Page 35 of Wright Kind of Trouble

It was better for me to disappear, just as I had after the wedding.

Still, I watched her until she left my sight, wishing I’d made a different choice. Even though I knew this was the right one.

10

Harley

November

I jumped up and down, screaming my head off as they announced Jensen’s mayoral win. I grabbed Bailey’s hands, and we jumped together. She laughed unabashedly, her freshly dyed dark brown hair swinging around her face.

In the months since Eve’s sister had moved in with Whitt and Eve, we’d become close. She was still a senior in high school, but she was the most down-to-earth girl I’d met since moving to Lubbock. Plus, we did all the family interactions together, and she was the closest person to my age in that group.

“He did it!” Bailey called in wonder.

“Hell yeah, he did!” I said. “I need to get us drinks.”

Bailey shook her head. “No, no, no. No drinking for me. You know that.”

“Sorry. Sorry! I just got excited.”

Bailey and alcohol did not mix. Or maybe they mixed too well. She’d gone a little wild before moving to Lubbock but was on the right track now.

“You have a drink though.” Bailey pushed me toward the bar on the opposite side of the room. “Don’t let me spoil the fun.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Go. I’m going to hang with my volleyball girls.”

“All right,” I said, leaving Bailey to the other girls on her high school volleyball team. She was a beast, and I hoped that she’d get to still play wherever she went to college. She’d been on her way to a Division I scholarship until she had to miss her junior year of play.

I passed the rest of my boisterous family. One that I was still admiring I even had. For so long, it had just been me, West, and Whitt. Now, West was in LA with his band Cosmere, and Whitt was busy a lot with Eve. I’d discovered this whole other side of my family—barbecues and lake days and holidays. It was wonderful and overwhelming. I wished that my mom would move down here, but I knew she wouldn’t. Not while my grandma and grandpa were still in Seattle.

I ordered a glass of red from the bar and took up a spot to people-watch during Jensen’s speech. It was a good one. All about hope and shit. Not about the money and name he’d already had that led him to this position. Alas, politics.

When the speech finished, the crowd roared, and a line formed to shake his hand. And like a magnet, I saw him.

“Fuck,” I whispered, melting backward against the wall and taking a formative sip of my wine. “Oh fuck.”

Chase Sinclair was at the front of that line.

What the fuck was he doing here?

His father had humiliated Eve at the last mayoral event I attended and made an enemy of Jensen Wright. I couldn’t even believe that Chase would be seen at Jensen’s victory. I’d thought the rivalry was bad before Arnold blew it up, but now, the Sinclairs were officially public enemy number one.

He was just asking for trouble tonight.

With my eyes still trained on his blond head, I watched two of my cousins, Austin and Landon, approach Chase. Austin clapped a hand on his shoulder, and then they were all talking. Well, arguing. Then, Chase was being bodily turned around and moved toward the door. He pushed off of the guys and ran his hands down his suit before putting his hands up. Landon just crossed his arms and shook his head. The picture was pretty clear. Chase wasn’t welcome.

Why had he ever thought he would be?

Was this another plea from his father to make amends?

My curiosity got the better of me, and like a shadow, I slunk through the ballroom, following him as he pushed roughly out a door that led to the elevator bank. His hands were in his hair as he cursed and then reared back and kicked the wall.

“Don’t think that’s going to do anything,” I told him, giving away my position.

He whipped around to find me standing in my black taffeta dress. I hadn’t meant to say anything. I was going to leave him to his own devices. After all, the last time I’d seen him, I’d told him to leave. And here he was, doing it before I had to say anything.

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