Vin doesn’t so much as glance back at her. “Because I needed to be sure that I would get what I want.”
I wrack my brain for an explanation for this that makes the glittering future I imagined still even remotely possible. But the only one that makes sense to me is the one in which Vin Cortland is a selfish piece of shit who has been playing me this entire time.
“And that’s all that has ever mattered to you, isn’t it? Getting what you want. My feelings have never been on the radar.” I feel a sensation like my body is dropping over a cliff. The ground is rushing up to meet me, but there won’t be any waking up from this nightmare just before I hit the ground. “You could have chosen anyone for this. Why would you do this to me?”
“It had to be you,” he admits. “I can’t inherit anything unless I marry a daughter from a Founding family. You were my only option. And you have to be pregnant within a year, or my inheritance disappears.” He sees the look on my face, and more words rush out. “That’s how it started, but this has all become so much more than that. I was only doing what I thought I had to do. I’ve never lied to you about anything else.”
Vin has always hated me. It would take a complete moron to think he was capable of feeling anything else where I’m concerned. It was only a matter of time before we went right back to being enemies.
I muster all of the bravado that I don’t feel. “What if I had just gotten rid of it?”
“You wouldn’t do that.” Vin reaches out to stroke my cheek, and I pull away before he can touch me. If I let him touch me, then I might let him convince me that he hasn’t been laughing at my naivety for the last two months. “You would do yourself in before you harmed an innocent baby.”
The sense of despair that washes over me is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Darkness creeps in on the edges of my vision, a tide threatening to pull me out to sea. Even when I realized that my mother had no intention of ever coming back or that the first time Grandpa forgot my name wouldn’t be the last, nothing compared to this.
Staring into Vin’s pinched face, I realize that I still love him. Desperately.
And he will only ever see me as a means to an end.
I would rather die than feel this way for even one more minute.
“It was my mother who tried to kill you when we were kids. She always put this medicine in your tea, but I didn’t think anything of it until the day you collapsed. I never said anything until now, because I wanted to protect her. I should have learned my lesson about protecting people who don’t give a shit about me.”
Vin must see something change in my eyes, some indication of the direction of my thoughts. He grabs for me, but I dodge around him as Amelia lets out a cry of alarm.
The door to the bridal suite is open, so there isn’t anything to slow my headlong rush into the hallway. My bare feet pound against the hardwood, painful enough to slow me down under any other circumstances. But right now, I run like the hounds of hell are chasing me. I have no idea where I’m going, just that it has to be somewhere far away from here.
Impending darkness is the shadow dogging my every step.
Dark clouds swirl on the horizon. A distant storm rapidly approaches the shore. The crash of ocean waves is louder than ever as I walk down the deserted beach. I’ve spent my whole life with the world on mute, and now I’m hearing it all for the first time.
Silence has been my only defense against the world’s cruelty for so long that the noise is more than I can bear.
My whole life has been driving toward this moment, forcing me closer and closer to the edge of the cliff until I don’t have any choice but to jump.
I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere, certainly not here where I’ve never been more than the town trash. Even my family is only bits and pieces with no glue holding it together. My own mother couldn’t bear to stay with me, not for any longer than she had to. Dementia has freed my grandfather of his bad memories and saved him from the pain of missing me. My brother is gone, and he won’t be coming back.
No one left will miss me if I’m gone, at least not for long.
Shocking cold hits my toes as I step into the surf, a bitter mismatch for the warmth in the air. The water here is always frigid. It takes a brave soul to step into it without protection and hope to make it back out.
I’ve never been anything close to brave.
The idea of being done with all of it brings a surprising lightness to my step, a stark contrast to the crushing despair that has always been my constant companion. In death, there won’t be fear or pain.
There won’t be anything at all.
I’ve always feared the ocean, a strange thing for someone who was born in spitting distance of the water. Growing up, trips to the beach were more frequent than visits to the grocery store. I’d never understood how anyone could look at the infinite water, the waves crashing hard enough to break bone, and see anything but death.
Just more evidence I was never meant to survive in this world.
As a kid, my mom used to tell me stories of people being washed out to sea by the tides, unable to make their way back to the shore. Even the strongest swimmers eventually grow exhausted fighting the undercurrent. She described in detail the lashing waves during a storm that could
