“I’m happy you’re doing okay, Cornelia,” she said carefully. “I know that this whole competition thing might make it seem as though words like that aren’t genuine, but…they are. Maddox is an ass for doing what he did.”
“Nope,” I said, lifting a finger to silence her. “Don’t wanna hear about Maddox right now.”
She laughed at that, throwing her head back a little. “Deal,” she agreed and sat down to tell me how things with her were progressing.
So engrossed was I in her words that I forgot about my own life for a minute. By the time we were done talking, I realized two things.
1. I wasn’t really in this alone.
2. Not all people were assholes. Just the men.
If there was anything I was going to take from my time on the show, it was that adulthood might be hard, but it’s nothing like the woes of childhood. I had made a friend here. Someone who cared, someone who genuinely wanted me to be happy. And that in itself, was the kind of love I knew I could get used to.
It was hours later when I was finally told just what the dinner entailed. The title: mending fences, as though my heart was some kind of inanimate object that could be patched together with plyers and pieces of metal.
Regardless, I wasn’t going to be a quitter and I wasn’t going to allow Maddox to run me out of this house. I was also certain that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to mend what he’d broken. In my mind, I knew that we’d already lost the game, but it still wasn’t over yet. Not until Robert said it was so.
I slipped into a sleek little number and checked myself over in the mirror. The deep neckline of the navy blue dress I was wearing, complete with a kickass push-up bra ascertained to the fact that I looked nothing short of irresistible.
My makeup was kept simple, a little liner, mild pink lipstick and a smattering of blush to bring out my cheeks. The broken Cornelia, the one who had been crying until her eyes were bloodshot and her face pale – she was nowhere to be found. Maddox was going to eat his damn heart out when he saw me. I almost couldn’t wait.
I made my way downstairs and tackled the cameras and other house guests with a smile as broad as the horizon. Their wide eyes and half-dropped jaws were just the thing I needed to make me know I’d gotten things spot, spot, spot on.
Phee raised a brow at me and gave a little whistle when I stepped in her direction. She was also dressed to the five-hundreds, looking like she stepped right out of a beauty magazine. Taking one step forward, she drew near to my side and kissed the air beside my cheek. “You got this,” she said, so low that only I could hear her words. I smiled and nodded. She was right. I did have this.
We were both ushered outside and taken to our respective rides. The men who were meant to hold our hearts were nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t unlikely, but definitely something I was grateful about. It was one thing having dinner with Maddox, but I didn’t exactly need to ride side by side with a camera pointed right at my face and a driver unable to keep his eyes away from the rear-view mirror.
The car journey started and after a few turns, I realized that I didn’t have a clue where we were headed. There were so many restaurants dotted around the city, but wherever we were going was further away from the city than I was sure I was comfortable with.
After about a half an hour, I spotted water and laughed a little when another half an hour passed and the car sped up a ramp to take us to a ferry. Robert really went all out with his plans for this date. Or perhaps he just wanted to make sure that I couldn’t hightail it out of there if Maddox said too many wrong things. Can’t say I blamed him, to be honest.
The journey continued and we made our way over water. I had my head pointed toward the window, watching as all the lights floated by and the city grew further and further away from me. If nothing else, this was an experience. I might not be walking away with a fairytale happily ever after, but I loved, I lived, I learned. And I got to take advantage of some pretty damn luxurious moments – ones I would have never been privy to had it not been for this show. So at least there was something I was able to take away from this experience.
We came to a stop at a restaurant with fairy lights illuminating the path and trees so high they seemed to touch the stars in the night-sky. Mesmerizing was the only word I could think of to describe what I was looking at, but even that seemed like a royal understatement.
“This is where I leave you,” the driver said as he opened the door for me to exit the vehicle. Slowly, carefully, I stepped into the night and made the short journey down a solid, wooden bridge toward Maddox. He was dressed to the nines in a navy suit that complemented my dress so perfectly it was almost impossible to think that this was the very man who faked the connection we had in order to earn his family’s pot of gold.
My heels clanking on the ground only a few feet away from him brought his attention to my presence. When he turned around, he did so almost in slow motion and my heart just about dropped to my feet. It wasn’t Maddox that I was staring at, but instead, the first man to break my heart.
His eyes met mine. In them, I saw something I didn’t belong there at all. Something that looked a lot like lust. “You look…” he started, wide-eyed and dreamy. Butterflies caught my heart and fluttered their wings against it. “Wow.” There wasn’t an inch of deceit in his tone or in his gaze. The way I felt as he took me in was downright forbidden. But that was Marcus. Even after all this time and even after all the hurt, he still had the ability to make me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
“Marcus?” I said, the confusion in my tone evident.
“You don’t sound like you were expecting to see me,” he said, stepping closer. He wasn’t wrong. Robert twisted the game once again. A part of me, however stupid it might have been, felt relieved that it was this man and not the other standing in front of me. A part of me knew just how wrong it was to feel that way.
“I was not,” I admitted, not really thinking much of the statement.
When Marcus shook his head, I knew that there was something else at play here. I raised a brow at him in question.
