Page 7 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

Chapter Six

Hollyn

T he funeral is well attended, and from behind one-way glass, I survey the crowd with my sister by my side.

As a kid, everywhere I went on the island, it felt like someone knew my aunt.

She worked for countless wealthy families as an employee in some capacity or worked beside so many of the people in our neighborhood that I shouldn’t be surprised.

Unless she was incredibly sick, she never missed a shift, never let anyone down.

I loved her with my whole freaking heart.

Giving her eulogy is going to be like ripping my heart out of my chest and showing it to everyone in the room.

No matter how many drafts I’ve gone through over the last couple of days, I can’t seem to get the sentiment exactly right.

Nothing I can say will ever effectively convey how deep my bond ran with my aunt, but I owe it to her to try, to tell all these people how wonderful she was. What I’ve got will have to do.

Maybe if I was sleeping better, writing it would have been easier.

Distorted memories—some distant, some not that long ago—have been eating chunks of my REM sleep every night since I got the call.

I thought staying at a hotel, devoid of anything personal, might have been easier.

No such luck. Between seeing Nate and my aunt dying, I’m a mess, barely holding my emotions in check.

At the door to the observation room, there’s a kerfuffle, and I half turn, wondering who’s trying to burst into the room.

When it finally swings open, I realize I shouldn’t have been surprised to see my mother and father, frazzled, their appearance grizzled by poor care.

I’m sure they’ve been to my aunt’s apartment, but we’re not staying there.

Kinsley presses closer to my side. I doubt she remembers them, and they look like hardened criminals. Which they are . Prone to drinking or taking drugs when the mood suits. Volatile.

“You’re not welcome here,” I say as Otis leaves, probably to get security. I already told him that my parents might try to crash the funeral.

“She was my sister,” my mother says, pointing at her chest, as though that makes all the terrible things she’s done forgettable in this moment. I don’t even know what their sibling relationship has meant to my mother. From the outside, it looked like a means to emotionally manipulate Aunt Verna.

My mother can’t guilt me into anything anymore. I’m numb to her efforts, but I still possess a healthy amount of fear. Mickie has a mean streak that’s almost unmatched.

“Aunt Verna wouldn’t have wanted you here,” I say.

“Yes, she would have. You poisoned her against me. Just like you’ve probably poisoned my poor, sweet baby girl.” She tries to touch Kinsley, and my sister shrinks into me.

“All right.” A tall, dark-haired police officer enters the room, his voice booming.

He’s got thick arms and thighs, and he’s pretty freaking intimidating, and I haven’t done anything wrong.

He looks familiar, and I try to place where I might have seen him before.

Maybe we went to school together. “Mickie, Niall, you gotta get out of here,” he says, slinging his thumb over his shoulder. “Otis doesn’t want you here.”

“Stephen,” Mickie says, turning toward him, her bottle-blond hair swinging around her shoulders. “Verna would want us here. She loved me.”

“Officer Foster, Mick. That’s how you address me.

We’ve talked about this,” Stephen says, leading her by the arm out of the room.

His hand makes her arm look like a twig.

“We’re not buddies, despite how many times I’ve detained you for drunk and disorderly conduct and listened to you rant behind bars. ”

My father drops into one of the seats in the room, his graying reddish-brown hair falling into his eyes. Officer Foster turns back to him after pushing my mother somewhat gently out the door.

“We’re not fucking doing this, Niall,” he growls, his tone pissed off. “Don’t make today harder on your daughters. For once in your life, do the right thing. You’ve been told to leave, now leave.”

My father glares at me and then at Kinsley, but he pushes off the arms of the chair and ambles out of the room behind the police officer.

I don’t know what kind of magic Officer Foster possesses, but that was impressive.

Every time I’ve had a confrontation with my parents without my Aunt Verna present, it turned violent quickly.

Maybe they’ve mellowed in their old age, or maybe the officer’s tree-trunk arms intimidate more than just me.

No sooner are they gone than Otis comes hustling back into the room, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Thankfully Officer Foster was in the area, and he’s very familiar with Mickie Davis and Niall Thompson.”

