Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 57

“I’m not bringing anything. No dessert, no rolls, no salad, no ice. Nothing.” I look at the case in front of me, at the empty trays and the smear on the glass where a man’s cheek was slammed down this morning. “I’m not coming at eleven to set up. I’m not counting the guest list. I’m not carrying the chairs up from the basement, and I’m not doing the dishes after. I’ll come at the time you tell everyone else to come, and I’ll sit down, and I’ll eat. That’s it.”

Silence.

“That’s a strange thing to make conditions about,” she says.

“Yeah, well, I’m making them. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” she says, thin as onion skin. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

“One more thing. I’m bringing someone.”

“Bringing—who?”

“My boyfriend.”

I hear her set something down. “You’ve been divorced for three weeks.”

“Yep. Sure have.” I put on my airiest voice. “Six o’clock, right? Can’t wait. We’ll be there.” I hang up before she can get another word in, and then I put the phone facedown on the shelf and hold onto the edge of the counter for a second.

When I turn around, Kane is watching me.

“Boyfriend?” he asks.

“It was faster than explaining.”

“Mm.”

I take a breath. “You’ll come, though?”

He looks amused. “It isn’t a holiday.”

“No. It isn’t,” I agree. “Which means it’s outside our deal. You don’t owe me it, and I can’t count it toward anything, and there’s nothing in it for you.”

Kane doesn’t answer.

“But I’m asking you to come with me,” I say. “Because… honestly, because I want you there.”

He looks at me for what feels like a long time.

Then he smiles and says, “Can’t wait. Just one question.”

I grimace, bracing for the worst. “Fire away.”

“Are you preparing the slideshow, or should I?”

The last time I stood on this stoop, my mother was screaming that if I walked out, I would never be allowed back in.

Six weeks later, here I am.

This time, I brought company.

I peek behind me to see Kane standing at my shoulder. His bulk, his warmth, his smell—I don’t know when or how it happened, but somehow, he’s become my safe space.

He’s the person I look for when I feel myself shrinking. Around him, I take up space without offering everyone an apology and a coupon.

Even when he’s not with me, his voice in my head makes me feel like a confident, braver version of myself.

Which is batshit crazy, obviously.

“Safe space” is not a phrase anyone should apply to a Bratva pakhan who once melted my deadbolt. It’s like calling a shark a flotation device because it lets you hold the fin.

But the heart moves in mysterious ways.

Sensing my uncertainty, he says, “We can still leave.”

“No.” I straighten, remembering my spine came standard with the rest of me. “I won’t give her or Viv the satisfaction of seeing me flee.”

His mouth curves.

I swallow, bite down, and reach out to ring the doorbell.

But I stop halfway.

My empty hands are part of what’s freaking me out. For the last decade-plus, ever since I moved out, I’ve never come to my mother’s house without gifts.

A pie carrier. A sheet tray. A garment bag with my mother’s dry cleaning in it. A tube containing a pulldown projector screen.

Tonight, I’m bringing just me.

“Are you going to do it,” Kane drawls, “or would you like me to knock down the door?”

“Give me a second.”

“Take a minute if you need it. It’s your house.”

“It is very much not my house.”

“Then we’ll go get a better dinner somewhere with more enjoyable company.”

He’s half-joking, but if I took him up on it, I know for a fact that he would turn around right now and put me back in the car. We’d be eating dumplings in Sunset Park in twenty minutes and he wouldn’t mention it again.

That’s actually what makes me able to knock.

Uncle Bub opens the door. He looks at me, then up at Kane, then turns pale, then looks back at me.

“D-Delilah,” he stutters.

“Hi, Uncle Bub.”

“You, uh…” He clears his throat. “You look well.”

“Thanks. You look exactly the same.” I give him a bright, sunny smile. “May I come in?”

He wordlessly steps aside.

From the mouth of the foyer, I can see twenty-odd people packed into the living room and the dining room with drinks in their hands. The noise level drops by half when I come through the door.

Then it picks back up, but when it does, it’s wrong. Too loud in some corners, dead silent in others.

