29. Bailey
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bailey
PAST
I’m already second guessing my decision, but I can’t change it.
Mirabelle and Henry know everything, and it’s only a matter of time before they tell everyone else what I’ve done.
It makes me nearly sick to my stomach to think about how Henry looked at me while he pulled my sister away from me.
Like I’m the dangerous one in the family?
Don’t they know how much their fucking secrets and lies hurt everyone? Mirabelle’s caught right into our parents’ web of lies, and there’s nothing I can say to convince her otherwise.
I’ve been to Carter’s apartment enough times over the last couple of months that I’m able to find it easily after walking from the bus stop. I’m just hoping he’s there because I don’t have anywhere else to go.
Fuck, I can’t believe I left.
I really did it. Maybe it was just supposed to be one of those things you say in the heat of the moment, but I don’t have another plan if Carter decides I can’t actually stay with him. All I can do is hope he really meant it when he offered it before.
I feel naked without my phone, and I’m not sure how I managed to decide which essentials to stuff in my backpack.
I stole money out of my parents’ safe, and I have a few changes of clothes.
It was a last-second choice to grab the picture of my family off my desk, and I’m not sure what I want it for.
Wiping my electronics before I left was liberating, but now I’m just mentally exhausted from the last twenty-four hours. I’m tired of all the lies. I couldn’t do it anymore.
But Mirabelle knew. She knew, and she even tried to defend them, insisting my information was wrong.
How could she say that?
The adrenaline coursing through me has worn off, and I’m doing my best to keep my head down.
As much as it’s never bothered me in the past, my parents’ fame extended to all of us, but it’s been especially worse since Mirabelle and Henry’s scandal broke two months ago.
I didn’t leave everything behind just to be found by some stupid teenager thinking they recognize me and post it online.
I also deleted all of my social media accounts so they wouldn’t be able to find any of the messages between me and Carter. I don’t want to be found. They didn’t care enough before, so they shouldn’t care now.
If I’m lucky, my parents won’t tell anyone I left because they’ll be afraid of what it will do to their perfect image. That’s all that really matters any way. Why else would they have pretended Carter didn’t exist?
“Fuck, I really hope he’s here,” I mumble under my breath after catching the door on someone’s way out of the entrance to the apartment building he lives in. It’s just my fucking luck that Carter isn’t home, and without a phone, I have no way of letting him know I’m here.
Good job, Bailey. You really thought this through, didn’t you?
I guess it was wishful thinking to hope he’d stop at home on his lunch break, but maybe I missed him. I could go find a coffee shop or something to sit in while I wait, but I don’t want to leave in case he comes back.
Except without a phone, I’m left alone with my thoughts, and it’s a dark place to be.
I was wrong to burn my soccer gear, but I want nothing to do with any of it. All it does is show me how different I am from everyone else in my family.
My parents made me stay behind with Henry and Mirabelle at the beach house because they didn’t want to reward any of my recent behavior with a trip to our house in France.
Whatever. It’s not like I wanted to watch Hunter rub his relationship in my face anyway.
Still, it hurt seeing the picture Kaitlyn posted of her and Hunter in France. I just reacted without thinking, even if I know I shouldn’t have done any of it.
They’re all liars, and I’m not going to let them turn me into one.
Maybe Carter’s mom will be able to give me answers.
As much as waiting for him to come home sucks, I’m just grateful he lives in a nice building. I drift into a light sleep while sitting in the hallway, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting here when I’m nudged awake.
“Bailey? What are you doing here?” Carter asks, offering me a hand to help me up from the floor.
“I left home,” I say, really fucking glad to see him. I don’t have another plan if this doesn’t work. His dark eyes widen in surprise, and panic rises in me. Shit, maybe I should have called first.
“You did?”
“I did, and I’d love to explain, but I really have to pee. Can we talk after?” I ask, grabbing my backpack off the ground.
Carter laughs and opens the door wider for me to step in first. “It’s on the left, behind the kitchen.”
After relieving myself and splashing water on my face, I step out of the bathroom, ready to recite the speech I rehearsed in my head the entire bus ride here.
Carter’s rinsing out a travel mug in the sink, and I don’t know if I’m more nervous for my speech, or to actually speak to someone else. It’s been months of silence.
Please don’t kick me out.
“Thanks,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m sorry for just showing up here, but I was suffocating in the house.
I couldn’t bear to hear the lies any more, and I-I needed to leave.
I hoped I would be able to stay with you for a little bit until I decide what to do next?
