by Livy North
Huffing, I sat down on the rocks, dismissing her. “I don’t want to talk.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough.”
We sat in silence, listening to the waves crash onto the shore. The minutes passed, and neither of us spoke. I stared in front of me, looking at the blue water against the golden sand.
“Why did you come here, though?” Emory asked eventually.
I had no good answer. “I don’t know. I haven’t come here since I left for England. I’m surprised I even knew this spot existed or how to get here.” I snorted out a laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing here… I hate the ocean.”
Emory looked at me with a confused frown. “Why?”
“It’s unpredictable.”
A grin tugged on the corner of her lip. “So are you.”
“That’s probably why I hate it.”
“Then why did you come here if you hate it so much?”
I hated that she asked questions, but at the same time, I wanted to laugh. I expected it from her. It would be odd if she didn’t question me like I was on trial for murder.
“I felt powerless today,” I admitted, a weird sensation filling me after my revelation. “And I was drawn here, maybe for that reason.”
She sucked her teeth, studying me until she looked down. “I showed you this place,” she whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“When I was five. You were turning seven. It was summer and an event at the pier with the elite. We got bored, so I showed you and Nicolas and Sebastian this place.”
“Huh,” was all I said, not meeting her gaze. I couldn’t look at her eyes without wandering lost into them.
Emory blinked at me, but I kept my eyes steady on the place where white foam washed up with every wave that came in. I still observed her in my peripheral.
“What’s going on with your dad?” she asked, inhaling a sharp breath as if she braced herself for my reaction.
I hated that she did that. Maybe she was right about me. I’m not a good person. Because of the tequila, I found myself confiding in her again. Resenting my father resulted in me resenting her less.
“Nothing has ever been my own,” I began. “I was born and bred for my father to have an heir as psychopathic as himself. I’m not his son; I’m just a means to an end. And now he has a better option.”
“That’s not true.”
I glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow.
“You can’t be replaced.” She swallowed. “No one can. Every human is unique.”
She studied me carefully, and her blue eyes caught my attention. They were so full of emotion, so warm and compassionate. Her lips were formed in something shy of a smile.
“He practically kicked me out of the family today. No one dared speak up to him.” I huffed. “I’m surprised he hasn’t cut me out of his will yet.”
The moment I mentioned will, Emory’s eyes fell to her lap and her bright mood changed. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s not fair. You deserve much more than he gives you honestly. How fucked up is the universe?” She laughed sardonically. “You don’t get to be a part of a company you obviously care so much about, and here I am… a joke because I own a company I don’t know how to run, and I have to write a will at the age of nineteen. It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I snickered softly. “Just be glad you had a family worth missing. If my family dropped dead, I wouldn’t have the same luxury of missing them.”
Emory frowned. “Not even your brothers?”
I pressed my lips together. “Well yes, but they are the exception. My parents… I wouldn’t know them enough to know who I’d be missing.” I hesitated for a moment. “If you… need help with the company, I do have experience with construction and real estate firms, and I’m studying to be a corporate lawyer, as you know. It’s not a trap. I mean what I say. If you need help, I can help.”
Her eyes lit up for a second and she smiled briefly. I expected her to tease me, because God knows she would have only a few weeks back. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I appreciate it.”
We lapsed into silence and listened to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.
Crossing her arms, she squeezed them tight against her chest and shivered.
“Cold?” I asked. The sun had migrated toward the horizon, casting a yellow glow over us, making Emory look like a golden statue, but the air was still harsh.
“I’m fine,” she said, brushing me off.
Before I knew what I was doing, I took my jacket off and gave it to her. She stared at me, eyes flitting between me and the jacket before she slowly took it as if it was a trap.
“Thanks…” she said eyeing me with drawn in brows as she slowly pulled it around her. “Won’t you get cold, though?”
Scoffing, I said, “Aren’t I always? At least, that’s what you’ve been telling me.”
She pursed her lips, apparently deep in thought as she scrutinized me. “You know I was mostly joking. You and I… we’ve been through some stuff since then.”
“We have, haven’t we?”
“I think…” She paused for a moment, looking down at the ground. “Maybe we’re more alike than we thought. Besides, you’re the only person who sees how this town can be. Everyone else is living in their perfect bubbles. They don’t act like people; they’re more like… robots.”
I surprised myself by agreeing. There was truth to her words. People here didn’t act like humans, they acted like robots. They had their lives laid out for them. They weren’t living, they were just breathing.
“I never thought I would say this, but you’re not half bad,” I said, my lips twitching up in something that resembled a smile.
Emory winked at me. “Took you a while to figure out.” She pursed her lips together. “What happened? Between you and your dad? You all used to worship him, and now you don’t.”
I swallowed the bile in my throat. I might as well confess. I’d already confided in her more than once. “Something happened this summer… a few months before your family died.”
Emory stared at me, waiting for me to elaborate, so I found myself doing just that.
