Elle
My mind spins as the costume department spins around me, stuffing, pulling, and pushing me this way and that into a new costume.
Cinderella’s costume.
I’m going to be Cinderella.
It feels surreal as Ms. Trix places the finishing touches on my tutu because it is surreal.
Everything tonight is surreal.
My mother.
Cinderella.
My chance in front of the university scouts.
Aria’s sickness. My father. Sylo’s father.
Sylo’s father…
My uncle…?
The green car…
The green car! What car did he come in? Surely he can’t be idiotic enough to still drive the same car? The same car that killed his wife’s sister? No, this isn’t a working-class man. He probably has a dozen vintage cars in his six-car garage at one of his estates.
But the desire to check, to scour the car park bubbles in me so strongly that for one delirious second when I’m finally alone at the vanity backstage, I leap to my feet and I’m about to bolt from the room when someone slips in.
Rin.
“I don’t care about your sugar daddy exchange,” I say, trying to brush past her. “So if you’re here to confront me about it, get out of the way.”
“As if I care to discuss my private matters with you. No, I’m far too interested in yours.” She holds up her phone showing me a small clip of the interaction I’d just had outside with Sylo’s father and a blubbering Jaime.
Yeah, Jaime.
“Do you record everything?” I ask, my patience already running thin.
“Only if I think it’ll benefit me. Monetarily or otherwise, but the best thing about knowing everything isn’t knowing everything. It’s knowing how and when to play it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I play Uno. Now move.”
“You didn’t play Gant’s tape at the right time. You didn’t play the right tape at all. All that work and what did it get you? A temporary boyfriend.”
All I can think about is that damn green car. Not Rin, not Beaussip, not even Gant.
“I don’t give a fuck about this right now. This isn’t some stupid game.” Madame’s potential killer isn’t just some cartoon character cut out from a cosy mystery game.
He’s her brother-in-law. My dad’s potential brother.
“You don’t think life is just a big game?”
“Rin, move!” I hiss, ready to pull her like a rag doll out of the way.
“All I’m saying is don’t play until you’ve assessed the risk and understood the potential reward. Don’t go running your mouth to Gant just yet.”
“I don’t need your advice, and I damn sure don’t want it.” I eye her dark costume now. “I think you’re taking the evil stepmother role to heart.”
“She has valid points her idiotic daughters are too stupid to see. Just like how you’re missing the bigger picture. The ultimate reward. Have you ever thought about how finding that driver can change your life? Don’t you know how much the Auclairs—”
“I don’t care,” I say impatiently, but Rin’s adamant.
“Just think for a second. This isn’t about love. None of it is.”
“So, what’s it all about? Strategy? Blackmail? Money? Fine, you have all three to some extent, but guess what? You’re still fucking miserable and bitter, so why would I want to play this ‘game’ like you? With you?”
She has the nerve to look taken aback. So she can blast me with her versions of the truth about my character, but I can’t do the same about her?
“You’re eighteen, running around and pretending to entertain bogus marriage proposals of men triple your age for the sake of gifts. Gifts that don’t make you happy past next month before they’re already ‘out’. Gifts your little sisters have no idea how you got. Gifts they don’t even appreciate because they’re the wrong colour.”
She pales at that.
“I wanted periwinkle, not chartreuse!” I mock. “Look, I’ll take advice from someone I actually envy. Someone I want to emulate and right now, as shit as my life is, I’d still choose to be a dumb bitch over being a bitter one. Now get the fuck out of my way.”
Rin just stares at me frozen, and I swear I see something in her eyes before they harden to ice and she reaches for the doorknob.
If nothing else, the girl has great composure as she slips into the hallway with purposeful steps.
I don’t make it two paces in the opposite direction before I’m pushed back into the dressing room. Strong fingers hold on to my waist and the scent of sandalwood, leather and mint suddenly crowds me in the best possible way.
Gant.
I look up into those perfect dark eyes and have to shake away the haze of lust, of distraction, that’s about to overtake me.
