Page 244 of Swallow Your Sorries

All I can think about is that damn green car. Not Rin, not Beaussip, not even Gant.

“I don’t give a fuck about this right now. This isn’t some stupid game.” Madame’s potential killer isn’t just some cartoon character cut out from a cosy mystery game.

He’s her brother-in-law. My dad’s potential brother.

“You don’t think life is just a big game?”

“Rin, move!” I hiss, ready to pull her like a rag doll out of the way.

“All I’m saying is don’t play until you’ve assessed the risk and understood the potential reward. Don’t go running your mouth to Gant just yet.”

“I don’t need your advice, and I damn sure don’t want it.” I eye her dark costume now. “I think you’re taking the evil stepmother role to heart.”

“She has valid points her idiotic daughters are too stupid to see. Just like how you’re missing the bigger picture. The ultimate reward. Have you ever thought about how finding that driver can change your life? Don’t you know how much the Auclairs—”

“I don’t care,” I say impatiently, but Rin’s adamant.

“Just think for a second. This isn’t about love. None of it is.”

“So, what’s it all about? Strategy? Blackmail? Money? Fine, you have all three to some extent, but guess what? You’re still fucking miserable and bitter, so why would I want to play this‘game’like you? With you?”

She has the nerve to look taken aback. So she can blast me with her versions of the truth about my character, but I can’t do the same about her?

“You’re eighteen, running around and pretending to entertain bogus marriage proposals of men triple your age for the sake of gifts. Gifts that don’t make you happy past next month before they’re already‘out’. Gifts your little sisters have no idea how you got. Gifts they don’t even appreciate because they’re the wrong colour.”

She pales at that.

“I wanted periwinkle, not chartreuse!” I mock. “Look, I’ll take advice from someone I actually envy. Someone I want to emulate and right now, as shit as my life is, I’d still choose to be a dumb bitch over being a bitter one. Now get the fuck out of my way.”

Rin just stares at me frozen, and I swear I see something in her eyes before they harden to ice and she reaches for the doorknob.

If nothing else, the girl has great composure as she slips into the hallway with purposeful steps.

I don’t make it two paces in the opposite direction before I’m pushed back into the dressing room. Strong fingers hold on to my waist and the scent of sandalwood, leather and mint suddenly crowds me in the best possible way.

Gant.

I look up into those perfect dark eyes and have to shake away the haze of lust, of distraction, that’s about to overtake me.

“I have to—”

“The show’s about to start,” he says, leaning down to kiss me and all the tension between my shoulder blades from a second before alleviates. The first time Gant ever held me, I felt excitement, shyness, and an awakening of lust for the first time. The second time I felt terrified, humiliated, degraded. The third time at the lake, I felt…warm. Like he would save me. And every time after, I feel a sense of comfort that I probably shouldn’t. A sense of strength and safety I can’t even find in Mum’s arms. Things she always found in mine.

It’s nice to find it, to feel it in someone else’s. To lean on them if only for a minute.

“Gant—”

“Are you okay, Dove?”

The seriousness in his tone catches me off guard.

“I saw Sylo taking Jaime to the infirmary. Is that what took you so long?”

“You were looking for me?” Giddy excitement sends my heart fluttering.

Sometimes I feel so invisible to my own family, the people that should care about me, that it’s nearly mind-blowing whenever someone cares enough to notice I’m missing. Temporary boyfriend or not.

Friends or not.

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