Outcast (Supernaturals Book 2) Page 3

  After the wedding, none of it would matter. I had plans that would set them free of me so that they wouldn’t feel pulled any longer. Once the “I dos” were over, I was out of their lives. Danielle and I had already discussed things. As soon as she was away on her honeymoon, I would let my parents go. Let them off the hook to be free to do what they truly wanted to do, and that was to go back to their home. I promised to keep in touch with Danielle via email, but other than that, we would have no further contact. She didn’t like my plan, but she saw the reasoning behind it. The only way any of us would find peace and a modicum of happiness was if I wasn’t around any longer.

  Yes, my reasoning applied to myself as well. As much as I love my family, I knew I would be happier away from them. I would feel less like I’d ruined their lives, less like a burden, and less like a disgrace if I wasn’t facing the disdain day in and day out. That last emotion was my biggest issue. Our society as a whole looks down on what they consider “fat people,” but oddly enough, I feel less like the Goodyear blimp when I’m not around my family; therefore, I’m happier.

  My mom was always there for me when I was younger and complained about my weight problem. She tried to play my heaviness off as if my weight came from my father’s side of the family. My father was admittedly not a small man, but he wasn’t heavyset. He was thick, but he was all muscle, so her reasoning never held water with me. For so long, I couldn’t figure out how I managed to be the only person in my household with a weight problem, and by the looks of both of my parents and siblings and my parents’ families, I’m the only person in the entire family without a high metabolism.

  Even at my biggest, my mother was never mean to me or treated me as if I were uglier than my sisters, but the older I got, the more I could see that my weight embarrassed her, especially when we were around her family. Her attitude about my weight didn’t completely change until Danielle met Dave, and even then, she wasn’t cruel—she was just distant. My younger siblings, on the other hand, treated me the way Dave’s family does and always have. If they weren’t pretending I didn’t exist when we were alone, they were belittling me in front of others. Danielle tried to discourage their behavior, but they were young. They didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong when every adult they knew was doing it.

  As I stood in front of my seat in the back of the chapel not caring about how awful my face looked from all of the crying I’d been doing, I kept Danielle in my line of sight as she made her way to the front of the room. I dismissed all the glares I felt boring into me. I didn’t even acknowledge Maddie’s smug look when Danielle stepped in front of her to face her husband-to-be. I wasn’t going to let anyone get to me to the point that I said or did anything to ruin Danielle’s day for her.

  I could ignore all the hateful glares aimed my way, but there was one set of eyes I couldn’t shake. They were eyes that always drew me when I did deign to come around my family. They were eyes I pretended not to see, but eyes I saw in my sleep every night. I stood still even though I felt Ryan’s heated gaze on me, watching my every move. I couldn’t decide if he was giving me attention as part of a practical joke or if he was actually interested in me. The ache in my lower belly that I got every time I was in his presence told me that I was definitely interested in him, but I wasn’t going to let him play me or allow him to exile himself because of me if he was truly interested.

  When I couldn’t hold myself back any longer, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He was indeed staring at me. His gaze seemed to be examining every inch of my face, my body. My already red and puffy cheeks heated more, so I blotted my eyes, fanned my face with the program, and tried not to look at him. My efforts weren’t enough, and every so often, I glanced his way to see him still watching me.

  What he was looking for, I didn’t know, but if I didn’t know any better, I would swear he was undressing me, caressing me with those eyes. I felt my body flush deeper from this presumed perusal of me, but I refused to let him know that I knew he was watching me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I was embarrassed and turned on by his stare. There was a chance that I was misinterpreting the feel of his gaze, and if I was wrong, I wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of humiliation, not when the longer he stared, the more I wanted so badly for my first assumption to be correct.

