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I hated that they got to stand there, poised and pretty with their perfect lives, their perfect little family, while I fell apart, bleeding out all over their expensive kitchen floor tiles.
“Go to your room,” Sabrina said with deadly calm.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, go to your room.”
“Sabrina—”
“No, Michael.” She shrugged my father’s arm off and stepped forward, her eyes filled with disdain. “She does not get to disrespect us like that in our own goddamn home. A home we have opened up to her. Now go to your room and stay there until it’s time for school.”
I realized it then.
Sabrina hated me.
She hated what I stood for, what I reminded her of. She hated that I was her husband’s illegitimate child from a relationship deemed inappropriate by the elite of Old Darling Hill. She hated that I was here, in her house, messing up her idealized version of life. But more than anything she hated that I’d brought this… this chaos to their doorstep.
The fight inside me sputtered out like a candle in the wind.
I’d thought she was just indifferent. Cold with everyone and anyone who wasn’t part of her inner circle. But it was more than that. She censored herself around me.
“Morning.” Celeste breezed into the kitchen, grounding to a halt when she sensed the thick tension. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Sabrina managed a smile for her daughter. Her kind, intelligent flesh and blood. “Harleigh was just leaving.”
Leaving…
The word clanged through me.
“Yeah, excuse me.” I shoved past them all, the edges of my vision blurring.
“Harleigh, wait—” Celeste called after me, but I was already gone, staggering down the hall as I tried to suck in deep, greedy lungfuls of air.
The precarious threads of my resolve, my inner strength, began to fray, tearing open like a piece of fabric stretched to its limits.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get oxygen in fast enough. The walls around me began to close in, making me pant with fear as I grabbed the stair rail and hoisted myself up. Up, up, up. I kept climbing, gasping for every breath, tears streaming down my face. I was almost at the top when my vision turned black, my heart beating too fast.
I lost my footing and tripped, flying forward, right into a solid body.
“Shit, Harleigh?” Strong hands steadied me as I blinked up at Max. “Should I call Dad?”
“N-no,” I choked out. “Just… help me back to my room. Please.”
“I…” He hesitated, dragging a hand down his face. “Yeah, okay. Come on.”
But Max didn’t take me to my room, he guided me into his, and sat me on his bed. I dropped my head between my legs, breathing slow and deep, forcing my heart rate down.
“Can I, uh, get you anything?” He didn’t sound thrilled to have me here, in his space. But I couldn’t find it in myself to care.
“Water,” I choked out.
Max walked off and I looked up to find him opening a small minibar. Of course he had a minibar in his room.
The thought was so random, so preposterous, that a garbled laugh bubbled up my throat. He stared at me. “Are you all right?”
“No, I don’t think I am.”
“Here.” He handed me the bottle of water and dropped down beside me. “Want to talk about it?”