Kane takes my coat off my shoulders before I can do it myself and hangs it in the hall closet. Then he stands beside me with his hands at his sides and looks around at every single face in the room, slowly, one by one, until most of them find something else to look at.

My mother comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel.

She’s had her hair done. She looks at me, then at my empty hands, and her Stepford wife smile curdles into a flat line.

“Delilah,” she says. “You didn’t bring anything?”

Those are the first words out of my mother’s mouth.

Not hello.

Not you came.

Not even Who is the large tattooed man standing by you like he’ll bite if anyone else ventures too close?

“Nope.”

“But what about dessert? Where’s that?”

“At the bakery, probably,” I say. “That’s where I keep most of it.”

Mom’s mouth pinches. “I told everyone we’d have something after dinner.”

“Then I hope someone bought something.”

“Not even—” She glances at the sideboard, where there is a sterling silver platter awaiting my usual offering of tribute. “I assumed you were joking. There’s twenty-two people here.”

“Twenty-four now,” Kane chimes in.

My mother looks up at him. She hasn’t decided what she’s doing about him yet. I can see the calculation running behind her eyes: the size of him, the watch, the rings, the fact that Aunt Sherry is already staring at him from the loveseat with a naked, dreamy expression on her face.

“You must be the…” She can’t say it.

“Kane,” he says. “Thank you for the invitation.”

“I wasn’t the one who—” She stops. “Well. Of course.”

Then she turns back to me. Evidently, she’s decided to try pretending Kane doesn’t exist.

I wish her the best of luck with that. He’s 6’4”, built like he plays in the NFL, and he’s got eyes that see right through all her bullshit. Ignoring him is a fool’s errand.

“There’s no dessert at all, then. Alright. Go see what’s in the freezer, there might be that Entenmann’s from Thanksgiving, and the coffee needs starting, and someone has to slice the⁠—”

“Mom.”

She keeps going. “—the bread, because Virginia bought a loaf but nobody’s touched it, and the gravy needs a stir before it skins over⁠—”

“Mom.”

She stops.

“I came as a guest,” I remind her.

The dish towel twists in her hands. “Pardon?”

“We talked about this on the phone. I’m not hired help. Nor am I an indentured servant. I’m here as a guest, like everybody else.”

“Yes, but you’re here now.”

There it is. The family philosophy in a few short words.

You’re here now, so lift that. Fix this. Make sure Aunt Sherry has her drink topped off. Connor prefers the end piece. Your father’s guests need coffee. Your sister has had a difficult day.

You’re here now, so be useful.

“I’m here for dinner,” I tell her firmly. “If the gravy burns, I’ll eat dry beef with everybody else.” I look past her at the table. “So, which chair is mine?”

For a second, she looks like she might fight back. Right here, in front of everybody, in front of him.

The full performance, Delilah Aileen, the hand on the wrist.

Then she doesn’t.

“Wherever you like,” she says. She pivots on her heel and retreats into the kitchen with her spine very straight.

Kane’s hand touches my waist.

“Well done,” he murmurs.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“If so, do it before we eat. It’s rude the other way around.”

We take the two chairs at the far end of the table. He pulls mine out for me, then settles at my side and rests a huge hand spanning my thigh.

Aunt Virginia leans across the table.

“You look pretty,” she says to me. “Did you cut your hair?”

Normally, I’d lie and say I got a trim, or highlights, or something, just to avoid the horrifying ordeal of correcting someone.

But those days are over, too.

“Nope. Same as always.”

“Well, just a natural, healthy glow then.” She takes a sip of her wine, then glances at me slyly out of the corner of her eye. “That was a hell of a thing you did at Christmas.”

“Ginny,” warns her husband.

“It was! I’ve been in this family fifty-one years, and that was a first.” She points a finger at me. “Your father would’ve laughed himself into the grave a second time.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I think.”

“It was too much,” blurts an already-tipsy Aunt Sherry from her end. “It was too much, honey, you know I love you, but there were children in that house.”

“They were in the den,” I remind her. “I put them there myself so they didn’t hear anything inappropriate.”