“I have to—”
“The show’s about to start,” he says, leaning down to kiss me and all the tension between my shoulder blades from a second before alleviates. The first time Gant ever held me, I felt excitement, shyness, and an awakening of lust for the first time. The second time I felt terrified, humiliated, degraded. The third time at the lake, I felt…warm. Like he would save me. And every time after, I feel a sense of comfort that I probably shouldn’t. A sense of strength and safety I can’t even find in Mum’s arms. Things she always found in mine.
It’s nice to find it, to feel it in someone else’s. To lean on them if only for a minute.
“Gant—”
“Are you okay, Dove?”
The seriousness in his tone catches me off guard.
“I saw Sylo taking Jaime to the infirmary. Is that what took you so long?”
“You were looking for me?” Giddy excitement sends my heart fluttering.
Sometimes I feel so invisible to my own family, the people that should care about me, that it’s nearly mind-blowing whenever someone cares enough to notice I’m missing. Temporary boyfriend or not.
Friends or not.
The other day Aria asked why I hadn’t come to the hall for lunch and it took me far too long to blurt out that I’d been in the library finishing an essay. She’d noticed. She’d cared enough to notice.
“I look for you everywhere I go,” he says, stroking my cheek. “But to be fair, everyone was given food poisoning. Zedd’s home economics class catered for the dancers again.”
“What happened?”
“He must’ve let the puff pastry out too long,” he says with a dismissive shrug.
I frown. I ate Zedd’s food all the time, thanks to Stassi. He isn’t sloppy by any means. In fact, he’s been boring Stassi to tears about his meticulous preparations. Stassi had commented that he acts like he’s going into surgery, vs baking a quiche.
There was nothing wrong with that food.
Or at least, there hadn’t been.
Gant looks at me in the mirror and I look back at him and we both say nothing. Because I know he knows that I eat Zedd’s food and he knows that I know. He’d do anything to make me his princess both on and off the stage.
But I can’t bring myself to ask as I reach for a makeup brush with shaking fingers and swipe on more blush. If I ask, he won’t lie. And if I know, it’ll fuck with my head.
So many things are already fucking with my head.
Sylo’s father.
Jaime.
Even fucking Rin.
Jarett.
Even Sylo himself. Did he recognize his father’s car from the fuzzy crash tape? Did he have a suspicion? Or is he seemingly in the dark like Gant?
Why is Gant in the dark? Why hasn’t he noted the resemblance between his uncle and my father?
It just doesn’t make sense. None of it does.
If I could just get to the lot. If I could just see if Sylo’s father brought the car to show off like all the other parents with their classic vehicles…
“Tell me what’s the matter, Dove. You’re about to dance in front of those scouts. Don’t let anything Jaime’s done mess with your head.”
Jaime. She’d already lost our home. I can’t let her take away my dance opportunity, too. I apply more blush with more vigour, more determination, and as more of a distraction than anything else until I look damn near garish. It has to be visible beneath the strong lights after all. But as I dip the brush again, Gant gently takes it away from me.
“I can be your haven,” Gant says in my ear, turning from the mirror to watch me in real time. “If you let me.”
I’m going to resist at first but then my spine, so stiff and rigid from holding up my own weight for far too long bows and before I know it, I’m on his shoulder and he’s my support. My refuge.
“It’s always Jarett,” I say softly. “Even when he isn’t here, she’ll always choose him over me. I’m never enough. My acceptance and forgiveness, despite the past isn’t enough. My love for her isn’t enough.”
“I think you’re more than enough. You’re too much. You were right about what you said that night. You’re above everyone here. You’re no angel, but you aren’t depraved, even though you have every right to be.”
At my uncertain look, he goes on.
“I’ll give you an example. I wouldn’t have sent her to the infirmary. I would’ve left her in that car to either succumb to alcohol poisoning or hyperthermia, or she’d wake up tomorrow morning and realise she’s finally lost her last little token, her one and only love left behind. I’d toss myself away, straight out of her life. She doesn’t have Jarett. Now she doesn’t have any more reminders of him either.”
I swallow at his harshness.