“You know I’ve always been into painting. Art. I love how it has no right or wrong, unlike business. Anyway, I hadn’t moved out then. I still had my room upstairs at the estate.”
She watched me intently, and if it were anyone else, I would be uncomfortable, but with her? It was like she saw me, and she wasn’t judgmental and condescending like my father or joking like my brothers.
I stood. “Come.” I held out my hand for her, but she let me wait.
“Where are we going?”
“Do you trust me?”
She said neither yes nor no but took my hand. I let her drive since I was intoxicated.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, staring at the white estate.
“I’m showing you what happened.”
Slamming the car door shut after me, I went to the backyard instead of going to the front porch.
“What are you doing?” She frowned at me when I climbed the fire ladder on the wall. It led up to my room and Sebastian had used it on multiple occasions when he wanted to bother me and I’d locked my door.
That was one of the few remotely good yet annoying memories I had of this wall.
“I’m climbing the wall. What is this, twenty questions?”
“Uh, should you be climbing walls? Aren’t you drunk?”
I snorted. “Drunk, no? I’m not even buzzed.”
“What are we doing breaking into your own house?”
“I don’t want to run into Lucy. Father scares her so she’ll most likely rat us out.”
“Who’s Lucy?”
“Our chef.”
Reaching my window, it was covered with curtains from the inside. The room had been hidden away for the last few months. Father pretended my room had never existed.
I knew how to work the safety lock on the window, and I did. Once
it popped open, I turned and glanced down at Emory. “Well, are you going to stand there and get us caught or are you going to start climbing?”
She glanced around before she sighed and started to climb.
I climbed through the window. The second my feet touched the ground, heavy, thick air surrounded me. The smell of smoke and ash were laced into the walls of the room.
Emory climbed through shortly after.
The room was darkened, but I could practically see and feel how heavy and dusty the air was. It was harder to breathe in here.
“What’s this room?” Emory asked. I could see the silhouette of her head as she glanced around.
I knew my room well, so I navigated my way over to the light switch and turned it on.
Soon, all the secrets in the room were revealed, and Emory stared wide-eyed in front of us.
“What the hell happened here…” Emory trailed off as she took in the entirety of the room.
Burned canvases, ashes on the ground, burnt and collapsed furniture, and burnt walls. Only the silhouette of my old room with my art in the corner.
The familiar steel taste of bitterness and hate coated my mouth. “My father is what happened. A few months before your family died in that accident, Sinclair Corp. lost a deal and Father blamed me. He burst into my room with a lighter in his hand.” I drew in a ragged breath, trying to rein in all the emotions that were pouring out of me. I wouldn’t lose my shit over him. I refused.
“He set fire to the canvas on my easel over there. I tried to make him stop, but he shoved me out. When I still resisted, he hit me. He fed the growing fire with my sketches and other paintings, calling my art a waste of time and that he was sick of it. Then he closed the door and let the fire consume everything. When the firemen came, he told them it was an accident and they believed him because of who he is. And to me, he said he did it for my own good. I’ve slept in the guest room since, and then I bought my apartment so I could get away.”
I tried to work out the anger simmering in my veins without exploding. “I even tried to adapt my art and make it useful to him. To make him like it. I drew houses, buildings, ideas for him and the company, but he threw them into the trash without looking and told me I needed to stop wasting my time. Since then, he pretends my room never existed. That’s why he never bothered renovating it.”
I paused for a moment, trying to hold in my demons. “That day of the fire was the first and last time he laid hands on me, but some sick part of me wished he hit me now so I could get back at him. I let him do it back then, but now I would give him a taste of his own medicine.”
Emory was speechless as she stared at me. She swallowed visibly, opening her mouth to speak but couldn’t find her words. “I can’t believe that happened,” she said eventually. “How could he do that to you?”
I shrugged, trying my best to come across as calm. “He doesn’t care about me. I have been nothing but his protégé, and he’s a narcissist. He likes the parts of himself he sees in me, and he simply cuts off the parts that don’t fit.”
Instead of giving me a pitiful look I would’ve loathed, she stared into the room with anger etched into her features. I liked that far more than pity.
“You know I’m not an art fanatic like my parents were, but I do understand it. The art is you. If your father doesn’t see that, he’s dumb. You might be arrogant, annoying, and impossible, but you’re also so ambitious and talented. There’s no one like you.” She squeezed my shoulder, and the gesture sent electricity through me and my heart did an unexpected and unwarranted skip. “And you know I say that in the best and worst way possible.” She grinned at me.
I let out a blunt breath of air, not managing to fight the smile she put on my lips. Whether it was because my teasing got to her, or that she was intriguing me or getting to me, I wasn’t sure.
This girl… A while ago, I wanted to destroy her.
Now, though? I think she was the one who would destroy me.
Not intentionally, and not in the way I’d wanted to destroy her.
Slowly but surely, she would destroy me, and I wasn’t going to stop her. I didn’t know how to, and I liked every part of it. I loved how she looked at me.
Maybe that made me a sucker for pain, or maybe I was a sucker for her.
