Cruel Fortune (Cruel #2)(76)

I laughed and decided instantly that I liked this Wright girl. “Oh, trust me, I know.”

“How’s Jensen?” Penn asked. “I haven’t seen him in the city much.”

“Trying to knock up his girl,” Sutton said with a laugh.

“So…busy,” Penn offered.

“Who is Jensen?” I asked, wondering how they all knew each other.

“My oldest brother,” Sutton explained.

“We met when he was here, getting a degree in architecture,” Penn explained. “The Wrights run a construction empire.”

I raised my eyebrows at Sutton in surprise. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who fit in around here, running an empire.

But she held her hands up. “I just run a bakery. I leave the business to my siblings and David.”

“Wow. Well, it was great meeting you,” I told Sutton honestly.

I couldn’t even believe that David was related to Katherine. He looked like he’d gotten out of the Upper East Side, too. Completely out. How had he done it?

“You, too! Us Southern girls have to stick together.”

Penn stepped toward me before I could walk away. “Can we talk later?”

I bit my lip. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It wasn’t a good idea to come talk to me the other night, and you did it anyway. How is this any different?”

“Live and learn,” I muttered and then made the mistake of looking up into his baby blues.

“Natalie, please, five minutes at the reception.”

“What do you have to say to me then that you can’t say to me now?”

“I don’t want an audience,” he said and then nodded toward Lewis, who was staring unflinchingly at us close together.

I took a step back from him. “No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”

“Nat, this is important.” And he sounded like it really was. Though I had no clue what he could possibly need to tell me.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a shake of my head. Then, I turned and walked back to where Lewis was seated.

“Have a good chat?” he asked in a clipped tone.

“He was introducing me to Katherine’s brother.”

He slipped an arm across my shoulders. “I don’t like him that close to you.”

“He’s part of this world too, Lewis. I don’t think he’s going to go away,” I grumbled. Stupid Upper East Side.

“I know. Just old rivalries rear their head.”

“It was literally nothing.”

“Number one rule of the Upper East Side, Natalie: it is never nothing.”

I turned to look at him in surprise. Uncertain of how to respond to that. But then the wedding music began, and I didn’t have to.





Katherine





33





“You can still get out of this,” Lark said anxiously.

I was standing on the raised platform before the enormous trifold mirror my hair and makeup team had brought in for the occasion. I’d kicked everyone out of the room, except Lark, a half hour ago. I knew that the five other bridesmaids—who I’d picked seemingly at random, but primarily because they had the most number of Crew connections—hadn’t been happy by the arrangement.

But they weren’t my friends.

I didn’t have friends.

The crew I’d grown up with my entire life was family. Lark, Penn, Lewis, and Rowe. I would have had them all back here with me. But instead, it was just Lark, trying to talk me over the cliff. Not off it.

“Okay, this is what we’ll do.” Lark immediately went into planning mode. Her work as a campaign manager shone through as she saw me as just another project she had to fix. A fire she had to put out. “I’ll distract everyone by sending them for alcohol. We’ll scamper to the back door and grab a cab back to my apartment. Poof, runaway bride.”

I ran my hands down the front of the one-of-a-kind Elizabeth Cunningham designer wedding dress. The bodice was strapless with a sweetheart neck. Made out of the softest, most delicate white lace with dozens of tiny white buttons running up the back. It swept down to my feet with an impressive train that would flow out behind me as I walked down the aisle. A twenty-foot empire veil would be affixed to the intricate braided design at the top of my head. White. Perfect virginal white.

“No wedding. No Camden,” Lark continued.

My eyes found her in the mirror. “I can’t.”

“Physically, you are able.”

“I can’t,” I repeated.

“But you don’t love him!” Lark gasped. “How can you do this when you don’t even like him? It can’t just be the money. We all have money. The crew has money. You can have mine. I don’t need it.”

“Lark,” I said, shaking my head.

“Is it the bet?”

I frowned. My dark red lips turning down at the corners. The bet. What a stupid fucking idea. The fucking bet that had ruined everything. Taken Penn from me. Forced me into actually going through with this arrangement. Even wrecked our tried-and-true crew. Little holes splintered in our unflappable love and loyalty.

“No. I just have to do this.”