“But see? Just look at your expression,” he says, and we both peer back into the mirror. He looks hard, cold, and determined. I look wimpy, weak, and unsure. “You aren’t me. You’ll fetch her in the morning, and accompany her to some lice and roach-infested motel for a few nights until what money she has left runs out. Then you’ll freeze to death with her in that soda can of a car and return to Beaulieu in two weeks, pretending like everything is fine. You’ll think it’s fine too, because you don’t really believe you deserve that much more. It’s why you keep wearing rags when you don’t have to. It’s why you’ll freeze in that car and suffer with her when you can come to my penthouse and stay warm.”
“I couldn’t do that to her.”
“She did it to you.”
“She’d freeze.”
“What would change for her if you froze alongside her, Elle? That she wouldn’t be alone? Don’t you get it? For her, you’re never really there. She doesn’t see you. Not like she sees Jarett.”
You see me…
“I know you hate her.”
“I can’t hate her.”
My eyes fly to his in shock.
“She doesn’t deserve you. But I’m so happy she was selfish and had you anyway. But now she needs to let you go. She can’t take care of you.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“We all do. I have unlimited resources and I still can’t stand entirely alone. I was cracking. Badly. Until I got my little doll. But I don’t want to just look to you for comfort and support. I want to be your little doll too.”
There’s too much emotion swirling in his eyes. I’m used to his hatred, his narcissism, his pain, his cockiness, his mirth, but his vulnerability, the pleading as he looks into my eyes feels like too much. I turn away, drawing in a breath in an attempt to calm my racing heart.
“And that’s the difference. You can’t be a doll for someone who doesn’t return the favour. They just use you, then set you aside on the shelf for later.”
“What’s wrong with me?” I ask, my voice cracking, but then I freeze as realisation dawns on me. “I’m just like her…desperate for her love and acceptance, just like she’s desperate for Jarett’s. But she won’t ever get it. I won’t get it. She’s shown me time and again that I don’t matter, but still, just like she chases Jarett, I keep chasing her. I keep trying…Why?”
“Because you’re a rag doll, Elle. You can’t help it. You want to love and get love. Sometimes you’re forgotten, discarded, or fallen under the bed, but you’re always there waiting to be picked up just as good as new. You bend but you don’t break. And she takes advantage of that.”
“That sounds fucking horrible,” I say, a snap in my tone. “Is it supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. But it’s the truth.”
“Then I don’t want to be a damn rag doll. I want to break into tiny little pieces that slice whoever tries to pick me up and piece me back together. I want to shatter.”
He cups my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Trust me, you don’t. But you can stop bending to other people’s will.”
“Says the puppet master.”
“I’ve cut the cords, haven’t I? Don’t let anyone else pick them up. Not even your mother.”
I watch his handsome face, tracing every feature. It’s the same face that once sneered down at me in the auditorium.
“I can’t believe you of all people are giving me a pep talk,” I whisper.
“At the start of the term, I wouldn’t have spit on you if you were on fire.”
“And now?”
“I’d burn trying. I told you, I want to be your net. Let me be the one the firefighters hold up to catch you. If you don’t need to jump, good. But if you have to, I’ll be right there waiting for you to fall into my arms. For you, they’ll always be open.”
“Why?” I rasp. “Why are you…”
“So desperate to take care of you? You took care of me too, Elle, and you were just as desperate to do so. Starting from that night, you stayed with me in the greenhouse. You went into the spring just for me despite how terrified of the water you were. There are a lot of whys and a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that I love you.”
My heart squeezes and suddenly I believe those three little words just a little more.
“Five minutes!” a student, one of the dozens of stage managers, screams, whacking the door before peering her head in and moving on to the next room.
Five minutes isn’t enough time to tell him about Sylo’s father, right?
Isn’t it? Or are you just being influenced by your stepmother already?
“Elle. Forget about your mother. Forget about Jarett. Even forget about me. Just for the play. Those scouts are out there. Make it so that they’ve come for you and only you. That’s all that matters right now. Everything else can wait.”
I lick my dry lips and reach for a Q-tip to swab on more lipstick before he pulls me to my feet and kisses it straight back off as we head to the line-up.
Yes, it could wait. But for how long?