Chapter 22 Sutton
SUTTON
“Do you think Mother or Father ever miss Bellamy?”
Beckett’s question catches me off guard as he stares up at the sky. The sun’s beginning to rise over Fury Hill, dewy oranges and pinks peeking through the trees, and even though it’s winter, my brother insists on starting his mornings by meditating on the balcony outside my apartment.
In the nude.
My apartment is one of several dozen in the faculty dorm and any of the neighboring theater professors could waltz out and catch a glimpse of the once-great Curator president in his bare glory, but Beckett seems unfazed by the possibility.
Frankly, it’s an improvement from him spending all his time in dirty, sweaty clothing on my couch, so I let him. As long as he doesn’t attempt to leap from the iron railing barricading us in, that is.
Mother would never forgive me.
“Bellamy was their child, so yes, I imagine they miss her a good deal,” I say, turning the page in the spiral-bound play I’m rereading for my course on writing and directing.
Throwing myself into class assignments is all I’ve been focusing on since I nearly gave in to my own depravity in the Apollodorus basement days ago. Elle likely has no idea just how much danger she would’ve been in had I kissed here there—I’m uncertain if I would’ve been able to stop.
It’s ridiculous how easily she pulls me in.
From the moment we met, it’s like she’s this flame and I’m a moth, powerless against her warm glow.
Even denying her is a weak attempt at ignoring how my brain and heart feel, and the more I interact with her in class, the more I see she’s not some pretty face who couldn’t hack it in LA.
I want to learn everything about her. Listen to her talk for hours. Figure out what makes her tick, what lives beneath the mask she puts on for everyone except me, as if her true feelings—desperation and fear that manifest in snarky remarks and recklessness—are only safe with me.
But I can’t, so I grade and study instead.
“They never talk about her,” Beckett replies. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect Father to, since he didn’t give a shit about either of you growing up anyway, but… Mother acts as if Bell never even existed.”
“Everyone has their own coping mechanisms.”
He’s quiet for a while, just staring up with his head resting on his bag. The balcony is barely large enough for him to stretch out on the floor, so his feet are pressed against the metal bars, and his arms are folded over his chest.
“How do you think she died?” he asks finally.
“Beckett.”
He turns his head. “What?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“No one ever does. Don’t you find that odd? She’d be so pissed if she knew we were just forgetting about her.”
“Just because she isn’t discussed like gossip on The Delphic Pages doesn’t mean she’s not being remembered.”
“Yeah, but… I’m forgetting her.” He sighs.
“The other day, I realized I couldn’t even remember what color her eyes were, so I went to her old room at the manor to look for pictures, ’cause you know she loved snapping them any chance she got, but it’d been totally cleared out.
Not even her bed is in there anymore. It’s just… empty.”
Something cold settles in my chest, a vicious pang spreading outward.
The situation surrounding our sister’s death never did feel quite fleshed out, although I suppose that is the nature of a mystery. We never got to see a body, so there wasn’t a chance for real closure. Instead, we were expected to accept things as they were and move on.
For a long time, Mother didn’t come out of her bedroom. House staff filtered in and out, tending to the woman as if she were receiving palliative care, while Jean-Louis kept on with business as usual.
A year later, on the anniversary of Bellamy’s death, we got the news that Jean-Louis was sick. Mother rejoined society, as if a fresh breath of life had entered her with the prospect of her husband’s demise.
They’ve always had that sort of relationship, though—something toxic and vile, like two venomous serpents twisting around each other, trying to strangle the other and win the upper hand.
If they weren’t Duponts, I suspect they’d have divorced a long time ago. The founding families frown upon that here, though, so Mother remains stuck in her loveless marriage.
But I didn’t think she’d give in to his pleading to have Bellamy’s old room cleaned out. For years, she kept it as a shrine, mummifying the whimsy that only my twin could create in a house built to entomb the people within it.
“Anyway, I just thought maybe it’d help jog my memory if we talked about her, since you were the closest to her. That’s how you keep a person alive after they’re gone, right? By telling everyone about them like they never left?”
My throat burns as I stare at him, wondering if getting beaten within an inch of his life actually knocked some sense into him. Or if this is some sort of warning sign I should be taking note of before he goes off the deep end and burns Avernia to the ground.
