Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Tonight is the night!
Whitney’s excitement leaps off the page before I even settle into the entry.
Mom is being INSANE—but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less.
She’s orchestrating every detail, from the donation that got us in the door to the hotel, brunch, and the ballgowns.
And brunch was amazing. McCullough and I got to spend time with our escorts, and they are such gentlemen.
I cannot wait to see them tonight—all dressed up, looking like the most handsome men in the room.
A faint smile touches my lips despite everything.
Mom secured us a table near the grand staircase so she can get the perfect photo when we walk down. I swear she might be more excited than I am.
I can picture it perfectly—Veronica’s precision, her obsession with optics, the way everything had to be just so.
McCullough doesn’t seem excited at all. Actually, she seems… off. When her dress arrived, I swear I saw tears in her eyes—and she didn’t even try it on. Who doesn’t try on a dress like that? She’s insane, but I love her for it.
My throat tightens.
She’s a good reminder that Naples isn’t the center of the universe. Sometimes I get so caught up in the drama here that I forget there’s real shit happening outside of it.
The honesty in that lands heavier now than it ever did then.
I’m a little worried she’s going to bail at the last minute. She’s been quieter than usual, more withdrawn. This life isn’t for her. Honestly… I don’t think it’s for me either. I just like watching it all unfold from the inside. Like a front-row seat to something absurd.
I exhale slowly, my fingers tightening slightly on the page.
Also, Mom insisted I participate, so it’s not like I had much of a choice.
That part hadn’t changed.
McCullough has no idea she’s saving me tonight. Having her there—someone to roll my eyes with, someone who sees through all of this—will make it bearable. Otherwise, I’d be trapped in my mother’s world and the other debutantes’ endless nonsense.
A pause.
And maybe she’ll actually get to know Stephen a little better. A debutante ball as a first date… can you imagine? It’s kind of romantic.
The word lingers.
Romantic.
I close my eyes briefly, swallowing past the emotion rising in my throat.
Whitney’s excitement hums through every line, bright and unfiltered, her anticipation so genuine it almost feels untouched by what I know comes next. And her read on me—on how I felt going into that night—is painfully accurate.
I wasn’t excited.
I was uneasy in a way I didn’t have the language for then.
What’s strange is how little I remember of it now. The details blur at the edges, as if my mind has softened them deliberately, worn them down over time in an effort to make them less sharp. Less dangerous.
But the feeling remains.
That’s what never leaves.
It’s almost surreal, thinking about how differently we walked into that night—Whitney hopeful, energized, ready to play along with the illusion, and me already half-withdrawn, already sensing something I couldn’t name. And yet, by the time it ended, we were the same.
Aligned in one unspoken truth.
We would never talk about it again.
I think, now, that silence was its own kind of agreement.
Not avoidance, not denial—but something heavier.
Whitney carried guilt for pushing me to go, I know she did, even if she never said it out loud.
But I never blamed her. She wasn’t like the others.
She never belonged to that world any more than I did, and the idea of her facing it alone feels almost cruel in hindsight.
In the beginning, it wasn’t all bad.
That’s the part that unsettles me most.
There were moments—brief, flickering ones—where everything felt almost normal. The dresses, the lights, the careful choreography of it all. It worked, in the way illusions are designed to work.
Until it didn’t.
Until something shifted.
And once it did, there was no putting it back.
Even now, years later, driving past The Pierre is enough to make my stomach knot, the memory rising before I can stop it, sharp and immediate. Time hasn’t dulled it. Distance hasn’t softened it.
Some things don’t fade.
Some things stay exactly as they were—waiting.
And no matter how much I’ve tried to bury it, to reshape it into something less threatening, the truth remains.
I remember enough to know that I will never forget.