12. Theron

12

THERON

CHERRY WAVES - DEFTONES

"Just once it would be cool if you weren't such a grumpy dick."

Theo's lectures always strike a balance between being stern like our mother and crass like some filthy-mouthed biker in a grungy bar. She adds a dirty look in my direction as she buckles herself into my BMW.

I insisted on driving despite the fact that it's my birthday. I needed my emergency means of escape if necessary.

"It's not some punishment, you know," she says when I answer her with stubborn silence. "It's supposed to be a joyous occasion."

"I don't celebrate my birthday. How many times do I have to tell the both of you?"

"Dad thought it would be a good idea."

"Dad also thought it would be a great idea to fuck his personal assistant. How'd that turn out for him?"

"You heard him and Mom. They have an arrangement."

"Which would explain why our mother has been overseas on a sabbatical for ten months."

"Don't expect me to explain the ins and outs of their fucked up marriage. They've been together for a million years. They still love each other in their own way."

Theo's comment isn't worth dignifying with an answer.

She can make up as many mind-bending excuses to pacify her turmoil about our parents as she wants, but I prefer to be more grounded in reality—they're married in legal status only and have no real affection for each other.

Love has been absent from our family for as long as I can remember. I was six wondering why my parents never hugged or kissed like the parents on television. I was eight when I accidentally stumbled upon Dad and the nanny in his private library. By age ten, I stopped cooperating with the farce of a family photo we took every Christmas.

At thirteen, as I went through the ringer known as puberty, I realized I never wanted to be anything like them. Successful but miserable. Married but alone. Living a lifetime of what ifs and maybes. Sneaking around in the dark because the light meant exposure.

I wanted no part of it.

I was young, naive, hopeful in my own way, noticing the opposite sex for the first real time. Their delicate beauty as they matured alongside me captivated me. It fascinated me as I fell in love—or so I thought—with the pretty girl nice enough to smile at me.

Then it was the bookish girl who asked me about the book I was reading.

In high school, I thought of my first girlfriend as the sun that lit up my sky. I wrote her poems and gave her flowers. I would've given her the world and more if she'd only loved me back. If she'd only loved me the same…

It was an emerging pattern that played out in disastrous fashion the older I became. The more times I had my heart broken, crushed, stomped on, the more desperately I clung to the idea I could have what I yearned for most.

Love.

The kind of love that eluded Mom and Dad.

The one thing in their perfect, sanitized, overachieving lives that they'd never been able to accomplish—true, genuine, boundless love.

Love that ran so deep, so integrally, there was no functioning without it. It was a kind of love that you'd sacrifice anything for.

There was no earthly limit to the things you'd do in order to protect it…

My version of love is nothing like the flimsy, cardboard cutout version that's my parents' marriage.

"Since when do you cuss?" Theo asks suddenly, pulling me from my thoughts. We've merged into traffic as we drive out of the city to the fancy restaurant where we'll have dinner. "And you say I'm the filthy-mouthed biker."

I sigh, fixated on the road ahead. "You are. But so am I. Now sit tight. The sooner we make it to this place, the sooner I get to fucking leave."

Theo laughs, though she yelps as I slam on the gas and floor it. We arrive to Le Canard no more than fifteen minutes later. Dad is predictably already seated and waiting on us, his square glasses perched midway down his aquiline nose. His thin mouth is downturned like it always is, as though he's pre-disappointed about what's to come.

Neither of us have lived up to his lofty expectations—he wanted more than an apartment manager for a daughter and a law school professor for a son. Add on the fact that Theo's a lesbian and neither of us have children, and his disappointment is the palpable fourth dinner guest at the table .

"Sorry we're late, daddy," Theo says, flashing a sweet smile like she's still thirteen. She kisses him on the cheek before claiming the seat on his right.

"It's alright, Theo. I've come to expect it," he replies dryly.

I skip the hello altogether, taking the farthest seat with the kind of silent, cordial nod I give coworkers.

Dad fixes his unyielding stare on me, peering across the table as if studying a complicated math equation.

