Chapter Two – Thea
Chapter Two
Thea
There was nothing wrong... There was nothing wrong...
Except there was. I was wrong. I was broken, and I couldn’t do this.
As I stared at my dirty hands, eyes blurring with tears, I knew that I’d been stupid to say yes. Yes to marrying Soren Sinclair, yes to proving myself to him, yes to being left here, at the edge of the woods, by my parents’ chauffeur before he drove away. Yes to crossing what was, to me, the most dangerous landscape, to get to the man who was going to, technically, end my life. End the future I had envisioned for myself.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. There were bits of grass under my fingernails. I needed to wash my hands, brush under my nails... I was frozen, instead, waiting for my thundering heart to settle, trying to keep my erratic breathing under control. I looked up at the trees before me. There was one leaning forward, slightly bent over me. One of its branches had brushed my head, and even remembering how that had felt, a shudder rattled me to my core. It must’ve been the wind.
I couldn’t do this. I should’ve told my parents. My father was a tough man, however. He wouldn’t have understood. Still, I should’ve told my mother, and maybe she would’ve put a stop to this.
It wasn’t even that I was supposed to marry Soren Sinclair, who was friends with my father and twenty-years older than me. It wasn’t that my life was going to end once I became his wife. It was this challenge. This game he wanted to play, where I was supposed to walk to him, all alone through the woods, to convince him and his family that I was worthy. He’d called it a ritual, because he was a spiritual leader, and the people who’d gathered around him over the years needed a show of faith from me. I wondered if it wasn’t, in fact, a form of revenge or humiliation towards my father.
No, it couldn’t have been. Because no one knew what I was suffering from, so how would Soren know that making me walk into the wilderness was the most efficient way to torture me?
I hadn’t told anyone. Not even my brother. And I told Matthew everything. At least I used to, when we were children. Well, I hadn’t told him this. That I suffered from a rather severe case of biophobia. Fear of nature.
My therapist had diagnosed me a few years ago, but I asked her to keep it between us. I didn’t want my parents to think that I was... defective. They had high expectations from both me and my brother, and as the little sister, I’d always felt like I was at a disadvantage. Okay, so I suffered from biophobia. It wasn’t the end of the world. I could handle it if I just stayed inside.
As a kid, I’d never liked to play in the garden. To say that my family’s estate was generous would’ve been an understatement. We had acres upon acres of land, perfectly manicured lawns, beautiful flower gardens, an apple orchard, a vineyard – because my father liked to produce his own wine – and even a forest. To them, all this translated to status and power. To me, so much nature was a source of anxiety. I preferred to stay inside with my books and my perfectly clean hobbies, that had nothing to do with dirt, leaves, and insects. If I as much as saw a spider, I ran screaming. Literally. Our maids were used to me, and if they heard me scream, they knew a spider, a fly, or an ant had made its way inside my chambers. They got rid of the creature and said nothing to my parents. After all, I was a girl, and girls were sensitive.
I kept it to myself. I never told anyone how it felt like my heart stopped every time I came in contact with something – anything – nature related. I got chills, my skin felt like something was crawling underneath it hours after, I sweat profusely, and if my contact with nature was direct enough, I could even throw up.
I was about to throw up now, and I was doing my best to keep down the light breakfast I’d had. It had been so stupid of me to agree to this without telling my parents that I just... couldn’t.
But how could I have told them? What would’ve happened to Matthew then? I was doing this for him. I’d agreed to marry Soren, because it was the only way to save my brother’s reputation. Though from what, I wasn’t sure.
As I pulled a pack of paper tissues from my backpack and started cleaning my hands thoroughly, I distracted myself by remembering, step by step, how I’d been roped into this horrible situation.
Three days ago, my parents, Bill and Emilia Everhart, the power couple of the furniture industry, had asked me, their daughter, into my father’s home office. Their faces were dour when I joined them, and at first, I thought I’d done something, and they were mad at me. No. It turned out that my brother had gotten himself in trouble, and all they could tell me was that he was going to be away for a while. I’d nodded, getting the gist. It wasn’t the first time my brother had needed to take a break. He’d been to rehab twice before. Even if my parents didn’t want to utter the word “rehab”, I knew that was what they were implying.
