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Congratulations on your engagement, I wish you and Gulliver all the happiness in the world. Enjoy the rest of your party. P x
My cell beeps again, but I ignore it. I don’t need to look to know it’s more than likely another message from my sister. She’s been calling and texting me constantly since I left her and Gulliver’s engagement party last night. I sent her a message after I got back to the hotel telling her to enjoy her party, but other than that, I’m not sure what else we have to say to each other.
I don’t really know what she expects of me now that the will is broken. We weren’t close even before our great-grandfather died, so it’s not like we have a good basis to try and rebuild our relationship on, and to be honest, I’m not even sure I want to try. My sister sees me with rose-tinted glasses, and I can’t allow her distorted view of me to allow me to forget who and what I really am.
For a second, I consider that the message could be from one of my parents, but I quickly dismiss the thought and the tiny pang of hope that comes with it. I’m of no use or importance to them now that I’ve deliberately sabotaged my inheritance. They won’t contact me. Without that money, I’m barely even a blip on the radar of their lives. Before the will, Izabella and I were an afterthought, now I imagine they’ll do their best to forget about us all together.
Glancing around, I take in the empty, impersonal hotel room. I’m alone, and for the first time in years, I feel truly lost. My fake friends, my fake life, and my entire orchestrated identity was all constructed around the stipulations of the will, and without the necessity to conform to the strict guidelines, I don’t know what to do or who to be.
I’m guessing that all the messages are probably my sister offering to help me, to be there for me, to welcome me into their group like I’m not the evil they were trying to vanquish just a few weeks ago. But I can’t accept their support or her far too easily given forgiveness.
Izabella, or I suppose I should probably start calling her Izzy, is a genuinely good person, and I have no idea what to do with someone like that. My default setting is superior bitch, and no matter how nice she is to me, I’m not sure I can change who I’ve forced myself to become or if I actually want to. I’m good at flirting with the guys I’m told to flirt with and ignoring the ones I’m told are beneath me. I’m good at following the rules. So, what the hell am I supposed to do now that the rules don’t matter?
Glancing around me, the beautiful hotel room feels bleak and oppressive, the walls slowly closing in on me as I sit in the same spot I’ve been in for hours, still wearing my gown from last night. The few tears I’ve shed have left ugly black streaks down my cheeks, and I feel dirty and pathetic.
“You are pathetic,” I say aloud, exhaling a shaky breath as I roll my eyes at myself.
My legs feel weak and stiff as I force myself off the sofa and to my feet. Reaching behind me, I drag down the zipper on my dress, then push the fabric down my body until it slithers to the floor at my feet. Stepping over it, I make my way to the bathroom and twist the shiny facets on the bath, watching through gritty eyes as water gushes out and into the deep tub. Steam starts to fill the bathroom as the bath slowly fills, and stripping out of my bra and panties, I climb in, ignoring the fact that the too hot water immediately starts to burn my skin.
Sitting down, I exhale raggedly as the water rises around me, gradually engulfing my body. The heat is intense but strangely cathartic as my limbs slowly become numb and weightless.
Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back to rest against the side of the tub and concentrate on breathing. In and out, in and out. The steam fills my lungs, making me feel like I’m eating the air instead of breathing it. The water is almost completely covering me, the heat so intense sweat is beading across my brow, but I don’t make any effort to cool it. I just lay there letting it wash away a thin layer of my sins.
As the water continues to rise, I let myself sink further, sliding beneath the surface. Once I’m submerged, I open my eyes and stare up at the unfamiliar ceiling above me. All I can hear is the muffled sound of the taps running, of more and more water coming over me, suffocating me, imprisoning me, and the familiar sound of my own heart beating. It’s so incredibly peaceful, like the water is protecting me from everything that’s waiting for me on the surface.
For a second, I wonder what would happen if I just stayed down here, beneath the water, where it’s warm and quiet. How long would my body allow me to deprive myself of oxygen? Would I eventually be forced to the surface, or would I drown before my brain tried to save me?
Closing my eyes again, I revel in the peacefulness of it down here. Allowing a bubble to plume from my mouth, my lungs start to protest, the lack of air noticeable as my chest starts to burn and my body instinctively tries to move me to the surface, fighting against my brain’s desire to stay here in the warmth, in the quiet.
Right now, I just want to feel the peace, to bask in the silence where nothing matters but the beating of my own heart. I know I don’t have long left, that self-preservation will propel me to the surface, to the oxygen I need to survive, but for this moment I’m nothing, and it’s blissful.
I don’t want to die. I’m not too noble for suicide, I’m simply too cowardly to be able to actually go through with it, and really how cliché would it be for the silly little heiress to kill herself after she deliberately sabotaged her inheritance?
Bursting from the water, I gasp, sucking in deep pulls of the balmy, steam-thickened air, filling my lungs with life-affirming oxygen. A wry scoff falls from my lips once my lungs have stopped burning and I’m no longer panting for breath.
I don’t get the luxury of peace. I have to learn to live with the consequences of my own actions. Without the weight of the water, every hateful thought I’ve had since the day my parents hurt my sister rushes in, warring inside of me as I remind myself over and over and over that everything that happens now is my penance. I’m alone because I deserve to be. I’m unforgivable because I’m so selfish that I never considered saving my sister until I needed to save myself. I’m irredeemable because I don’t even have enough conviction to despise myself, even though I should.
The small voice in the back of my mind is still whispering that I did what I had to, that I stopped it before it went too far, that I helped when she needed it. But it was all too little, too late.
When my cell buzzes again and again, I ignore it because I don’t deserve Izzy or her forgiveness.
Eventually, I crawl out of the bath and under the comforter. Still wrapped in the towel, I let sleep take me.
* * *
The sun is peeking through the blinds when I open my eyes. It’s morning, and I should be getting up and going to school, but instead I pull the covers over my head and squeeze my eyes shut. I’m sure that by now everyone will know that I walked away from billions of dollars. Most won’t have a clue about the real reason I did it, but they won’t care. I’ve treated people like pawns and then hidden behind the protection of the money and power I expected to inherit. Now I’m just an average rich girl in a school full of average rich girls, and the people I’ve walked over in the last few years will smell the blood in the water the moment I step through the doors.
There are only a few months left till graduation, but I’m not sure I can face the other students, my sister, her fiancé, or their friends, and especially not him.
Until two days ago, Hawthorn Benedict was just Gulliver’s friend. I knew who he was, and he knew who I was. But that was the extent of our relationship. Everything changed the moment I asked him for his help. I picked him because, despite knowing he hated me, my body reacted to him, and even though I knew he wasn’t a virgin, he didn’t flaunt his conquests by groping them in the lunchroom like their other friends do. I chose him because, out of the very small group of guys I could trust not to tell my parents what I was doing, he was the only one I could imagine being so vulnerable with.
I thought having sex with him would be easy. I thought I could use him and then leave, and that would be it. But I was so incredibly wrong.
I was an idiot to think I could do something so intimate with someone and then just forget that it happened. Even though it physically hurts me to admit it, Hawthorn is something to me. He’s someone who will forever be a part of me, and I don’t want that, but no matter how much I rationalize that sex does not equal feelings, I just can’t pretend it was nothing. I lost my virginity to him, and even though it was for a purpose, it’s still not something I can force myself to forget, no matter how hard I try.
Since I climbed into the back of the Uber at the marina, I’ve tried to build a wall around the way it felt to be under his control, but every time I manage to place the last brick, I hear his voice against my ear or feel the soreness that’s still lingering between my thighs, and my metaphorical wall crumbles. I don’t want Hawthorn to be important, to be anything more than my sister’s friend, but he is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that now.
9
