by Lily Paradis
What hurt the most was that they didn’t look back. Neither of them looked back before they drowned. I used to think it was because they forgot about me. Now, I wondered if they did it because they didn’t want me to see the fear on their faces before they drowned.
I thought it would happen to me, too, but the water stopped just before it came over my mouth. It was closing in, but it didn’t get me. Someone found us and got me out before that happened.
Would it happen again?
I tried one more time to climb the edge, to get out of the grave I had quite literally helped dig.
The second I thought I had a firm grip on the walls, I tried to move my feet. It was no use.
I slipped and fell, and my hands went behind me to break it. My wrists stung as I landed on them, and one finger burned more than the rest. My left ring finger was twisted in a way that didn’t look quite right.
Fuck.
It might as well be that one. I was never getting married anyway. That finger was useless to me.
That thought numbed me enough to survive the night, but that was all I did.
I survived.
Now
“YOU CAN CHANGE your mind. We can turn around now.”
Hayden is calmly driving down the highway to the Hale Plantation, and it’s scaring me. He’s too calm. I haven’t slept in two days because of my nerves, and my crazy is showing.
“Turn the car around,” I tell him, trying to be forceful.
We don’t have to go to this. I sent the RSVP for two people, but I didn’t put his name down. They have no idea he’s coming as my guest because if they did the wedding would be more about him than Cece and her husband-to-be.
In fact, I’m sure Lara could twist it, so Cece would marry Hayden instead—not that he would consent, but I wouldn’t put anything past her.
Hayden reaches over and puts his hand on mine. This is a dream, right? This is what every girl dreams of. A beautiful man in a beautiful car, putting his beautiful hand on hers in an effort to calm her in her time of need. This is supposed to be a dream.
Instead, I just feel like I’m going to throw up. I can’t put my present in my past. It’s like me and Jesse. Oil and water.
The irony doesn’t elude me that I met Hayden less than a day after I tried to escape this place, and here I am, dragging him back into it—except he’s walking willingly, and he’s dragging me instead.
“We’re not turning around,” he says, his voice even. “It’s your sister’s wedding.”
He says that like it means something, and I realize it’s because it does in his family. His brother died before he could get down the aisle, so Hayden’s wedding will be the first that the Rockefellers experience of his generation.
“Have you been to a wedding since?”
I don’t elaborate, but I know he understands what I’m asking.
“Yes. It’s been a while, Tate.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Just making sure.”
He slides his fingers through mine, and my heart pounds even harder.
“I hate my family.”
It sounds insensitive, but he doesn’t know how I grew up. I can tell him everything, but he’ll never understand it. Living through it would be the only way anyone would ever understand what I went through. Yes, they kept me afloat financially, but emotionally, I was a vacuum. I only had Colin and Catherine. Casper was never about emotion, and neither was Jesse.
None of these people I’m about to see ever cared about me, but they’re about to the second they see Hayden’s face.
The paparazzi in New York may keep things under wraps far better than the West Coast would, so no one knows we’re together, but once it hits Charleston, there’s no going back.
“Lara’s going to spread this like it’s 1353,” I tell him, voicing my thoughts.
“Did you just compare our relationship to the plague?”
I let out another sigh. “You’ll see.”
Hayden turns off onto the side road that leads to the plantation, and I show him the way to get to Colin’s family estate. I wish I had Colin and Catherine with me, too. An entourage would have helped, especially since the two of them are the only people in the world who understand what this feels like.
I wish I could be like Hayden. I wish I loved my family.
I would have—if Denny and Maggie were here. My life would have been so different. Wouldn’t it?
The trees start to get familiar, and I know the house is about to come into view, sitting there like Longbourn to Kyler Place’s Pemberley. He turns the last corner, and as I see it, I start to sink down into my seat, pulling his hand along with me as I act like a five-year-old.
“I’m going to freak out,” I tell him honestly.
“Tate,” he says, his voice steady, “you can do this. I’m not going to leave you.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight. If I have to go to the bathroom, you’re coming in with me.”
“Isn’t that slightly frowned upon, especially in Southern culture?”
“I don’t give a damn what’s frowned upon,” I tell him. “If I’m alone with them for a second, I’ll scream.”
Dramatic, awful, selfish Tate is coming back. I can feel her seeping back into my body, and all the sense that I gained from the distance is fading fast. Now, I remember why I used to drown myself in substances to avoid precisely this feeling, the feeling that I’m not wanted, that I’m an extra.
I’ll be reminded of that today with Cece’s wedding.
Hayden is a weapon, whether I like it or not, and bringing him will change everything for Lara. I can’t let it.
“Do not show that you like me,” I say, changing my mind. “You’re here as my date, but you have to be noncommittal.”
“Tate, what is going on?”
I can tell I’m throwing Hayden for a loop because he doesn’t understand what’s happening.
“I’m not a good person. This place brings out the worst in me. If Lara sees that this is more than just a date to a wedding, she’s going to try to take me back. She’s going to try to suck me in just like she did Cece.”
