Playing for Keeps (Heartbreaker Bay #7)(77)

“Um . . . that question feels like a trap.”

“It’s actually what I don’t see,” Clara said. “I don’t see my sister.”

Sadie stilled and lifted her gaze to Clara, whose eyes were suspiciously sparkly. “I’m sorry, Sadie,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it in the store. You don’t look like you. And I want you to look like you. So I ordered you the other dress. The light champagne-colored lace one that you liked.”

“But the tattoos on the back of my shoulder and ankle will show—”

“I want them to. They’re a part of you. I want you to look like you.”

Sadie sucked in a breath, surprised at the wave of emotion. “Mom’s going to have a cow.”

“It’s my wedding,” Clara said simply and hugged Sadie.

It was the nicest moment they’d had in years.

At dinner, the first few moments were taken up with small talk and passing the dishes around. Unlike Sadie, Caleb didn’t struggle in social situations. He could talk to a scared dog, a bitchy woman, an old guy who lived in an alley . . . He could talk to anyone and have them fall in love with him in the first ten seconds.

She envied the hell out of that skill, not that she wanted it. “Pass the roast please?”

Her mom lifted the tray and then hesitated to remove the sharp carving knife from it before handing it over.

Sadie stared at her in shock and an instant heavy tension hit the table. She didn’t look over at Caleb. Couldn’t.

“Really, Mom?” Clara finally asked into the awkward silence.

“What? I mean yes, she looks wonderful and happy, but I’m just playing it safe. That’s what a mother does, you know.”

Clara shook her head. “Sadie’s therapist asked you to stop with the passive aggressiveness, remember?”

“I haven’t been forced to see a therapist in years,” Sadie said to the room.

They all ignored this. “I don’t even know what passive aggressive means,” her mom said to Clara. “And I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“What did you mean then?” Clara asked.

“I just meant what I always mean,” her mom said.

Caleb slid his hand to Sadie’s thigh beneath the table and squeezed in comfort, in solidarity. And that was sweet, but she still couldn’t look at him. Instead, she stabbed her fork into some slices of meat and loaded her plate. It’d been years since her family had learned she’d been cutting herself and taken the control of her own life from her. The nightmare of her parents’ overreaction and having her committed under the 5585—an involuntary hold of an at-risk minor—had nearly done her in.

She’d survived, barely. And though it’d been years, her parents still did things like remove all scissors from the house and lock up the knives when she came over. Her dad had sold his gun collection. Her mom had given up knitting and thrown away her knitting needles.

“But what about Sadie?” her mom asked.

Great, she’d missed something. “What about Sadie what?”

“We need everyone to be on their best behavior at the wedding,” her mom said, pointedly not looking at Sadie.

“I will be if you will be,” Sadie said.

Her dad started to laugh but at a look from her mom, he turned it into a cough. Her mom knocked back her glass of champagne and gave herself a refill with the last of the bottle.

Sadie pushed back from the table and grabbed the empty. “I’ll get us another.”

She went to the kitchen and stuck her head in the freezer to cool herself down. She knew her mother loved her, knew that her neurosis about Sadie came from a deeply seated fear that her daughter hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Her mother’d had a terrible childhood, with a mean drunk of a father and a mother who’d self-medicated with booze and pills and gone off the deep end. The fear that Sadie would do the same was very real and Sadie got that. But damn, she was tired of her mom always being on edge waiting for Sadie to crack.

Because she wasn’t going to.

She grabbed another bottle of champagne. As she moved back into the dining room, she heard the low rumble of Caleb’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. When she entered, everyone fell quiet.

She glanced at Caleb as she sat.

His mouth quirked slightly in a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes—her parents had that effect on people—but once again he reached for her under the table. This time he reached for her hand, encasing it in his.

It was a small gesture, but it felt like a lifeline.

Her dad asked Caleb all sorts of questions about his work, and he answered with endless patience and good humor until her mom laughed and put a hand on her dad’s arm. “Honey, I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk about his work all night,” she said. “I want to hear about how Sadie ended up on a date with him and how lucky we are that it was tonight.”

Because of course her mom assumed it was a first date. “I blackmailed him,” Sadie said. “Pass the bread?”

Her mom gasped in horror.

Caleb reached for the basket of bread and held it out to Sadie, pulling back slightly when she tried to take it, his brow raised.

She caved. “Fine,” she said to the room. “That was a joke. I didn’t blackmail him. I just didn’t tell him where we were going until we parked out front in case he was a flight risk.”