we do, Laire. They got different values, different priorities. You know that. You can’t expect nothin’. I certainly don’t. When you come on back from Buxton with your heart in tatters, you can choose an island boy and set up a date. Get him drunk. Fuck him. And he’ll do right by you.”
“I can’t seduce someone I don’t love just so my baby has a daddy. I can’t . . .,” she said, reaching up to dry her cheeks again. The very idea chipped away at her soul. Trapped on Corey for the rest of her life with a man she didn’t love? It was a fate worse than death for Laire, who wanted so much more than Corey could offer.
“Then get a ring from the governor’s son,” said Kyrstin acidly, “and good fuckin’ luck.”
Kyrstin’s doubts made Laire wince, made her doubt herself. But Erik had loved her, hadn’t he? Yes. Yes, she was sure that he ha d. Then again, fear and anger had caused her to choose her family over Erik. She had rejected him and hurt him, forced him out of her life. What if he had stopped loving her? What if he had moved on as she’d urged him to do?
“What if he doesn’t give me one?” she murmured, stricken. “A ring?”
Kyrstin raised her chin, her face sad for an instant before it frosted over. “Then you know what you have to do. And if you won’t do it, don’t come home.”
***
Laire had made the drive from Corey to Buxton over a hundred times over the summer, but now? In the middle of November with Remy cold and silent at the helm? It was freezing and wet and completely unpleasant. Nothing like the long, warm days of summer, when she loved feeling the wind in her hair and thinking about her blossoming love with Erik Rexford.