“So?” He takes is eyes off the road for a moment to glance in my direction. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I roll my eyes.
“I need my space from her. I like the way things are now. This is going to change everything. You’re going to change everything.”
He squeezes my hand, but I can still see the concern on his face.
“Sometimes, change is good.”
He says that, and I want to believe it, but I resent change. It’s in my nature. Change means a period of uneasiness where I’m not in control, and if there’s one thing I know about Charleston Tate, it’s that she has a power complex.
Hayden pulls up to the massive circle-shaped entrance to the house where I can see various other cars parked.
Maseratis. Teslas. Porsches.
Although this isn’t New York City and the Hales aren’t the Rockefellers, they’re still old Southern royalty, and everyone who is anyone will be here.
A parking attendant I don’t recognize motions for Hayden to slow the car, and another comes to my door as we silently come to a stop. My door is opened, and I know this is it. This is where the vacuum seal breaks, and all the air is going to get me. I wonder if simply breathing this air could turn me back into whom I was. Or is that who I truly am and New York me is pretending?
Either way, I don’t have a choice because Hayden is already out of the car, and one of the valets is now holding his keys, but he refuses to get in the car until I’m out because I’m Tate McKenna.
The second attendant steps aside, so Hayden can reach for my hand, unencumbered. I take it, and the humidity engulfs me like a far off memory. The darkness inside me begs to get out, and I thank God Jesse isn’t here to make it even worse.
After this wedding, I am never coming back to Charleston. I hate this version of myself becaus
e although I think I have all the power, I have none. I’m not rational here.
“We should stay in a hotel,” I tell Hayden, tugging on his arm as he tries to walk up the steps toward the front door. “We should have come just for the wedding, not the rehearsal.”
He leans down and kisses me softly, and I know he’s doing his best to figure out what will stop me from going over the edge in the next few seconds.
“It’s two days. Get through two days, and we’ll be back in the city with hundreds of elevators.”
“Hundreds? There are seventy-three in the Empire State Building alone, so I’m saying there must be thousands in the entire city.”
He smiles, and my evil side dies a little.
“Thousands.”
He kisses me again, but before I can relax, I hear my name shouted shrilly from one of the balconies on the front of the house above the door.
“Tate! You’re home!”
Home is a strong word for it, so I don’t bother to smile as I look up to see Lara standing where Cece just vacated, framed by the billowing drapes behind her.
Moments later, Cece is running out the front doors and down the front steps. She looks like a deer, and her perfect limbs are accented with each stride. Her grace is something I’ll never have. I’m much too harsh.
“Sister!” she says.
I wonder if she really does think this is Longbourn or if she’s just forgotten my name in the whirl of premarital bliss.
“Cece,” I say with gritted teeth. Her body splits mine and Hayden’s apart, and she hugs me as tightly as her delicate little body can. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you! Tate, you remember my fiancé, Emmett.”
She gestures at the man following behind her, and although he’s older, I recognize him from several society events I was forced to attend.
I smile curtly like I’m supposed to, and although I know Cece is madly in love with Emmett, she’s standing there, looking at Hayden with her jaw on the pebbled driveway.
“Are you—” She shakes her head as if she knows she’s being rude. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you look an awful lot like Hayden Rockefeller.”
I roll my eyes. This has just reached a new level of awkward as Hayden narrows his eyes slightly at me because I know he hates it when people recognize him. I throw a look back at him because if he didn’t want that, he shouldn’t have come here. This is all the next two days will bring.
“Cece,” I say because now it’s my job to fix the situation, “this is in fact Hayden Rockefeller.”
She grips his hand like he’s a piece of David Yurman jewelry.
“Cecelia Hale,” she says shyly. “This is my fiancé.”
Emmett steps up and takes Hayden’s grip as he introduces himself like he’s trying to be better than a Rockefeller, but he knows he never will be.
I’ve won.
If this is a battle that Lara created and expected Cece to win by a landslide, I’ve won because unless I married a prince, there would be no topping a Rockefeller. And even then, I’m sure Hayden wins in Lara’s opinion since he’s an American, and any prince would be foreign-born and therefore tainted in her conservative eyes.
I shouldn’t take glee in this, but I do. I take disgusting satisfaction in the fact that he makes me better than all of them, and suddenly, I’m above and not beneath. I can now act the way I’ve always acted, but now, I have an excuse, and I’ll just be sophisticated instead of angsty or troubled.
I’ve won, and Hayden is my weapon.
Old Tate is sweeping back into me, and I let her in like Louisiana welcomes a hurricane—resentfully but without alternative.
New Tate never stood a chance.
Now
WE’RE HERDED LIKE cats into the reception area set up for Cece’s rehearsal dinner, and I walk myself in behind my sister and Emmett while Lara takes Hayden’s arm. He obliges because she’s biologically my grandmother, but he doesn’t know that she’s really a snake in human guise.
