Page 29 of Rejected
Within seconds, he was gone.
Dear Beth,
‘I have been building my willpower for years, and you destroyed it with one look.’ Who talks like that?
I could die just thinking of the way his lips
eleven
She ran all the way back up to her room, and, still wet through, she picked up her quill, dipped it in the still-wet ink, and wrote:
I lied.
I felt everything.
Everything.
She paced around the room, her shadow turning into a giant silhouette on the walls, as the light of the candles flickered, about to die.What have I done? I have killed my best friend.
Emotions so great were coursing through her, it was hard to breathe. She sat back down, shivering violently, and clutched her quill tighter, as if it were a plank she was clinging to in the drowning depths of the ocean. The one thing keeping her afloat.
She threw on a robe, not bothering to peel off her wet night gown, and kept writing. And as she wrote, she was able to breathe.
As she wrote, she was no longer alone.
Everything that was in her heart, all the things that were tormenting her, tearing her apart… All the things she hadn’t even known she was feeling or thinking… Every single secret, pent-up emotion that had her heart in a manacle of pain…. She wrote it all.
She told everything to someone: to the person who mattered most. Herself.
Her chest felt lighter.
She kept breathing.
And she kept on writing.
Dear Beth,
Why did I lie? Was I that afraid?
Then again, how could I tell him the truth? It would only give him hope.
I could not encourage him, I had no choice. But I shouldn’t have lied. He… It is so new, I had no idea it would feel this way. And with him, of all people. Of course with him. With no one else.
I can’t lose him.
I murdered him.
I can’t…
twelve
Her father told her at noon that Laurie had left London suddenly.
He was rumored to be going to Vienna to pursue his music.
Within hours, they too were travelling back home. Justin was nowhere to be found, but Papa did not hold any hope that his son and heir would take any interest in his family’s affairs after Meg’s wedding anyway.
They waited for word from him, and when none came, they set off. The viscount had had enough of London, and so had Jo.