  Chapter 4 ~ Arrival

  ~~~Leigh~~~

  Once my sister took her place and everyone sat, the long ceremony started. I held my gaze firmly to Danielle. I couldn’t let Ryan or anyone else pull my attention from her. She was why I was there, why, against my better judgment, I agreed not to take the redeye in from Seattle. I had hoped to avoid everyone by taking the flight that would have had me there the morning of the wedding, only Danielle sent me a text the night before saying that she’d switched my ticket to an earlier flight because she wanted me to attend the rehearsal dinner. I had groaned, complained, and begged her to change it back, but she had cried and pleaded for me to be there for her, and I gave in to her pitiful sobs.

  Danielle meant well, but she never understood how embarrassing it was for me to be around those people, or maybe she did, but she thought throwing me in everybody’s faces would magically cause them to change their minds about me. She could wish all she wanted, but I knew that was never going to happen.

  Having the earlier flight meant that I got to the hotel shortly before four in the afternoon, about the same time most of Dave’s family started to arrive. That meant that I spent the rest of the afternoon dodging everyone when I wasn’t cooped up in my room.

  My stress level rose the second my taxi pulled up in front of the hotel. The driver stopped behind Mom and Dad’s town car. I didn’t give the man time to put the vehicle in park before I was undoing my seat belt and reaching for the handle. My parents had their backs turned to me and were clearly leaving the hotel. I wanted to get out of the vehicle and into the hotel before they saw me.

  Just as my father was helping my mother into the vehicle, an usher came out of the hotel pushing a luggage cart. My father turned to look behind him, and I could see him peering into the windshield of my cab, trying to figure out who was inside for no other reason than that he was curious. The driver made a move to get out of the car, but I stopped him.

  “Wait a second, please,” I said, ducking behind my seat. “Act as if we are having a conversation. At least until that gentleman gets into his car.”

  The driver shrugged and gave me my total. I paid him. Seconds later, my father’s car pulled away from the curb, and the usher reached our vehicle with the rack. I crawled out of the back seat and maneuvered myself so that the man and the cart would be all anyone saw if they looked our way. The man and the driver unloaded my few things onto the cart, and I followed the usher inside. I heard the irritating voices of the Pine Hollow townsfolk, but I did my best to ignore them.

  The usher led me to the counter, where I waited in line to check into the hotel. I kept my head down and pretended to search my wallet for something. When I felt eyes on me from the short line to my left, I thought I would look up to see the eyes of someone who disliked me, but when I felt my body heat from the gaze, I turned to see Ryan’s beautiful, orgasm-inducing eyes staring at me. That hadn’t been the first time that I had truly looked at him, but it had been the first time we had gotten stuck in each other’s gazes that way. I’ve seen him many times, but most of those times it had been in passing. He was hot. His brown hair, thick body, and dark chocolate eyes, made me want to lick him from head to toe, but I had never fully drunk him in until then. Our gazes locked and stayed that way until the woman at the desk called to me…multiple times.

  “Sorry,” I said. I could tell she had been trying to get my attention for some time, and she was officially annoyed with me. She and I weren’t going to be friends, I told myself, thinking I didn’t need another person here this weekend that hated me.

  I stepped up to the counter, but before I could give the lady my name, she aske
d, “Are you here for the wedding?”

  “I am,” I said, not thinking. I had sat my purse on the counter and had started going through it looking for my photo ID when the woman had asked her question.

  “Your name, Ms.?” the lady asked.

  “Leigh Alexander,” I said, handing her my license.

  I could still feel Ryan looking at me, distracting me even more. He was close enough to hear this conversation and that wasn’t a good thing because things were about to get embarrassing. At that second, I saw a frown pass over the woman’s face, and I understood that she had looked up my reservation and not found it on the floor with the rest of the wedding guests. And she wasn’t going to find it there.

  My father had reserved an entire floor of the hotel for wedding guests. I only knew this because when my sister had called to tell me which hotel the wedding would be at, she told me about the floor, and told me my name wouldn’t be on the list. I hadn’t expected it to be. I would have booked a room in another hotel, but I’m a bit lazy and with the rehearsal dinner in the hotel restaurant, the wedding in the hotel chapel, and the reception in the gardens behind the hotel, staying there was much easier.

  After promising my sister that I would be attending the wedding, I had called the hotel and booked a room a few floors below theirs in the hopes of being away from the family. I was checking in earlier than I had anticipated due to the early flight, but it was early afternoon and any previous occupant would have already checked out.

  Before I could tell the woman that my reservation was on a different floor, she said, “I’m sorry, Miss Alexander, but there seems to be a mix up with your reservation. You’re related to the family, aren’t you? Your last names are the same.”

  “Yes, I’m the bride’s sister, but…”

  “Oh my, I’m so sorry. Someone must have made a mistake. I’ll get the manager,” she said, cutting me off and moving away from her computer to get said manager.

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said loud enough to stop her.

  “It isn’t an issue, Miss Alexander. My manager can fix the this quickly.”

  “There isn’t a problem,” I said, praying she would come back to me so that I could lower my voice. “I booked a room on a different floor.”

  She looked at me quizzically but didn’t move back to her computer.

  Lying, I said, “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it to the wedding because I live on the other side of the country, so I told my father not to put me on the list. I told him I would book my own room the second I knew I would be able to come, and I did.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking relieved that a hotel employee hadn’t made a mistake.

  She went back to her computer, looked up my name, and said, “We have you on the thirteenth floor. Your family is on the twentieth. Would you like me to move you closer to them?”

  “That won’t be necessary. We won’t be in our rooms much with all the events lined up.” I leaned in closely and whispered conspiratorially, “And to be honest, after each event, I’ll be ready to have some peace and quiet away from them.”