The last names are a reminder that my parents never married and that, for a reason I either never asked or can’t remember, we are the Davis girls, not the Thompson ones.

“I bet Officer Foster is very familiar with my parents,” I mutter, and there’s something about Stephen that’s nipping at the back of my brain. Was he at the hearing for Kinsley a few years ago? “You’ll be regretting that first-time-client discount you gave us this morning.”

“I would have regretted the alternative more,” Otis says with a tight smile.

His discount is the only reason I can afford to stay at the hotel for a few more days while Kinsley and I clean out Aunt Verna’s apartment.

Otherwise, I would have been forced to sink into those memories, that old life, for longer than the few hours a day we’ll spend sorting through the things Aunt Verna held dear.

The more distance I can keep between the person I’ve become and who I was, the better.

Otis peers through the one-way glass. “We believe everyone is settled. We’ll have the music you selected play, and we’ll escort you and Kinsley to your seats at the front.

We have someone reading a poem based on the theme you selected, and a few other people from the community came forward asking to say a few words. You’ll be the last to speak.”

“Okay,” I say as he presses a program into my hand and leads us to the side door, which will take us out into the service room.

Kinsley squeezes my hand, and I squeeze hers back.

As the music is drawing to a close, Otis opens the door and leads us through.

We pass by the crowd, and I can’t help searching the sea of faces for any that are familiar from my childhood.

I’m not surprised by the ones I find. Just as I’m about to sit down, the back door opens, and my heart freezes.

Nate stands for a second, framed in the doorway, and then he slips into a seat at the end of the closest aisle. I press a hand to my chest, and Kinsley’s worry radiates off her.

Why would he come? After the awful way I left, after our stilted conversation the other day, I can’t understand why he’d come.

“You okay?” Kinsley whispers to me as we sit down, our backs to the crowd.

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Just so many familiar faces from my childhood.”

“Can we talk to some of them later?” she asks.

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sure some of them will come to the reception, but there’s no need to get too comfortable here.”

Kinsley sighs, and I try to ignore the obvious disappointment in the sound. She doesn’t understand how severe the class differences are on the island, and I’d prefer she never realizes it the way I had to.

The service starts, and it passes in a blur of me mostly trying to keep myself from crying too long or too loud.

When it’s my turn to speak, Kinsley squeezes my hand before releasing me, and the papers I took out of my purse shake. I smooth them out on the lectern, and I adjust the microphone, stalling while I get myself together.

Once I’m ready, I look toward the back of the room, an old public speaking trick. No eye contact but looking forward. Except at the back of the room is Nate, and I expect to tense up again at the sight of him. We aren’t on good terms. We don’t know each other anymore.

Instead, some long-buried instinct takes over, and my body remembers that he used to be a safe landing place, that I once felt safer with him than I ever had with anyone. The memory of those months settles over me like a weighed blanket, a shield against what I have to do next.

And when I start to speak, I don’t look at anyone but him. The page and then him, over and over until I finish. Somehow, I don’t cry, and I don’t stumble. The speech is smooth and practiced, as though I didn’t bawl my eyes out every other time I tried to say it to the end.

There’s no clapping when I finish, just a long impossible silence. As I leave the lectern, Nate rises to his feet and slips out the door. As soon as it clicks shut, it’s like whatever was propping me up, whatever got me through the speech, leaves with him, and I practically fall into my seat.

Otis directs everyone to the reception area in another part of the funeral home, but I stay seated with Kinsley by my side.

“Are we going?” she asks, glancing behind us.

“Is everyone gone yet?” I ask. “I just need a minute before we go in there.” Because once we leave this room, I have to pretend to be okay, even if that’s the last thing I feel.

“Yeah,” Kinsely says. “Everyone is gone now.”

I’d tell her to go ahead without me, but that wouldn’t be fair. Some of those people, I remember well, and others are hazy memories, but either way, Kinsley will be a curiosity to most of them. We haven’t been back to the island since I took Kinsley to New York with me.

I smooth down my hair that I straightened this morning, and I rise to my feet. Once I’m through today, there’s only a few more hard things left to do. For Kinsley, I can hold my emotions together.