I have money to help pay for stuff if that matters?—”
Carter moves closer, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Hey, you’re more than welcome to stay. I know I’ve told you that before, and I was serious then just like I mean it now. Keep your money. I don’t want it. You’re family, and this is what family does, okay?”
Emotion threatens to overcome me, and it takes everything I have to swallow them down so I don’t burst into a pathetic puddle of tears. I nod stiffly, refusing to look him in the eye because I needed to hear I wasn’t alone.
Almost like he can tell, he squeezes my shoulders once before turning back to the sink to give me a moment I desperately need to collect myself.
“This might be a bad time to mention this, but I told my mom I’d come over for dinner tonight. We usually do dinner every Sunday, but it’s different this week. If you don’t want to go, I can tell her I’m not feeling good?” Carter asks, looking over his shoulder at me as he finishes washing his cup.
I don’t know if I’m ready to meet her tonight, but I didn’t come here to mess up his life.
“Sure,” I say, trying not to overthink this. I’m just grateful he’s letting me stay and not sending me packing.
I don’t know what I was expecting his mother to be like, but the woman in front of me was not the picture I’d conjured in my head. It doesn’t seem like she has a mean bone in her body.
I’ve been wondering what reason my parents had for even considering Kiera as a suspect for the fire at the Charlotte house, but I’m not seeing any red flags.
Even despite everything my parents did to her, she’s been nothing but kind to me all night.
The second Carter introduced me, I half-expected her to kick me out and blame me for my parents’ actions. Instead, she offered me a warm smile and pulled me into a hug. I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me.
Her daughter, Luna, is my age, and looks just like her, with the same dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Their other son, Ryan, is more similar to the man sitting at the end of the table.
“Bailey, do you play any sports?” Kiera asks, her voice soft and gentle like a breeze on a summer day.
“I played soccer, and I surf in my free time,” I reply, doing my best to smile back at her. I just really don’t feel like smiling right now, but I’m trying. For some reason, I want her to like me.
“That sounds fun,” she says, causing Luna to scoff.
“Mom, the only person you’re fooling is Bailey because everyone here knows how much you hate the ocean,” she says, reminding me of Kaitlyn a little, which only rips open the scab on my bleeding heart. “She has a huge fear of sharks. Won’t go anywhere near the water.”
“Luna,” her dad says in warning, and she rolls her eyes, shooting me a quick look as if to ask, Can you believe this?
“What? It’s not a secret.”
I surprise everyone—including myself—by laughing.
It’s refreshing to have someone be brutally honest. She tilts her head, studying me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed, but I’m not sorry I did.
Luna doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me.
It’s a little unnerving, and I feel like she’s cataloguing every move I’m making.
“Lu,” Carter says, and she huffs, taking a bite of spaghetti.
“What? You said to be ourselves, and not make it weird that Mom’s ex-fiancé’s son showed up.”
Ryan laughs, shaking his head as Kiera sputters on her wine. “I think he meant, don’t do that,” he says, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being silent, is you can understand a lot just by listening.
It’s a similar yet entirely different dynamic from mine, but I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.
Carter wasn’t lying when he called himself the black sheep of this family.
Luna and Ryan are clearly close, which makes sense given the closeness of their ages.
Luna is on the debate team, which definitely matches her bluntness from earlier.
Ryan is on a scholarship studying forensic science at North Carolina State.
I can understand why Carter feels like the odd one out.
It seems like choosing to love soccer made him feel like an outlier too.
They’re still a family, and I didn’t expect it to make me miss mine so much.
It’s not like I asked to be different.
I wonder if they’ll even miss me. Their lives will be so much easier with me gone—fitting the picture of perfection.
After dinner, I excuse myself to the restroom so I can have a second to breathe. I brace my hands on the sink, hating what I see staring back at me in the mirror.
All I see is someone lost, trying to find their place in the world.
I hate that my face doesn’t belong to me, and how I didn’t feel important as an individual in a family of superstars.
More than that, I hate seeing my parents in my features.
The color of my hair and eyes is a direct match to my mom, whereas my facial shape and nose belong to my dad.
It doesn’t matter how far I run. I’ll never be able to escape the parts of me I got from them.
Turning on the sink, I splash water on my face, trying to soothe my churning thoughts. It wakes me up a little, but despite the cat nap I took while waiting for Carter to get home, I’m exhausted. I don’t think the last forty-eight hours have fully hit me yet.
I drag my hands through my hair, creating dark spots in the golden locks. I can hear laughter coming from the kitchen, and I’m too busy focusing on the happiness in the room to notice I’m slowly being lured into the lion’s den.
I didn’t realize until it was too late.