If there's one thing the brilliant and renowned district judge Thurman Adler loves, it's a problem he believes he can solve.

Somehow, he's never managed to fix me in his image.

He married young and remained married no matter how unhappy. I'm officially forty-two with no marriage to my name, no matter how unhappy, because I refuse to settle for anything less than a love worth dying for.

We're polar opposites, and I couldn't prefer it more.

"Happy birthday, Theron," he says finally, his tone lukewarm. "I'm glad you made time in your busy schedule for your sister and I."

"I would appreciate the occasion more if I celebrated birthdays," I answer. I'm just as deadpan. Equally as unimpressed and bored.

Truthfully, my mind is on one thing only on a night like tonight.

Tonight may be my birthday, but more importantly, it's Halloween—and Nyssa Oliver has plans.

So far, I've resisted checking my phone, where I've been logging into her iCloud to spy on her. I vowed I'd do what I haven't often managed to do in recent times; I'd go the rest of the night without checking on her once.

But as Dad makes forced conversation about the menu at Le Canard and halfheartedly asks Theo about her job managing the college apartments, I give in. My resolve vanishes in a desperate intake of air and I slip my phone out of my pocket, glancing down at it from under the table.

She's tagged her location as the university campus, which means she's gone through with it. She's attending the much-talked-about costume party at the frat house. I'll never understand why she would want to sully herself at such a place, where drunk losers congregate and trouble always breaks out.

Doesn't she understand she's better than that? She's better than them .

Whatever the reason she wanted to attend, it's not lost on me who else will be there. My plans to frame Samson Wicker have been a success so far. He's facing removal from the team, but I won't stop there. I want him expelled.

Far away from Nyssa for the rest of his life.

The problem is, my endeavor does nothing to stop him tonight. What if Nyssa's turning up to the party for him?

My hand curls into a fist on the dinner table and I'm clenching my jaw. The same hot pulse of anger returns, ever intensifying the deeper down the obsessive hole I seem to fall.

If he so much as breathes in her direction…

Theo notices first. "What's that look for?"

I twitch out of my rage-induced trance, blinking to find two sets of eyes on me. Theo's curiosity and our father's shrewd analyzation. He's doing what he always does, crunching numbers, figuring out probabilities, drawing conclusions.

"There was no look," I mutter, unfurling my dinner napkin. "When will we order?"

"We're waiting on someone," Dad says. His pale eyes light up for the first time since we've arrived. "Ah, there she is. Right on time, as asked."

I glance over my shoulder to follow where his gaze has landed.

My stomach drops as if bottomless. There's no end in sight as dread fills the void. Instant, cold, paralyzing dread that has me gaping at the woman approaching our table.

Veronica pastes a bright smile onto her angular face. "Evening, everyone." Then she cuts me a special look, her smile widening. "Happy Birthday, Theron."

It's a rarity that I'm ever speechless beyond my control.

This is one of those rare moments.

I can only stare back as she takes the final empty chair at the four-person candlelit table. Theo's jaw has dropped open, her eyes bulging. But Dad couldn't be more pleased, welcoming Veronica with kind words and a mention about the wine selection.

"How's your father doing, Veronica?" he asks. "I was reading an article about him in the paper. Is it true he's considering a career in politics?"

"My father has always dreamed big," she answers primly. "It seems natural after his successful reign in banking. Which reminds me, Theron, he's been asking about you. Maybe the three of you can go golfing again sometime."

Suddenly, it all makes sense. The special birthday dinner at Le Canard. His and my mother's recent comments about my breakup with Veronica. The surprise guest.

This is about his quest to fix me. Remake me in his image.

I need the right woman on my arm from the right family. A family as rich and prestigious as the Fairchilds, who own half of Castlebury .

It wouldn't be the first time he's done this. Veronica and I first got involved because our families pushed for us to date.

I let it happen then, but how can I possibly let it happen again?

My shock takes so long to wear off that I miss half of the conversation happening around me. Theo's launched into scolding Dad for inviting her.

