Authors: Rachel Higginson
Chase’s hand became stiff and still on my back, his whole body rigid next to me. I felt wide eyes burning into me with intense surprise and curiosity. But I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t explain how it was my fault what happened to Sam and that I would have to live with the guilt and sin of that night.
“Did I hit a nerve?” Amber smirked pompously.
“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. So I suggest you stop talking now,” I threatened in a low voice. My hands had started to tremble so I clenched them together and hid them beneath the table. My breathing stuttered and staggered in a worthless attempt to draw in oxygen. Black spot
s prickled my vision and I could only fear the impending breakdown that was swooping down on me between the flashes of horrific memories of that night.
“God, you’re such a bitch,” Amber’s voice bit out from somewhere beyond the craziness playing out in my head.
I felt Chase whisper against my ear, asking if I was alright, but I wasn’t capable of answering him at this point. It was all caving in on me, my control was slipping, my future was fading away….
“Who’s the bitch?” a strong voice cut through my haze and called Amber out on her bullshit. “Don’t start shit you know nothing about just because you’re jealous.”
I lifted my eyes to Ryder who was very effectively putting Amber in her place. Her face had paled and her eyes filled with tears at his admonition. I felt the shattered pieces of my soul start to mend themselves back together and I worked to pull in a full breath, filling my lungs and expanding my chest. Ryder turned back to me, his gaze softening, his eyes searching.
“She’s been trying to hook up with Chase for two years,” Ryder explained in a loud enough voice that I knew this was still directed at Amber. “She’s jealous of you.”
I nodded because that was all I was capable of. Ryder held my eyes for half a minute more before turning back to a stunned Kenna. He went back engaging her in conversation, giving her every ounce of his doting attention. Slowly quiet chatter grew around us and everyone at our table seemed to move on. I leaned into Chase, enjoying the strength of his chest against my back, relishing in the warmth of his body pressed against me.
I would survive this.
I had to.
Chapter Twelve
“Finally!” Sloane called from the top of her staircase when my mother and I walked into her midtown French Beaux-arts design house. Her mother had drastically different taste than mine. Where my mother worshipped at the altar of modern chic, Sloane’s mother was all classic French doors and imported antique tiled floors. The house was a magazine spread waiting to happen, with expertly decorated classic French furniture and a drool worthy backyard grotto complete with a cozy fire pit and sunken fifteen-person Jacuzzi. “Up here now!” She snapped her perfectly manicured fingers impatiently and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Geesh! You are so bossy!” I called back, feeling a weight lift off my shoulders. I hated being here tonight. I loathed being surrounded by these people, by these women who had sold their souls to the devil without putting up any kind of fight. But I loved my girls. And it was good to see them.
“Ivy,” my mother stopped me before I could hang up my coat and disappear into Sloane’s bedroom for the rest of the night. Her voice was poised and authoritative, her glassy green eyes narrowed and expectant. “I expect you to put in some face time tonight. You heard what Nix has planned for you. He won’t want you hiding away. You need to remind him and everyone else why he would pick you. It’s not public knowledge yet, but when he makes his claim to you I don’t want there to be a shadow of a doubt for why he would pick you.”
She leaned forward to straighten the neckline of my mandarin collared sheer shirt dress. She brushed invisible lint off the shoulder and then adjusted it so that it layered over the dress-length slip underneath perfectly. I willed myself to be still underneath her ice cold fingers and intense scrutiny.
“Mom, nobody will notice,” I argued doing my best to keep the pleading tone I desperately felt out of my voice. “It’s not like Nix is going to announce his intentions tonight.”
“Don’t argue with me,” she chastised immediately. “And please, Nix’s affection for you has never been anything but common knowledge. Do you think anyone else could have pulled that little depression stunt last spring and gotten away with it?” My mother laughed derisively, completely and effectively putting me in my place. “Hardly. So don’t you dare seem ungrateful tonight. Get your act together and give Nix what he wants.”
“Yes mother,” I ground out obediently sounding like a Stepford robot. I knew there was no point arguing what might as well have been a command straight from God in this circle of delusional crazy people.
She gave me another head to toe dissecting glance, pausing a little too long on my solid black leggings like they were an eye sore. And then she turned her back on me to greet her…. colleagues. I looked around the elegant rooms of Sloane’s house, each one exquisitely designed and furnished. The house cost the same as our condo which could have reflected badly on Sloane’s mother Thalia. Our circle was entirely wrapped up in price tags and paychecks. But where Thalia had been frugal with the house she had made up for with extravagant pieces of art and design.
The first floor of Sloane’s
mother’s house was filled with women just like my own, gold diggers all vying for Nix’s desired attention. Not that Nix would ever be an end all for these rich bitches, but he had his own charm and appeal that was absolutely intoxicating to these women…. to every woman. Nix floated between clusters of beautiful but conniving females, dazzling them all with his charm and wit.
I had the sudden urge to vomit all over the antique ottoman to my left, just to cause a scene. Obviously I squashed the urge, but the bitterness stayed firmly lodged in the back of my throat.
I took one more brave look around the first floor from my vantage point in the foyer, swearing to myself that I would never become these women, that I would never let myself get swept away in the shallow-possession-coveted existence that poisoned them. I lifted my chin in mild defiance and let the promise to myself weave a protective layer around my cynical, jaded soul, around my broken, malformed heart. I was better than this. I was better than this life.