“She had Mother’s eyes,” I say, misery flooding the chambers of my heart when I pinch my own closed, thinking back to the last time I saw them.
That memory, so vivid even just weeks ago, feels like it’s been replaced somehow.
“So your eyes?”
“I don’t mean the color. Bellamy’s were a warm brown mixed with green, but they were kind. Mischievous. You could always tell whatever she was thinking just by staring into them.”
Slowly, my gaze travels over the treetops to the caves in the distance, not really visible from where we’re located at the back of campus. But I know them well enough that I don’t need to see them to remember the night my sister died.
The only reason I’d been at that party in the quarry was because Bellamy asked me to go. She could make me do anything, our connection forged in a distressed womb and fortified by a strict home life. I was guilty of constantly placating her.
Being around Bellamy felt like orbiting the sun though.
It was a light source I sought when I was worn down from pleasing our parents and doing everything they said.
I was a peacekeeper trying to get the four of us out from under our parents’ influence and control, and it gave her the freedom to be chaotic and uncontainable.
I would have done anything she asked if it meant getting a taste of that freedom. Just for a moment even.
My desire for her to be that outlet is what got her killed. I shouldn’t have gone to the party and shouldn’t have let myself get taken advantage of, leaving her vulnerable for anyone who wanted to weaken the Dupont line.
I should have been stronger. That was my duty as her older brother—to protect her no matter what.
But when I came to, I was too weak to search. Too weak to do anything but wait for someone to rescue me, and even then, the flashes of people violating my body made me catatonic.
It was weeks before I returned to school. By that time, Avernia had fully moved on from Bellamy Dupont, and no one cared about the concerns raised by students. Not when the dean and higher-ups were saying our fears didn’t matter.
Eventually, people started wondering if she’d ever existed at all. She became a ghost and has haunted me ever since.
Beckett glances at me, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Do you miss her?”
I’m not sure that’s a strong enough word to describe it.
You don’t miss a limb when it’s forcibly removed from your body. You ache against the phantom sensations where it once was, your mind forever altered by the knowledge that there’s nothing you can do to get it back.
“Every time I let myself,” I answer, tilting my chin slightly toward the sky as a breeze coasts over the trees, whispering its secrets.
Except they’re in a language I don’t speak.
Having Elle in class is a lesson in fucking torture.
She answers as many questions as she possibly can, visibly irritating the other students, but it wouldn’t be fair of me not to call on her. Reverse favoritism would be as much of a problem as anything else, and I don’t want anyone questioning my authority as a teacher.
It’s bad enough some people know about my relationship with Beckett. Too many connections, and people get suspicious.
I do my best to simply ignore Elle entirely, but her presence makes that impossible.
My fingertips yearn to smooth over her skin. My mouth quivers with the desire to have hers against it.
Any time I look away, placing the students into groups or allowing them time to start an assignment, it’s her that my gaze seeks out. No matter what.
Our rendezvous in the forest and near-kiss in the basement did little to quell the mounting need inside my bones.
I spend more of my time in class just trying to get through the lesson without recalling what her cunt feels like or thinking about how nice the imprint of her teeth would look on my skin.
How nice she smells and the little gasp she inhales when my face gets close.
Now I sit on the stage, twiddling my thumbs, unsure of what to fucking do.
Acting on it would have catastrophic consequences for both of us, but ignoring the issue makes my migraines more frequent. I’ve denied her multiple times at this point, but as my already-threadbare restraint thins, so does my bullshit reasoning.
I don’t actually give a fuck about my job, but I do care about her. She knows that too, which makes this more complicated.
When I glance at her, she’s just sitting in the front row, swinging her foot as she reads a passage in her textbook, biting down on the end of her pen.
Some sick part of me wishes I were that pen.
The more time I spend resisting her, the worse I feel, until my mind is spinning a tapestry of blistering longing with no end in sight.
As if she can sense my stare, she lifts her gaze, meeting my eyes. A smirk forms around the pen, and she sits up a little straighter in her chair.
Christ. It’s pathetic the things I’d beg her to do to me if we were alone right now.