  She chuckled softly in understanding. I cut my eyes to my left to see if Ryan heard any of what I had said. All I needed was my insult to get back to someone in the family and give them more of a reason to hate me. He only smiled at me as if he agreed with my sentiment.

  As if to reaffirm just how loud and obnoxious people from Pine Hollow could be, the hotel doors behind me opened and one of Dave’s aunts walked in, complaining in the loudest voice she could muster.

  “I thought Danielle was supposed to have picked a nicer hotel than this,” his aunt said. “They don’t even have enough luggage carts to take care of all of their guests. This won’t do.”

  I’d never bothered to learn the woman’s name, but she knew me, and I made sure not to turn to look her way. She continued to complain, but I tuned her out.

  “See what I mean,” I whispered.

  The clerk smiled, but didn’t laugh.

  “Right there,” the woman all but yelled, “that one is empty. Why am I trying to force all of my luggage on one rack when he is standing around with an empty one?”

  Stunned, the man beside me turned to see that the woman was pointing at him. The cart he had wasn’t empty, far from it. I had two large suitcases, a small one for my toiletries, two dress bags, and one bag full of gifts for my sister on it. I had had the gifts shipped to the house of a friend of mine one town over. She had met me at the airport with them, where we had had lunch. She had offered to drive me to the hotel, but I knew if I had allowed that and someone even looked at me cross, she would have caused a scene.

  Margi and I have been friends since junior high. Even back then, she tried to stick up for me with my family and the mean kids at school. I love her dearly, but I couldn’t let anything ruin this for my sister, so I had declined her invitation, telling her I had to do this for myself. At that moment, I wished she were with me. She would know how to handle the situation I saw coming.

  “Ma’am,” the usher said, watching with fear as the woman stomped toward him. “This rack isn’t empty. It’s nearly full. If you will give me a second, I’ll help this woman to her room and come right back down to help you.”

  Knowing that wouldn’t go over well, I said, “No, that’s okay. I can carry my stuff. Here, I’ll empty it real quick, and you can have it for other customers.”

  “But Miss…” the man started to say. I shook my head violently at him. He shut his mouth quickly and started to help me unload the rack.

  I had draped one of the dress bags across the countertop and was reaching for the second one when the woman got to us. She reached out, grabbed a hold of the rack, and started to pull it away.

  “Ma’am, this one isn’t empty,” the usher said and pulled back hard on the rack, stopping her from pulling it out of my reach. “Now, this nice lady is offering to let you have hers, so if you will be kind enough to wait one minute, we will empty it, and you can have it.”

  The woman looked around to see that most people in the lobby, the ones not here for the wedding, were looking at her with disdain, her expression changed, and she nodded, but she didn’t say a word.

  “Here, you can share mine,” a deep, male voice behind me said. I had leaned over to grab the handle of one of my suitcases when he spoke. A metal cart came into view on my left when I turned to see who had approached.

  Ryan stood beside me with a rack that was also only half full. He had one dress bag and two suitcases on his. If he hadn’t had the dress bag, which obviously held his tuxedo, he wouldn’t have needed the cart.

  “Thank you,” I said, unable to take my eyes from him. He smiled at me, then picked up the bag I had laid across the counter and hung it up next to his. He was reaching across me for the second bag when I snapped out of my daze. “Thank you,” I said again.

  Dave’s aunt made a rude noise, and I gave her a smug look before helping Ryan load the cart.

  Once all of my stuff was on Ryan’s cart, I thanked the usher, took my room key from the nervous-looking clerk, and turned away from the woman. To my surprise, Ryan did the same, and we started toward the elevators.

  “Just wait until I tell your mother about this, Ryan Hart. She’ll be so disappointed in you,” Dave’s aunt said in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear what she said.

  “She might be, but at least I’ll go to bed tonight guilt-free, knowing that I didn’t treat an innocent woman as if she didn’t exist because certain types of people say it’s all right to do so. My conscious will be clear. Can you say the same?” He all but snarled the words to the woman and caused the people around us to back up in fear. I would have disappeared into the crowd if he hadn’t had a death grip on the luggage cart that held all of my things. As it was, I ducked behind the bags of clothes to be out of the woman’s line of sight.

  I had come close to touching his arm and begging him not to reply, but I could feel the anger rolling off him in w
aves. No one had ever stuck up for me before in front of these people besides Danielle. I had started to wonder about his motivations until I remembered that he was Dave’s best friend. Danielle must have asked him to keep an eye on me if possible.

  To my surprise, the woman only huffed and stormed off. Ryan didn’t say anything to me when he turned toward the elevators again and began pulling the cart behind him. I followed, walking to the right of the cart, not saying a word. At one of the elevators, he hit the “up” button and stepped back. When the elevator door opened, he pushed the cart inside and held the door for me. I passed him and went straight for the farthest corner to cower. He waited a second for others to enter with us, but when no one did, he let the door slide shut and pressed the button for the floor on which the family was staying.

  I was terrified to speak, but I had to tell him I wasn’t on that floor before we passed mine, so in a quiet voice I said, “I’m on the thirteenth floor if you would like to drop me off first. I mean, I’m more than willing to wait while you unload your things if you prefer. Either way is fine.”

  I sounded like an idiot, but the look on his face when I told him what floor I was on nearly caused me to wet myself. His anger at Dave’s aunt paled in comparison to how mad he grew at my words. I wasn’t sure what had made him mad though. Surely, he wasn’t angry because he had to make an extra stop before going to his floor. That seemed like a petty thing to be ill about considering how nice he had been in helping me.

  “Fucking bastards,” he mumbled a few seconds later, then hit the button for the thirteenth floor.

  Did he mean my family…or Dave’s, I wondered. Surely not, but who could he mean? The plural “s” told me he wasn’t talking about me, so I didn’t think I was the one he was upset with, but why he would be upset on my behalf, I didn’t know.