35. Cult Leader
35
Cult Leader
Sophie
I’m too shaken up and restless from the date to go home, and I end up in the last place I ever thought I’d find myself on a random Saturday night: Alice Liu’s hotel suite.
Trust Alice to be renting a hotel suite rather than an apartment.
It’s beautiful, of course: white walls, ornate panelling, low sofas and tall Parisian-style windows, and ironwork balconies overlooking Cambridge.
It looks surprisingly lived-in: the king-sized bed is slightly rumpled, strewn with satin cushions, there are fresh hydrangeas in the vases, perfume bottles and jewellery boxes on top of the dresser.
A silk robe is draped over the arm of a chaise, books and case files stacked over the marble-top coffee table, a closed laptop next to half-burnt candles.
Alice is wearing a tiny Miu Miu set in opal-pink silk, gold under-eye patches, her hair braided into pigtails.
Even ready for bed, she looks pristinely put-together.
She grabs a bottle of white burgundy and two glasses, and we flump down onto her bed, which smells exactly like her: like Damask roses and milky soap .
“So,” she says, relaxing into her cushions with her glass of wine.
“Bad date?”
“No, that’s the problem.”
“Said no girl ever.” She rolls her eyes.
“Did you not like him?”
“I liked him. He was smart, well-spoken, a bit posh, but I’m used to posh guys. And he was good-looking, I suppose, in a British upper-class type of way, and clearly well-brought-up, with good manners.”
“But?”
It takes me a moment to spit out the truth.
I evade Alice’s eyes, looking at the flowers, the gilded mirror, the floor lamps—anything but her.
Dropping my eyes, I mutter against the rim of my glass.
“I didn’t want him.”
Alice’s eyes rest on me heavily, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I think… I think maybe I’ll never want anyone else.”
And then Alice says something I’d never expect her to say.
“Of course you’d think that. He’s your first love.”
I look up at her, shocked.
First love? As if what I had with Evan could be reduced to something as soft, as innocent, as that .
First love is meant to be sweet, sunlit, easily outgrown, not at all what I had with Evan, which was dark and tempestuous and simmering, an exhilarating disaster, a breathtaking, terrifying inevitability.
Alice’s stare is cool, her inky black eyes fixed on me with no sentimentality.
“I don’t believe in things like that,” I say thickly.
“So? Reality doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not.”
“Alice Lian Liu.” I raise myself up on one elbow to look at her.
“ You’re a romantic?”
She shrugs, the strap of her top slipping from her shoulder .
“I’m a realist. I believe in reality without hoping any more than what I already know to be true.” She sips her wine and tilts her head.
“Did I ever tell you my parents met in boarding school?”
Of course she hasn’t.
This is the first time I’ve ever been to her place, and the first time we’ve ever talked about anything other than school or work or law.
I shake my head.
“They met in boarding school, just like you and your Evan. My father fell in love with her at first sight and told his parents he wanted to marry her. They were only sixteen, and there was already a plan for him to marry the daughter of some manufacturer. Dad refused. He broke the engagement. His parents put him through hell, sent him to America to study, tried paying her off, tried paying off her family. It didn’t work, none of it worked. My father came back and did exactly what he always said he’d do. He married my mother. They’ve been together ever since.”
“You are a romantic,” I whisper.
“Who would have thought?”
She gives me another roll of her eyes and leans slightly forward.
“I only ever saw him once—your Evan. That night, at the gala. And the way he looked at you wasn’t romantic, Sophie. It was far beyond that. He looked at you like you were a cult leader, and the key to heaven was right there in your hand, and he would’ve been willing to get on his knees right there and then to beg you for it.”
Her eyes move deliberately over my face, watching me the way a cat watches a mouse—patient, curious in a predatory way.
I don’t need to look in a mirror to know what she sees: the flush creeping up along my throat and into my cheeks, the tightening of my fingers around the stem of my glass, the sharp intake of breath.
Alice smirks, slow and knowing.
“You liked it, didn’t you? ”
“I’m not a cult leader.”
“But you liked feeling like one. You liked having that power over him.” She shrugs.
“And so what if you did? I can’t blame you. What woman wouldn’t enjoy absolute control? We’re born to it. We suit it, unlike men.”
Finally, something we agree on.
Alice doesn’t give me time to relax into the thought, though.
“So the question is: if you want your little worshipper, and he wants to worship you, then why—”
I cut her off before she can finish.
“We can’t, Alice. Trust me.”
Alice watches me, unimpressed.
She doesn’t need to say anything for me to hear the scepticism loud and clear.
“We’re not like your mum and dad, alright? Boarding school was hell; we fought all the time. He saw right through me, he knew we weren’t meant to be together, that we were simply too different. Falling in love didn’t change any of those things, they were still true even when we were together. Like you say, reality doesn’t care whether or not you believe in it.”
Alice tilts a perfect eyebrow, and I shake my head.
“Harvard isn’t enough to make up for those differences, no matter how much power and influence it gets me. I’m still going to have to build a career, fight for my place. I can’t afford distractions. Meanwhile, he—” I huff a quiet laugh, shaking my head.
“His entire life’s already mapped out: all he has to do is step into it. And when he does, he’ll want someone like him, someone easy and fun, someone who understands him, who understands the world he’s from.”
“Hm.” Alice drains her glass and slumps back into her pillows.
“If that man wanted someone easy and fun, he’d never have fallen for you in the first place.”
I glare at her.
“Oh, thanks.”
“You’ ve got two choices in front of you, Sutton, and only two.” Alice raises two fingers to highlight her point, pink nails catching the light.
“Get back with him, or move the fuck on.”
My heart sinks.
I glance down into my glass.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t move on until I’ve made Max pay.”
“Max?” She frowns.
“Because of that stupid prank?”
“Because he took Evan from me.”
Alice tilts her head.
“Did he, though?”
My fingers tighten around my glass, knuckles whitening with the force of it.
“Maybe Evan and I were never going to work,” I say.
“Maybe we’ve been running out of time from the second we met. But that was supposed to be my choice, our choice.” I exhale sharply, jaw clenching.
“And Max took it from me.”
Alice watches, impassive.
“I know what Max is. He’s every smug, entitled self-named king who made my life hell at Spearcrest, every person who looked at me and decided I was worthless, disposable, unwanted. And I know—” My voice breaks, but not from sadness.
“I know that I’ll never be at peace until I’ve made him pay. Until he realises that he can’t touch me, can’t hurt me, can’t take from me without facing consequences.”
I take a slow sip of my drink, swallowing the heat in my throat.
“I need to hurt him,” I finish.
“I won’t be able to move on until I do.”
If Alice thinks my reasoning is pathetic, she doesn’t say it.
She watches me from her nest of cushions, tapping her manicured fingers against her glass with a little tinkle.
And then she shrugs.
She smiles, sweet and deadly .
“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. Max only really has one weakness, doesn’t he?”
I sit up.
“He does? What is it?”
Alice gives me a slow, wolfish smile.
“His father, the senator, of course.”