Page 104 of Provocation
I snort. ‘Nope, I just killed myself in the gym for three hours to pass the time.’
I look down at the horrible starchy clothes they made her wear. The fuckers dressed her up like an ugly china doll. That’s how they see her. They don’t know her. They don’t value her.
‘Want to get out of that?’
She nods and I help her upstairs. She’s already a little unsteady from the whiskey that she just gulped down according to the message I got.
In her room, she rips down the zip on the side of the dress and shudders as she pulls it off, letting it fall to the floor and stepping out of it like she can’t get it away from her fast enough. I notice the black underwear set doesn’t look like anything we’d buy her. it doesn't fit her properly and it looks like polyester. I frown as an unwelcome suspicion forms in my mind.
‘Did those come with the dress, Tulip?’
She glances at me and then looks at the floor miserably, nodding as she takes them off too.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Say what?’ she asks. ‘There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing I can do. Only sell Envy and try to get the hell out of here before I have to marry into that fucked up family.’
She shakes her head.
‘And I thought the Novelles were messed up,’ she whispers.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Not now,’ she says adamantly, but then sighs dramatically. ‘But I will. No more secrets, right?’
‘Right,’ I agree, smiling a little at her petulant tone.
‘I’m going to take a shower, and then can we go back to the club?’
‘Of course. You like it there, don’t you?’
She nods.
‘I feel safer there. No one knows where I am when I’m in the lab, you know? It’s like a comfy bubble.’
‘Yeah,’ I say quietly. ‘I know.’
She leaves the room with a towel wrapped around her and I take out my phone.
She’s back but upset. Hasn’t said what happened, but I think we need to come up with a better plan than waiting until we have the cash to leave. We need this wedding stopped. I don’t want her to have to see them alone again. She’s terrified of them.
What I didn’t tell Daisy was that we had an argument while she was gone over the fact that she had to go at all. Shade says she has to, that it’ll be worse for her if she doesn’t at least pretend to fall in line.
Blake and I think that she shouldn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want.
Blake sends a message back immediately.
Agreed
Shade reads it but doesn’t reply.
I look at the dress and the discarded lingerie, if you could even call it that, that's in a pile on the carpet. It's cheap and ill-fitting, and I know that she was probably really uncomfortable for the entire time she was wearing it, and that probably contributes to the fact that she's exhausted, but something else definitely happened there. At least this time she didn’t have any bruises that I could see from being hit. But I don’t like seeing her so subdued and blank, so inside her own head. It happens when she’s very upset and I hate it.
I wait for her in my bedroom, and I hear when the water shuts off that she’s finished in the shower. She goes to her room and immediately shuts the door.
I give her another twenty minutes before I knock, just so she has some alone time to decompress from her afternoon from Hell, and find her ready to go. She seems almost antsy, like being here is like standing in the open in enemy territory.
‘You don’t feel safe here anymore?’ I ask.
