And look how that’s turned out.
“So you’re okay with this?” My voice catches. I hate it.
Iris nods. Shrugs. “It could be worse.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Coal—”
“Fine.”
The skin between her eyebrows bends in a question.
“Fine,” I say again. “We’ll do it. But I don’t love you.”
Iris flinches. “I don’t love you either, asshole.”
“No. Not like that. I mean I’m notin lovewith—”
But she stands, smiling that small, brittle smile again. “I’m messing with you.”
“It’s hard to tell right now.”
“I know.”
“None of this is funny.”
“You must be in hell.”
God, she knows me.
She’s right—this could be worse. But it could be better. A lot better.
Kris turns away, hand on the back of his neck, but I have no idea what to say to him.
The door opens.
Dad walks in, trailed by Neo, and we all stand there for a second, making passive-aggressive eye contact.
I can’t handle talking to my dad yet, so I whirl on Neo. “You’re allowing your daughter to be sold off like some—some—goddamn it, I’m so worked up I can’t even think of something people sell. But how are you allowing this to happen?”
Neo doesn’t look at me as he scratches a hand through his shortblond hair. “My feelings regarding you are of no consequence to this transaction,” he says like some goddamn automaton.
“That isn’t what I meant. I meant you’re okay with forcing your daughter into an arranged marriage—yeah, to a guy you hate—when your own marriage was for love? What hypocritical bull—”
Iris takes my hand. “Coal. Stop.”
Neo turns away, pale skin reddening, looking so eerily similar to the capped grief he’d held at his wife’s funeral that I draw back.
“This decision is for the betterment of Easter,” he says to the floor. “My wife would understand. Iris, too, understands. Don’t you?”
He looks at her, and he’s so damn…delicate.
And it’s worse because Irisdoesunderstand. She immediately understood the gravity of what they did, and even now, she’s standing here wilted under duty instead of being livid like I am.
“You know what you did was wrong,” I say to Neo when Iris is quiet. “We’re not pawns.”
“No, you aren’t,” Dad speaks up.