Yes, my brother had a drug problem, but he was my brother, and I loved him to the moon and back. I would’ve done anything for him. Anything to know that he was going to be okay.
My parents knew that. And they took advantage of it. Which, again, I didn’t mind. If there was anything I could do to help Matthew, I would do it. Without hesitation. Apparently, this time it hadn’t been just the drugs. It had been what he’d done while high. My parents didn’t want to say exactly what it was, but Soren Sinclair was the only one who could keep it out of the press, and Soren Sinclair wanted me.
Among other businesses, Soren had a newspaper. My brother’s misdoings had gotten onto the desk of one of his editors, and Soren was willing to bury the story because he and my father were friends, and because he’d had his eye on me since I’d turned twenty. I was twenty-three now, which was a good age for marriage, so my father hadn’t hesitated to promise him my hand, knowing I would comply if my brother’s future was at stake.
That was what my parents had asked of me three days ago. Of course, I said yes. But then my father told me about Soren’s little quirk – which he called a pre-marriage ritual – and my whole being froze. I wanted to tell them I couldn’t do it. I would marry Soren if they asked me to. I would do anything, in fact, just to know that my brother was okay, but I couldn’t spend three days in the woods.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. It was too late. I’d chosen to keep my phobia a secret, and now it was too late to tell them. They wouldn’t have believed me. And if they had, then what? That didn’t change the fact that we were all indebted to Soren Sinclair, and had to do as he wished, or Matthew’s reputation would be destroyed by a simple article in his newspaper. Matthew was to inherit Everhart Furniture. He was our golden boy. So, he’d slipped a few times. It could happen to anyone.
No, I couldn’t think about myself. This was about Matthew, who was in rehab, getting himself clean. He needed me. I couldn’t turn my back on him.
So, here I was, shaking so hard that my teeth clattered, cleaning dirt from under my fingernails, trying to convince myself that I could overcome my fear and do what was expected of me. The trees looked ominous. The forest was deep and dark. I could feel the chill of it seep into my bones. The sun was almost all the way up in the sky, and I’d wasted too much time already.
I used a bit of water to wash my hands, then pulled out a set of gloves I’d brought with me and slipped them on. There. Now I was as covered as I could be. It was too hot for long sleeves and gloves, but I needed protection. I was going to enter the woods in just a minute, as soon as my heart settled, and I needed the layers of fabric between my skin and everything nature was made of. Branches were going to snag at me, leaves and vines were going to brush my cheeks, ants couldn’t wait to crawl up my legs, and I’d read about some advanced species of ticks that could sense humans and follow them for miles, until they got their chance to attack.
Okay, I had to stop thinking about what was out there, between the trees and bushes. I had to stop thinking altogether. I felt a panic attack coming on, and I closed my eyes and focused on breathing evenly. My fight-or-flight activated, and for a second, I was convinced that I was going to bolt. Where would I go? I’d run to the nearest town, where hopefully, I’d get a phone signal, call my parents and ask them to send the chauffeur to pick me up. And then what? They were never going to forgive me for not even trying to help my brother.
Damn it, why did Soren Sinclair need me to do this so he would marry me? He wanted me. Wasn’t that enough? Why this ridiculous ritual, where I had to cross the woods to get to him, to prove how invested I was, to show the people who followed him that I was worthy to be the wife of their spiritual leader?
I didn’t understand any of it. Like I didn’t understand why I was suffering from biophobia. I just had it, and that was that. I would have to deal with it.
“Okay, here goes.” I pushed myself to my feet and started walking towards the tree line. This time, I was going to make it, because I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, and focusing, focusing, focusing. “I’m doing it. I am strong, and I am doing it. For Matthew.” If I had to, I would talk to myself for the entirety of this crazy journey. “This isn’t for me, this is for Matthew.”
I stepped through the trees. I was in the woods.