Page 32 of Solstice

I gave a sad laugh. “There’s no getting off this roller coaster. Just be thankful you’re not betrothed. Yet.”

“Yeah, thanks for falling on that sword.” Kit gave me a sympathetic smile and stabbed a piece of cheese on her plate with a toothpick, bringing it to her mouth. She trailed her steely gaze over the crowd with a sneer that always hid right between her eyebrows.

“Don’t count your chickens, dear sister,” I said. “Just wait until there’s another election someone has to win. Some rich cousin with an agenda. Some political asshat that Mother needs to please.”

“Which is why I’ll take my rebellion where I can.” She covertly placed a flash drive in my hand. “Your Mr. Smythe, if I do say so myself.”

“Are you serious?” I’d only asked her to look into it a few days ago. She’d already found him?

“He’s not that far away.” Kit glanced between me and Jon. “Andhe’s staying with a bunch of other people with similar tattoos. The ivy and the vines.”

Jackpot.

“Some day, you’ll tell me what this is all about, right?” She narrowed her icy eyes on me.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to. Of course, I didn’t see how I could bring Poppy into my family without a good cover story, one that we all agreed on. I smiled at my sister and nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

“Oh, shit.” Jon turned toward me and hid his face. “Incoming.”

Our father strolled our way, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass of whiskey. Despite his stressful marriage and his very public career, the former president had aged well. In his late fifties, he still had a full head of red hair and bright gray eyes. Washington eyes. My eyes.

“It’s never good when you three are in cahoots.” He straightened, his attention going from Kit on my right to Jon on my left before finally landing on me. “And you’re at the head of it.”

“As always.” I smiled at my father and clinked my flute against his glass. “Having a good time?”

He made a sarcastic noise and turned to face the crowd. “Oh, yeah. A blast. Can’t you tell?”

The wave of alcohol on his breath hit me like a slap, and I winced as he looked back at me, a little unfocused, but I’d seen him drunker at more important events. I ignored it and finished my champagne before setting it on a tray behind me.

“Well, you’re in like company.” Jon finished his flute and did the same. “We’re taking bets on when we might be able to escape. At least you can always divorce your way out.”

Our father laughed, cynical and depressed. “You’re hilarious.”

That hurt right at the center of my chest because we all knew there was no divorce in this family. We married once, and we married for life, and that was that, no matter what.

I’d always had a formal relationship with my father, the type expected from a man who’d sent his children to boarding school and paid someone else to raise them. I used to think he was a God, and my mother some Goddess, and together, they ruled my very soul. But the look in my father’s eye when he frowned at his whiskey and took a drink shifted my perspective.

For so long, I’d seen it as me versus them, my siblings and me on one side of this war and my parents on the other. Now, I hesitated. These last few years were supposed to be their retirement. She was supposed to be done. They wanted to move to Florida and live as civilians, put away their political games and let the next generation take the reins, the way their parents had done for them. But she couldn’t give it up and he’d been the man behind the curtain far too long. Would that be Lex one day? Or me?

Eventually, he turned to me and swirled his whiskey around in his glass. “Your mother wants to speak with you.”

“About?”

“A spring wedding,” he said.

Anxiety twisting in my gut, I nodded and glanced at Kit, whose scowl deepened at the mention of my marriage. Then I looked at Jon, who resembled our father so much, the media often mistook old pictures of my dad for my brother. He echoed my father’s distant look, as if he were thinking about his own future and how it might compare to the man in front of us. Or how it might compare to mine.

We were such a traumatized family.

Lex talked to Evelyn in the crowd a few yards away, and whatever she said to him didn’t sit well. The glower in his eyes intensified as they frantically searched the crowd for me, mentally shouting across the distance.

X, where the fuck are you?

I took a deep breath and headed straight for destruction.

“Oh, there you are,” my mother said when I caught up to them. “Anna and I have decided.”

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