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A part of me thinks that maybe I should comfort him or do something to assuage his guilt, but I don’t move because I want him to feel guilty. I need someone to share this burden for at least a little while, and although I’m sure it’s not the healthiest thing to do, watching him suffer lightens my own pain.
“I’m sorry. I’ll tell them the truth, I’ll explain,” he says, his words coming so fast they’re a jumble.
“No,” I cry, silencing him.
“What?” he gasps, his eyes meeting mine.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You used me to piss off my family and force them to accept that you don’t intend on marrying my sister. It’s too late to take it back. Now I need to use you too. I need to keep up appearances until graduation, then I’ll be leaving, and I’ll never have to see any of you ever again,” I tell him, my voice hard and weirdly monotone.
“You need to go to the police,” Kip says, reminding me that the others are still in the room.
“I’m not going to the police, don’t be ridiculous.”
“But they attacked you,” he says, stepping forward.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going back to that house, ever.”
“So you’re just going to let them get away with doing this to you?” Gulliver snarls.
I smile, and it feels foreign on my lips, the hint of pain only sharpening my intent. “No, I’m not letting them get away with anything. My parents are driven by money, obsessed with Penelope’s inheritance and the power that will come with being that rich.”
“So what, we’re all rich,” Thorn says, his gaze assessing as he watches me from the other side of the small room.
“Exactly. We’re all rich. I have enough money in my trust fund to never have to work a single day in my life and still live in the lap of luxury. Money isn’t a consideration for any of us, but yet my family is still obsessed with being the richest of the rich. You guys know about the ridiculous set of stipulations in my great-grandfather’s will, right?” I ask, addressing them all.
“She has to be a virgin, marry into another old money family, blah, blah, blah,” Davis says, rolling his eyes.
“Yes, exactly. But beyond that, she also has to maintain a 4.0 GPA, which without me she can’t do,” I say calmly.
“What do you mean?” Kip asks.
“My sister is smart, but she’s not a perfect 4.0 smart.”
“Okay?” Thorn says slowly, looking like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“I take more than half of my sister’s classes for her,” I blurt.
“What?” Davis cries. “How?”
“You pretend to be her,” Gulliver says, his voice low and rough.
I nod slowly as I watch him piece it all together.
“That’s why no one knows you at school. It’s not because you’re introverted or antisocial or any of that other bullshit your family tried to feed me. It’s because if no one had any clue you existed, you could swap with your sister whenever she needed you to take her place.”
Crawling onto the bed, I sit cross-legged in the middle of the comforter. “The teachers know both of us attend, but my parents make enough donations to the school that no one questions why I skip so many of my own classes and hand in my assignments late, or why my parents insist I do detention on my own in isolation.”
“But why did you agree to do it in the first place? Why would you do that for her?” Kip asks, looking genuinely perplexed.
“My sister might be a massive bitch now, but she hasn’t always been this bad. From the moment my great-grandfather’s inheritance was dropped on her, she’s been living with a noose around her neck, tightening and tightening the older she gets. I remember hearing her crying in her room one day, and when I asked her why she was upset, she said that Mom and Dad would hate her because she was going to fail her chemistry test and ruin all of our lives. We were fourteen, and she thought failing one test was going to destroy our entire family’s future. So I suggested I take the test for her.”
“Wait,” Gulliver interrupts. “You agreed to pretend you don’t exist so your sister can graduate high school,” he snaps, his expression disbelieving.
A wry scoff falls from my lips. “No, I offered to take one test to help her. But when my mom found out about it, she asked me to step in the next time Penelope was struggling, then again and again. After a while, she stopped asking me to help and started demanding. Every time I argued, she’d insist that Penelope was the one with the important future and that this was my role to play.” Looking up, I find all of the guys watching me. “The more they focused on my sister, the more they ignored me, and then one day I realized that I’d traded my own identity to be my sister’s stand-in. You’d be amazed how quickly people forget about you when you simply stop being mentioned.”
“Izabella, that’s crazy,” Kip says, pity pouring out of him in waves.
“I’m not looking for sympathy,” I snap. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.” Turning to look at my fake fiancé, I pull back my shoulders and exhale. “Gulliver, you blackmailed me, and this happened,” I say, shamelessly pointing to my bruised face. “You owe me.”