Nix caught my eye from across the room, his dark eyes hypnotizing me, his allure calling to me, asking me to stand by his side. He hardly acknowledged me other than the way he kept his gaze tightly locked with mine, not even a head nod or incline of his chin. But it was because of the subtlety of his authority that I felt the call to him stronger than even the oxygen in my lungs, more intimately than the blood pumping through my veins. I held my ground and fought with everything I had against the intense desire to walk over to him. His lips quirked into a perceptive smirk, and I felt his expression turn knowing. It was like my defiance only spurred him on, only encouraged him. More afraid of that truth than anything else, I broke our gaze and bounded upstairs and to the safety of Sloane’s room.
“There she is,” Exie squealed. “Shut the door behind you, Ives.”
I followed her directions and plopped down on Sloane’s oversized bed. Sloane’s room was decorated in the same style as the rest of the house, light and airy with touches of eighteenth century France. Every piece of her ivory painted provincial bedroom set was occupied in some way by Sloane, Exie or their sisters Evaleen and Anaxandra.
Exie was at the vanity curling her sister Anaxandra’s hair. She had long golden curls, just like Exie and icy blue eyes framed by impossibly dark lashes. They were big-boobed Barbies with tiny waists and perfect manes of hair. Anaxandra watched disinterestedly as Exie arranged her hair in a perfect mess that would appear casual even if it had taken several hours to accomplish.
Evaleen, Sloane’s sister shared her pale complexion and deep, dark brown eyes, but her hair was more chestnut than Sloane’s rich almost black hair. Evaleen was definitely Snow White’s older sister, and
not
the fairy tale princess that Sloane was, but she was still breath-taking, still heart-stopping. All of these beautiful girls could give anyone an inferiority complex.
That is if you weren’t equally as beautiful and acutely aware that this kind of splendor came with an insipid, disgusting price you would have to pay for the rest of your existence and never, not once, not even in your outspoken fantasies or most private hopes and dreams have the opportunity to be free.
“Hey, Ivy,” Evaleen greeted in a falsely casual tone. She lifted her eyes from a gossip magazine and pinned me with an accusing stare. “It’s been a while. How was the…. what are you calling it? The mind-vacation?”
I gaped at her. She was speaking to me with barely hidden cruelty like she was accusing me what happened was my fault. She should know better. We were all brought into this together, the same way. We used to be in this together. But apparently Exie was right, these two girls that I used to look up to as heroes had bought into the lie.
Everyone in the room was waiting for me to say something, staring at me with jewel-like eyes and practiced expressions of curiosity.
“Rehab,” I finally whispered, my own voice failing to stand by my side. “I’ve just been telling everyone I went to rehab.”
Anaxandra snorted her disapproval. “Not a very flattering lie. Fat camp would have been better than
rehab
.”
I swallowed my righteous rage at her callousness and decided to save the “beauty is on the inside” fight for when it actually aided my case. In fact, all of my beauty was on the outside.
All of it
. So it didn’t really matter if I wanted to argue with Anaxandra or not, she would clearly win this argument.
“But rehab isn’t really a lie,” I replied pathetically. “At least not if you hear Nix or my mom talk about it.”
“What was it like?” Evaleen asked, sliding down from her perch on Sloane’s long gilded dresser. “Was it really intense?”
“Yes,” I admitted. I hadn’t even had this conversation with Sloane or Exie yet. I preferred never to think about my time in the posh brain-washing camp I had been sent to. Most of the time I believed my soul was still intact, well, small pieces of it, but there were moments of weakness when I wasn’t so sure they hadn’t penetrated my mind. “Lots and lots of therapy. And Nix had several veterans visit and share their
success
stories with me. I guess he was trying to sell me on this whole thing.” I gestured around the room lazily, as if Sloane’s room summed up our entire existence.
“Spa time?” Anaxandra pushed, probably noticing my glowing skin and manicured nails, both of which I had chosen to neglect before I went in. I nodded my answer. She sighed enviously. “It sounds like vacation. What I wouldn’t give for Nix to pamper me like that!”
Evaleen squealed with laughter, “No kidding. Six months of constant relaxation and spoiling. It sounds amazing! Was it amazing?”
“No,
obviously
not.” I looked at these two girls that had just as much influence in raising me as my mother did and could not believe how far gone they were. They were five years older than me, which was an insane amount of time in my life. It was the difference between fighting fate and accepting it. They were almost finished with college, about ready to enter our society completely and they were going on and on about
spa time
? Everything in their lives was already a vacation from reality and still they wanted more? I wondered who they were at the core of their beings; how far down the morally deluded they had really fallen.
Evaleen
once pulled me aside at a garden party when I was thirteen and slipped comfort inserts into my four inch pumps when she could tell I could barely walk straight anymore. She whispered in my ear when I turned fourteen and had to go to dinner with Nix for the first time by myself that I would be Ok, that I was strong enough to handle a four course meal and when dessert was over to simply tell him that I was exhausted and had school in the morning and couldn’t be out any later. She had shown me one of Nix’s greatest weaknesses, that he was a gentleman to a fault in public and nothing would come between him and keeping up appearances.
And
Anaxandra had been the closest thing to an older sister I ever had. She tweezed my eyebrows for the first time, taught me the tricks of well-placed duct tape and Band-Aid placements and never let me cry in public. Never. She would somehow see tears form in my eyes from across entire ballrooms, race to me, scoop me up and hide me in the nearest bathroom until the tears stopped and she could reapply my makeup. I was gone six months and came back to invasion of the body snatchers. I came back to sell-outs. The reality of that epiphany was like a slice to my already battered heart. What if that was me one day? What if I forgot all my moral high ground and coveted convictions and allowed the idea of spas and vacation to completely cloud my judgment? That was the scariest question of all.