"How could you? You said it would just be us!"

"I don't recall those words coming out of my mouth, Theodora."

"This bitch keyed Theron's car!"

"I would rather be a bitch than a butch," Veronica snaps back, color spreading across her cheeks.

"This butch will kick your ass if you're not careful."

"Theodora," Dad hisses. "Language."

I finally regain enough sense to check back into the moment. I rise to my feet, tossing my cloth dinner napkin on the table, the pulse of anger beating thicker and hotter off me than ever before.

My usual mild-mannered demeanor is nowhere to be found.

Dad realizes this a split second too late, his eyes flickering with unease.

"This is the last time I participate in your schemes. Both of you," I say in a mix of calm rage. "If you ever come near me again, I will do something to make you regret it. I will make things very insufferable and painful for you. Stay away from me. Stay away from my life."

I stride toward the exit with only Theo bothering to follow. Wise on their part.

I'm vibrating from the inside as I enter the blustery night. I've contained the rage as long as I can manage and now it's busting at the seams.

"Theron," Theo pants. "What're you?—"

"I'm leaving. Enjoy the rest of your dinner."

"The dinner? Your dinner! It's your birthday!"

"Which is why I get to leave any time I want. Have a good evening, sister. Feel free to bitch slap Veronica. She deserves it after calling you what she did."

I leave Theo staring in shock after me, sliding behind the wheel of my BMW XI.

In no time, I'm speeding on the freeway with only one destination in mind.

Nyssa's still on campus. She's at the frat house… doing who knows what.

And with who.

Samson.

I'm drunk on rage and jealousy by the time I've parked in the faculty lot and am getting out of my car. Both toxic emotions surge through me, rampant and unfettered 'til I'm blinded by them. I'm a new man altogether as I cross the courtyard, headed straight for the frat house.

What I'm about to do—how reckless I'm about to be—I'm not sure.

It wouldn't be the first time I've lost my temper. But it would be the first time I've done so publicly.

I've ripped off my mild-mannered, mysterious, intellectual mask to reveal the true obsessive living underneath.

The man who would rip his beating heart out of his chest for the woman he loves and present it to her as a gift. The man would torch the world 'til it burned down just for her if she asked. The man who comes across her in a grassy ditch, about to be attacked by the same guy I've decided to destroy, and grabs the heaviest rock on the ground .

The man who rushes up from behind and bashes in the guy's skull.

The man who is me.

I slam the boulder into the back of Samson Wicker's head as if it's of no consequence I could be murdering him in cold blood. It means nothing so long as I've rescued Nyssa. So long as it means she'll be mine.

Some would find it sickening, but I find it freeing—the big reveal where my growing infatuation unleashes itself in the form of the bloodiest, goriest romantic gesture imaginable.

Insane? Yes. Sick? Also yes.

Do I regret a thing? Never in a million years.

My hand's shaking, the rock smeared in blood that's splattered from cracking Samson's head open. He's flopped down into the grass, unconscious though twitching. Nyssa gapes up at me as if she's never seen me before.

As if she's seeing me—really, truly seeing me—for the first time.

I toss the rock into a distant bush and offer my hand to help her up.

"Professor," she murmurs, swallowing hard. "Professor."

It's all she can say. All she can do but blink and stare some more.

"Shhh. We have to get the hell out of here."

We run, fleeing into the night, far across the courtyard as if being chased. I drag Nyssa along with me as she struggles in the heels and skimpy outfit she's wearing. By the time we stop, we're gasping for air, stumbling through the door of my office.

I turn toward her, a lock of my wavy hair curled against my brow, vaguely aware of how crazed I must look. The truth staring her in the face.

For a moment filled only by the small gap between us and the air we suck into our lungs, Nyssa doesn't move. She eyes me as though I'm a feral creature she's unsure how to handle. No doubt debating if she should run or hide or scream for help.

Instead, as the moment ends and a new one begins, she rushes toward me, throwing her arms around my neck for a searing kiss on the lips.