“I can leave if that’s what you want,” he said.
It wasn’t what I wanted and so I said nothing, trying to wrap my head around just what was going on. That only confused Marcus more.
“I didn’t come here to – “ he started and I raised a hand to cut him off. The least I could do was enjoy the night. After all, we were already here and by the looks of it, we were very alone in this place that pedestrians couldn’t get to on their own. The car that had dropped me off was slipping deeper and deeper into the night, riding the ferry all the way to the other side. Seeing as I didn’t have a choice but to stay put, I threw caution and hesitation to the wind.
“Let’s head inside,” I suggested, offering him a smile.
Marcus nodded, his nerves seemingly settling a little at my reaction. It was odd seeing him as anything but the overly confident teenager I’d left back in Biloxi. Proof that with time, some people really do change. I didn’t try to think much on that, however. It wasn’t as though I was interested in pursuing or being pursued by Marcus. No man had ever won me over as quickly as Maddox did and look at how that turned out.
Chapter Five
The restaurant was a shit-show of cameras. No matter where I spun, there was a lens watching me. Just like at the house, however, with time, their presence fell to the background. There were splashes of time where I didn’t remember they were there at all. Surprisingly enough, I had Marcus to thank for my forgetfulness… and quite possibly the third glass of wine I’d downed without even pretending that I gave a damn about being sober.
Marcus had been talking about himself for a good hour. Not in a conceited way, but as a means to not have an awkward silence consume us. I learned that his stepfather had moved on with his life, removing himself from their family without leaving a trace behind. Marcus was grateful for that and took it as an in to help his mother kick her addiction.
I
learned that he’d been on a quest for happiness and never quite found it. What I earned through him talking was insight into someone I thought I knew, but had no idea about. The way he spoke, with a passionate calmness and an understanding of life was perhaps even more attractive than the man himself which made it all the more surprising that love had evaded him for so long. All of that was good and well. I’d have had him talk for the rest of the night, drowning myself in his words as to not deal with my own thoughts, had it not been for the words that came next.
“I wasn’t lying when I told you that I’ve loved you my entire life.”
I chugged my wine slower, needing something to do that didn’t involve answering him or acknowledging what he just said.
“I know,” he continued, “it doesn’t make much sense at all, but…and I’m gonna cross a line here that you probably don’t want me to cross.”
I pulled the wine glass away from my lips and finally looked up at him. His eyes were just about as captivating as the night sky. I wanted to look away, but the longer I spent in his gaze, the more I became stuck there. “Maybe you should reconsider that thought,” I said. “I’ve got a wine bottle and I’m not afraid to use it.” The words were meant to sound like a warning, but between my drowsiness and my drunkenness, the impact of my words got lost in a slur.
Marcus laughed a little, the sound causing something in my chest to flutter in a way it wasn’t allowed to. “I’m a man who likes to take risks,” he said, his tone deep, his words clear. I swallowed once and then twice, trying and failing to free the nerves that had clustered themselves in my throat.
“When Robert told me that you asked for me to be here,” he started and my eyebrows shot up in equal parts alarm and surprise, but I let him continue. “I can’t say that I was sad things aren’t working out with you and Maddox and that you thought it might be worth it to give us a shot.”
Now, I didn’t sip my wine slowly. I downed what was left in the glass in one go and finished up the rest of the bottle. My head swam and my stomach churned. “I didn’t ask for you to be here,” I said and saw a reaction similar to mine cross Marcus’ face.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that Robert’s a liar. I’m saying that I haven’t made a decision on what happens between me and Maddox. I’m saying that I didn’t ask for you to be here. You left me with questions that I desperately wanted answered, but that’s all there was to it and I would have never asked Robert to hunt you down and drag you back here to have them answered.” But I’m also not displeased that you’re here, my thoughts screamed, but I didn’t dare say the words.
“If you weren’t as drunk as you are, this might be embarrassing.”
I laughed at that, my head hurling so many things at me that I couldn’t quite put in place. “Well…here’s the thing,” Marcus said.
“I’m not sure I want to hear it,” I told him, but he was already waving his hands, letting me know that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“We’re kinda stuck here together and the driver won’t be back for another…hour…maybe two. Like you said, I’ve talked myself into an embarrassing situation. And while you’re as drunk as you are, I might as well say all the things I’d never say to a sober Cornelia and hope you forget most of it by morning.”
“I’m not that drunk,” I challenged. The way the world was spinning before me told me that I was.
Marcus shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”
And that he did. If I didn’t remember just how much he hurt me as a kid, I might have been inclined to consider something more than a friendship with this man. The words he spoke and the way he spoke them, made my heart skip more beats than it should have been able to. He dove into parts of our childhood that I’d long forgotten, reminding me that it wasn’t all bad. That there were so many times I should have seen right through his bullshit.
“Do you remember your first kiss?” he asked.
I dove back in time and fought for the memory. But before I could tell him all about the guy in college who sucked my face with the strength of a vacuum cleaner, he was plunging into the depths of his own story.
