The room inside was void of any personal touches. There was a big bed elevated higher off the ground than I was used to, black curtains, a snakeskin-wrapped dresser, and two nightstands boxing in the bed. All of it plain and none of it held any parts of Bowen for me to hold onto.
Not even his alcoholic scent that mixed with the spunk of pot perfectly.
Searching my bag for the phone my mom gave me in case of emergencies only felt like more bars on the cage. No squeezing my body through and escaping, not that I would now.
No messages.
No calls.
I flew to LA to get married to the man I was promised to, yet he calls himself the highest bidder, and my mom didn’t bother to check in on me once.
If I wasn’t promised to Bowen, then how much worse could this have been if he didn’t buy me?
I didn’t bother to unpack or even change when I unbuckled the harness over my powder blue dress. Tossing it on the floor, I crawled under the covers with tears I wouldn’t let myself shed against his cold pillows.
Twisting the lamp off, I soaked in the hell I traded for a nightmare, waiting for the terrorizing dreams to steal my sleep.
EVE
I felt like a tragic princess locked in a castle, cursed to daydream of my perfect prince by only hour two of being by myself in this too quiet house.
Dusting off my angel wings, I decided to finally explore his castle since I was now here to stay. Running my fingers over the surfaces and looking around corners like I could get caught any moment, it dawned on me that he might have cameras to watch me behave the same way they did in Denmark.
Another trinket I left Denmark with, I was a scaredy pants now and never was before.
Carefully continuing my gallivant down hallways and up the stairs, I found a door where normally there wouldn’t be one, under the twin staircases that hugged the space, making it feel decadent. Pushing down on the handle, the door didn’t budge, and my bad memories hit me over the head like a warning sign as the rush of wanting to escape clouded my judgement.
The door not budging instantly felt like a future cage, and suddenly my lungs weren’t expanding all the way to suck in the deep breath that I needed.
Denmark ended up being a trap my mom walked right into under the guise of being his queen when really it was only going to feel like royalty for one of us. She chose herself.
I tried to run away more than once but there was nowhere to go, no one to trust, nothing that was going to help put distance between me and the people trying to break me.
My stepfather’s son was the enforcer when it came to the Young Ladies of Etiquette courses I was forced to take in order to stand by my mother’s side. She was all I had left to hold onto even though every time I sobbed, complained, or showed her the bruises, she just turned her cheek.
It didn’t take long before I realized my own mother wasn’t an ally. She was an accessory to locking me away and cursing me the way she did.
Excess baggage.
Humiliation in teenage form.
A past she could forget if I were out of sight for long enough.
After I learned some hard lessons and was ripped down to exposed nerves, I learned the only person I could grasp onto was the same person who now wanted nothing to do with me.
My head was still spinning with his words, the highest bidder, trying to understand how that fit into my life before I arrived here.
I wasn’t royalty material. I was a little shit with a grin a mile wide and an attitude that only made me seem demonic instead of angelic like my face told you I was at first glance.
I needed to be taught how to be a royal for my mother and so I’d be a good future wife for Bowen. Everything I have gone through has brought me back here to him where I’ve always wanted to be.
Bowen was making the crash course I was forced into seem like something else entirely and it was making my headache with false truths.
Continuing on with my snooping, I tied my blue robe around my waist even tighter, only making my slender frame seem more severe. Thankfully for LA, my body type was normal and considered healthy.
A wave of self-consciousness cascaded over me when I wrapped my arms around myself as I caught my slender frame in the mirror. I was unable to shove the memories away of that element from the hell I endured. Fingers pinching my skin, the comments that make the image in the mirror change so much you don’t recognize yourself, and the full-fledged feeling of not being accepted unless you fit into their box.
I felt the old me trying to crawl her way to my mouthpiece when I bit my tongue. Tensing my jaw to keep myself quiet at my self-deprecating insults, my eyes stuck to the girl in the mirror—the girl that I no longer knew even though she looked an awful lot like me.
I was my own worst enemy because that’s what they created when