Of course she’s clinging to him.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Julian dropped dead by her hand, so she’d become available for Hayden instead of me.
I’m annoyed that I’m all alone, snacking on little cheeses to keep myself from clawing her eyes out. Cece comes to my rescue and pulls Hayden out of Lara’s grasp, so she and Emmett can speak with him instead. It’s then that I’m completely shocked as Lara pulls me aside and into one of the smaller rooms.
“Who would have thought you had it in you to seduce a Rockefeller, Tate?”
She doesn’t whisper, and if people weren’t talking so loudly in the other room, everyone would hear her. I half-think she wants them to hear her.
“I didn’t seduce him,” I say icily.
I’m watching my words because I don’t want to say anything that she can use against me later. She’s particularly fond of that trick.
I watch as little wrinkles form at the corner of her eyes, and I wonder if mine will look the same. We share a resemblance through my mother—her eyes, my hair. It’s there underneath all that evil.
“Are you sure? It’s a good thing you got your mother’s good fortune. If you’d taken after that Denny, I would have committed you to a European convent.”
I’m surprised she’s being so candid since her quips are usually beneath the surface. She’s trying to get a rise out of me. There’s no other explanation.
“You can have it, you know,” she continues. “If you marry him, you can have the rest of your inheritance.”
“I highly doubt I’d need the money if I married him, Lara. And that’s only if.”
“Think of your family,” she says. Her voice drips honey, but her eyes shoot daggers. “Think of what it would mean to us.”
She’s reached the end of my patience.
“I will not light myself on fire to keep you warm.”
I’ve wanted to say it for years, but I’ve never had an opening quite like this one.
Lara’s eyes narrow, and her cheeks form a victorious smile as she directs her gaze behind me. I turn, but I already know what she’s done.
Hayden’s standing behind me in the doorframe, holding two glasses of wine—white for me, red for him.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Lara says. She makes her exit, but I know she’s just going to wait around the corner to hear what’s about to come next.
“Light yourself on fire?” he asks. I can see the hurt in his eyes—genuine pain, not just confusion at my statement. “Being with me is the equivalent of lighting yourself on fire?”
I don’t tell him to stop. I don’t tell him to listen to me. I don’t have anything to say because he’s right. That’s what I’ve just said because of my lifetime feud with my own flesh and blood and my ill-favored quest for vengeance.
Yes.
I’ve hurt him.
Deeply.
I run. I run like the night of cotillion when I ran away from Jesse.
I’ve dragged Hayden into this mess of a life that I have, and this is the breaking point. My mind is spinning from lack of sleep, so I run out of the house and down the steps to where we left the car.
“Keys!” I shout at one of the valets like I’m Marie Antoinette.
He produces them from his pocket and tries to run to get Hayden’s rental car, but I’m faster. I wrench them out of his hand as I start the car with the remote, so no one can stop me.
I get in and shut the driver’s side with such force that I’m shocked when all the sound immediately stops. This car is like a bubble, and all I can hear is the clicking of the seat as I move it forward since Hayden is significantly taller than me.
I hate driving. I hate this car. I’m not registered on the rental agreement because I wasn’t expecting to be behind the wheel. I don’t know where my driver’s license is because all I have in the pocket of my dress is my phone.
It’s ringing as I pull out of the driveway and onto the back road that will take me into the city, and I don’t
pull it out to check who is calling me. I’m betting it’s not Hayden.
Lack of sleep does something to you. You start to see the world in different ways. The edges of everything start to blur—not in a calming soft way, but more like there’s a buzz to the air, and you can’t stop any of it until it invades your mind, too.
It’s like living in another layer of life. It can’t be reached unless you bring yourself to the brink of torture that is facing a second sun without rest. I assume it’s what a caffeine overdose feels like when the anxiety sets in, and nothing will fix it but time.
I’m fully aware that I shouldn’t be behind the wheel for a multitude of reasons as I make my way into the city. I have no idea where I’m going or how long I’ve been gone.
Highway hypnosis is apparently worse when you’re sleep deprived. I don’t remember the drive from point A to here, only that I am here now.
I stop at a light, only to be distracted by the trees. I’m the first car, and I probably won’t notice when it’s time to go. I’ll be honked at several times.
I look down.
There’s a car in front of me. It’s idling in the middle of the intersection, waiting for the oncoming cars so that it can turn left. It’s taking too long. It’s still sitting there. My light hasn’t turned green yet, but I have the desire to move my foot from the brake to the acceleration pedal and slam my car into the side of it.
It’s like the overwhelming desire that I have to pull a fire alarm whenever I see one.
It’s that morbid curiosity of what would happen.
Or is it the actual act?
I imagine myself careening toward it.
I would hit the driver’s side and crush the driver. My windshield might shatter, and the airbag would deploy, but I would survive.
The light turns green.
Then
I DIDN’T FALL asleep while I was in the muddy mess of the hole, but I wasn’t lucid either. My thoughts went in and out of reality while I waited for the sun to come up. I wished I had just passed out, but it never happened.