“You have no idea how gutted I was when I heard you were going to the dance with Tyler. And then everyone was talking about how he planned on sealing the deal and…I was just red with jealousy.”
“Green with jealousy,” I corrected.
Marcus shook his head; the action making him look like an excited little kid. “Red with jealousy,” he insisted. “If you’d seen my face back then, you wouldn’t be questioning that fact now.”
I pursed my lips. “Okay. Then red with jealousy you were.”
He nodded fervently. “And then Sara, being Sara, tried to egg the dude on more. My own sister!” he exclaimed, using all the big hand gestures that were just so very much him. “Even if it had been a rumor when it first started, Sara was going to make sure that Tyler kissed you.”
“She did have that effect on people, didn’t she?” A small laugh slipped past my lips as I remembered Sara and how she could convince even the most strong-headed adults to bend at her will.
“Tyler was pumped by the time she was done with him and I was fuming. I’m still not fully convinced that she didn’t do it just to piss me off.”
“She knew you had the hots for me,” I teased.
“She could read me like a book,” Marcus said, his lips tilted into a smile. My heart jumped and I looked away. “I never admitted it to her though.”
“But you did beat Tyler to the punch,” I added, remembering that time from my past all too clearly now. The way Marcus had walked up behind me, the feel of his hands as he covered my eyes, the way my entire body sung with excitement as his lips met mine. The hatred I felt not long after when I remembered just what we were to each other and what we would and could never be.
“I hated you for stealing my first kiss,” I said.
“And I hated not being able to steal even more,” he confessed, tilting his head a little and focusing his eyes on mine.
I wanted to pinch myself; to see if this was really happening. Nothing about it felt real. But most confusingly, nothing about it felt wrong. Which, in itself…was wrong.
My mind slipped to Maddox for a moment, drawing a comparison between the two men without my permission. It hadn’t been that long since Robert had dropped the bomb on the fraudulence in my relationship with Maddox. I still had a lot of feelings to sort through. We hadn’t even had the chance to have a real conversation.
“I’m still in love with Maddox,” I said to Marcus, not wanting him to get the wrong idea here. “I’m not saying that I’ll forgive him and I’m not saying that I think there’s anything to the relationship I was trying to build with him, but my heart…”
“He borrowed it,” Marcus said in an attempt to complete my sentence. It was a royal failure, of course. When something’s borrowed, it’s expected to be returned and I wasn’t sure that men like Maddox knew how to give back the things that didn’t belong to them.
“You’re too late, Marcus. Even if things don’t work out with Maddox and me…you’re too late.”
“I’ve waited for what feels like forever to see you again. I can wait even longer.”
I shook my head at him, trying to figure out a way to let him know just how nonsensical his interest in me was. “A man like you can’t possibly still be obsessed with his childhood crush.”
“Tell that to all the girls I’ve dated,” he countered and then reached across the table to take my hands in his.
Stupidly enough, I let him.
Kids on the block
My mother took the news of my sister’s death well.
My stepfather did not.
He yelled. He screamed. He wailed like a fucking banshee. Barring the fact that I am the reason that my sister is no longer with the living, I should have been at least a little happy that someone cared. That someone cried. That her life mattered to someone
other than me. Other than Cornelia. That wasn’t the case. I didn’t want her life to matter to him. I didn’t want to see him care or cry or throw a fucking fit because even though I pulled the metaphorical trigger, he killed my sister a long time before she was dead.
Just the sight of him mourning the fact that he will never get to sink himself into her again makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn in on itself. Cold sweats take a storm of my body and I have an itch like no other to get the hell out of there. The only problem is, I don’t know where the hell to go to. Still, I leave. I throw a baseball cap over my head and hold my head down as I pass the nosy neighbors.
Lucky for them, they keep their condolences to themselves. All of them knew what was going on in our house over the years - or at least, they knew that our house wasn’t a place fit for kids. Not once. Not fucking once did any of them think to check up on us. Not once did they offer a helping hand or call the damn cops when my mother or my sister screamed bloody murder. So fuck them and the fuck the universe.
With my head buried against my chin, I pick up my pace. I still haven’t a clue where I am heading, but I am heading somewhere, that much is for sure.
I walk and I walk, for what could have been minutes or hours, I’m sure. Not until I’ve gotten to the mountains of sand atop the beach where my sister took her last breath. Now, my steps are more panicky, my legs shaking as I trudge upon the sand and find my way to the mouth of the water. I watch the waves ripple over each other and feel as the cool water crashes at my feet. My sister is out there somewhere. My sister is out there somewhere and it is all because of me.
Pulling my cap from my head, I scan the beach, taking note of the fact that it’s empty. Way too empty. The cops had promised that they would continue to search for her, but not even a single cop or boat or human being is in sight. After a thing like this, you’d expect a swarm of people coming to see the place that stole one of their own. You’d expect cameras flickering and reporters keen on writing their next story. There is none of that. Not even a little bit of it. My heart burns. Tightens around itself.
Morally Imperfect: A Bully Romance (The Bully Project Book 2) Page 5
