It happened in the first place because she had been willing to sell her soul for fame. It happened again and again because apparently her soul hadn't been enough. And this time, it happened again because Travis simply didn't like seeing her happy.
"Guilia...please."
Guilia had the rarest urge to sob. She hadn't cried the first time Travis' dad told her she would have to become his whore before he gave her what she wanted, and she still hadn't shed a tear the night she had woken up from her first forced threesome. But the way Ethan was looking at her now...
The way Ethan so obviously still loved her despite what he knew...
If she broke things off with Travis, the other man would release all the footage he had of Guilia, and if she let that happen—-
Would Ethan still love her, she wondered hysterically, once he knew the truth?
The thought was too frightening to contemplate, and it was as if something snapped inside of her. Before she realized what she was doing, she had already dashed into the kitchen and sliced her wrist with a knife.
GUILIA HAD NOT SUCCEEDED in killing herself, but the Guilia Ethan used to know might as well have been dead. It was as if she had changed overnight, and when Guilia was finally discharged from the hospital, she was someone he didn't recognize at all.
Instead of coming home with him, Guilia insisted on staying at her apartment in New York, and it was there she seemed to spiral out of control. News of Guilia hitting the clubs every night soon filled the Internet, with photos showing her either drunk or getting into catfights with other girls. She had also started taking drugs, and the paps on her trail had caught her sneaking out like a hooker in various instances. There was one where she had climbed out of a window of an actor's RV, another from a rockstar's backstage room, and one time from the hotel room of a professional athlete.
It was one goddamn scandal after another, but since Guilia had asked for space from him following her discharge, Ethan was able to lie to himself about not having any right to expect anything. If she had called him out of the blue and asked for forgiveness, he would have given it. But the one thing he couldn't forgive was when he woke up to her newest scandal. The tabloid sites had released photos of Guilia and Travis inside a car, and even though they were both fully clothed, the position they were photographed in left nothing to the imagination.
It was one thing for Ethan to know of her unfaithfulness. It was another thing entirely if the whole world knew about it as well, and Ethan flew to New York all at once after seeing the photos. He just wanted to be done with her once and for all, but the moment he saw Guilia again, it was like having the heavens playing a fucking joke on him.
"If you're here to break up with me," Guilia said with a catty-looking smile, "then you should've just sent a text."
Bitchy as always, but God...
It was also the first time he had seen Guilia looking at him with love in her eyes.
THE NEXT THREE YEARS for Ethan and Guilia were tumultuous at best and acrimoniously volatile at worst. By now, Guilia knew that Ethan genuinely loved her, but somehow the knowledge only made her want to hurt him more. When all she wanted to do was love him back, Guilia found herself doing everything that would kill his feelings
Stop loving me, damn you!
Stop! Stop! Stop!
But nothing seemed to work. Ethan never left her side. Never tired of asking her what was wrong. Never stopped loving her.
And it terrified her.
To the point that she found herself unable to stop destroying him. She just couldn't seem to help herself. She just kept pushing and pushing and pushing...until finally, Ethan did what she expected him to do.
He left her, loving and hating her, and that was fine with Guilia. All that mattered was that Ethan never knew the truth, and if keeping him in the dark meant being alone for the rest of her life...that was fine, too.
Part Two
Chapter One
OUT-OF-STATE SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROGRAMS NOW AVAILABLE
All travel expenses covered
Excellent pay and inclusive of board and lodging
Email list of requirements below if interested.
Sixteen-year-old Anah Blakely had been beyond excited when she saw the newly-posted notice on her high school's bulletin board. She had asked for her parents' permission to apply for it as soon as she had gotten home and was able to submit her application the very next day. It had taken a while to hear back, but she eventually received the response she was hoping for.
And so here she was in Hartland, Wyoming three weeks later, and Anah was still pinching herself like mad. Hartland wasn't anything like the small Texan town she grew up in. Since San Antonio was only half an hour away, it sometimes felt that Evergreen was simply an extension of the city, and the locals hadn't felt any need to build a community of their own.
Hartland, however, was wonderfully different. It stole Anah's heart from the very first moment she stepped off the bus, with its cozy but vibrant vibe that somehow felt like this strange, whimsical fusion of the Wild Wild West and the chic side of Paris. Historic buildings, made either of brick or natural stone, lined up the sides of the main streets, and their signages were either hand-painted in charming script or bright and colorful with incandescent lightbulbs outlining their business names.
There were streets permanently closed to vehicular traffic, and then there were also streets where she had seen a couple of horse-driven wagons rattling down and even a cowboy riding up to the local church.
It was a good thing, Anah reflected cheerfully to herself, she had decided to come up early to Hartland.