“Happy birthday, River,” were the first words I heard when I walked into school a few weeks later.
Evie immediately looked at me when his name reached our ears. “It’s River’s birthday. Did you get him something?”
I frowned instantly, but my stomach clenched. “Why would I get him anything?”
She shrugged. “No reason. Just thought you were friends after New York.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. River and I were too complex and too fired up about each other to be called friends, but at the same time, New York did change us. I felt closer to him—the real him. I respected him, unlike earlier. I may even admit to liking some parts of him—especially his looks and brain combined.
“Well, I didn’t get him a gift,” I mumbled as we passed by the doors to the dining hall where River and his brother sat with a flock of people casually hanging around them.
As if River felt me looking, his gaze slid over to me almost instantly and our eyes locked until Evie and I were out of his line of sight.
The air returned to my lungs and I took an inhalation of breath. Evie eyed me suspiciously but changed the subject.
I didn’t see any of the Sinclair brothers until lunch, where most of heirs sat on the long table in the dining hall where we ate every day. Evie and I slid into our usual seats toward the end of the table.
We didn’t speak much but instead, listened to the gossip happening around the table as we ate. Some of them were out of earshot, but when the people talking looked at me, I knew the gossip was about me and River.
“Don’t they at least know how to be discreet?” I asked Evie, stabbing a piece of pasta and shoving it into my mouth.
My jaw worked it and I chewed for longer than I had to so I would keep my mouth shut and not put the gossipers in their place.
“I know how to,” a sudden dark voice said, and River slid down onto the seat on the other side of the table. He leaned back, his shoulders slack and tongue gliding over his teeth.
“Well, isn’t it the birthday boy?” I may have sounded passive-aggressive, but I wasn’t. It was my way of talking to him, and frankly, I wasn’t sure how to act another way. I didn’t want to make him think I was seeing stuff between us that wasn’t there if I suddenly acted all nice to him.
Sarcasm was like our friendship language.
Shit, I just admitted to calling him my friend.
“Are you going to wish me happy birthday?” he teased.
I shrugged, a smirk playing on my lips. “Nah, I figured you’re sick of hearing it by now.”
He chuckled darkly. “True.”
Something in the way he looked at me made my heart beat faster, my breathing heavier, and my skin turned warm.
“So, are you celebrating?” Evie shot in, looking expectedly at River.
He shrugged. “Seb and Nico are planning a surprise party for me.” He inclined his head at the windows where Nicolas and Sebastian were standing outside smoking with a group of people.
Frowning, my gaze darted between them. “But if it’s a surprise party… then why do you know about it?”
And why haven’t we been invited yet?
“Seb isn’t the best at keeping secrets. He was so excited, he accidentally slipped up.”
“Aw, he’s so cute.”
River ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “I don’t think cute is a proper word for any Sinclair. But anyway, you should come.” His eyes were on me. “It’s mischief night, you know.”
Of course, he was born on mischief night.
I smiled back. “Of course, it is.”
His gaze slid slowly over to Evie. “You can come, too.”
Evie cocked a sharp eyebrow at
him. “Trust me. If it’s a party, you’ll want me there.”
He only smiled mischievously. “Sure. Anyway, it’s at my apartment building. Emory knows where it is.” He looked at me, and for some unknown reason, I appreciated how he pretended nothing had happened between us. I liked his playful side; it was the River I was used to. “It’s on the rooftop.”
“Fancy.” Evie beamed. “I’ll see you there.”
“Sure, White.” River blinked slowly, looking completely uninterested.
His blue eyes found me quickly and something sparkled in them. Ripples of excitement and exhilaration shot through me. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
Something told me River had a lot of mischief planned for tonight.
Evening came, and I picked up Evie before driving to River’s apartment building. She was dressed up in high pumps and a tight dress that showed off her curves. I had to park a few blocks down and we walked up.
In the elevator, I got flashbacks from the times I’d been here before. Back then, things were so different.
The music reached us way before we reached the rooftop where the party was already in full swing. I lingered in the entrance, and Evie had to stop behind me. It was chilly out here, but people were still sweaty.
“This party looks lit,” Evie said. I was too busy with the growing headache I already had to reply.
Suddenly, River was in front of me—tall, dark, and handsome. He was the ultimate cliché.
“You came.” For a second I thought I heard surprise in his voice, but he quickly covered it up with his mask of stone.
“Didn’t bring you a gift, though,” I admitted.
He snorted softly, his eyes raking over me with something primal in them. “I didn’t expect you to,” he said once his eyes locked with mine again.
“Then I didn’t disappoint you.”
“You never disappoint me, Nightmare.”
Suddenly my breathing was labored, but air filled my lungs when Evie not so discreetly nudged me in the back. “Please step out of the way, River. We’re here to party.”
Grabbing my arm, Evie pulled me away and into the sea of people. She didn’t ask questions and instead, she started to dance, pulling me with her, but her eyes said everything her mouth didn’t.
