Chapter 29
“Take it all off,” I said, staring into the large, round mirror with the bright pink plastic frame.
“All of it, honey? You mean like three or four inches?” the stylist asked behind me, popping his gum. His sheers were in one hand, and his other was propped up on his hip while he considered my long, luscious hair.
“Do you donate hair for kids with cancer?” I asked.
“Of course, as long as it’s long enough and untreated. Have you dyed your hair before?”
“Never.”
“Keratin treatments or perms of any kind?”
“No.” I smiled. My stomach was tight, and my nerves were making me a little jumpy, but I was excited.
This was the moment I took my life back.
“Well, then. Your hair would be perfect, but we would have to cut it to at least here,” he said, picking up a lock of hair between two fingers and bringing it just below my shoulder.
“What do you think about here?” I asked, moving his hand up to my chin.
“Honey, whoever he is, he isn’t worth it. I mean, this is not the best way to mend a broken heart. You should go on a drinking spree and like fuck his best friend or cut up his clothes. All of that is fine. That is recoverable, but don’t do something as permanent as chopping off all your hair for a breakup. No man is worth it. It will take years to grow all this back.”
“This isn’t for a breakup.” I smiled. “This is shedding my old skin—the old me.”
“And what is wrong with the old you? If I’m going to do a complete lifestyle makeover, I need to know that it’s for the right reasons. I don’t want you coming back tomorrow screaming how I destroyed your hair.”
“My parents died in a horrible car crash. I was stuck in the car with them freezing for sixteen hours, and since then, I have been wallowing in a pit of depression and wine. I let other people dictate the terms of my life, and I am done. It’s time for me to shed the skin of being the girl I was after the accident to the girl I am now, who is on the path to healing physically and mentally. I don’t want to be the broken orphan girl anymore. I want to be the bad bitch survivor. I’m becoming fierce, more independent, and less sad. I promise you this has nothing to do with a man. Nobody has broken my heart.”
“Hmmm.” The stylist looked at me, tapped his shears against his lips, then moved in front of my swivel chair, looking me up and down like he was considering all of the options. “We will do an edgy asymmetrical bob, having it come forward so it’s going to be higher in the back and longer in the front. What do you think?”
He moved behind me and grabbed my hair, bending it up and trying to give me an idea of what my face shape would look like with the new hairstyle.
“I like it,” I said, “but I have one very important question.”
“What’s that, darling?”
“Would you have time to dye it as well?”
“Absolutely. What were you thinking? Maybe a nice balayage or just some face-framing highlights?”
“Pink.”
“Pink highlights? Like a rose gold?” He tilted his head like he was trying to envision it.
“No, bright pink. All over.”
“The new you is coming out bold, strong, and fierce.” He looked at me in the mirror, meeting my gaze, and he lowered his face just above mine. “I love it.”
After talking to Emma for a while, I’d ended up calling the event planner that I had always used to see if she was looking for any help.
I’d passed on Emma’s information, explaining that she came from the same world I did but had had a recent lifestyle adjustment. I explained that she knew exactly what was expected at high society events and the proper way to behave and set a table.
She was also a hard worker and determined to work her way up. The event planner I used gladly took her name, and I was reminded that sometimes it wasn’t what you knew. It was who you knew. And that even without my family’s money, I still had something to offer.
Even if that was just sheer stubbornness.
Lucian Manwarring treated me like a trophy wife, like a good little girl, because that was what I was acting like.
That was what I was bred to be.
I wasn’t so sure that was what I wanted to be anymore. Maybe if I became too much for him, too much work, too much effort, then he would drop it.
Maybe I would still have to live with him for the three years, maybe he’d still even insist on sleeping together, but maybe my sentence could be commuted to just the three years instead of till death do us part.
Ideally, I would create a look that was so far from what he wanted that he moved me into Charlotte’s old room, forgot me, and left me there until I became of age. From what I’d heard, that was pretty much what he had done with his daughters. Why couldn’t I get the same treatment?
When my hair was all said and done, it looked fantastic.
And just for a nice little perk, some kid going through the hardest battle that they would ever face was going to get a wig with some very long, expensive hair.
I looked at myself in the mirror, and I loved the hair.
I even loved how it made my cheekbones seem sharper, but it still wasn’t right. The hair was perfect, but I looked like the backup dancer for a bubblegum pop band.
It wasn’t enough. I needed more.
After giving my stylist a generous tip and leaving the Upper East Side salon with its fabulous ‘70s vibe and absolutely brilliant stylist, I headed somewhere a little bit more daring: the Maria Tash Broadway flagship piercing salon. It was where I’d gone to get my ears pierced, including the three piercings in the upper part of my ear that almost gave my mother a heart attack when I was thirteen.
Now I was going back and getting something far more daring.
I walked into the upscale piercing salon, praying they had a walk-in appointment available, and just my luck, they did. Some days, it felt like the entire world was on your side, and I was going to take advantage of every second of it.
I walked out of the salon an hour later with a few more ear piercings, and more importantly, a gorgeous diamond hoop in my nose. The piercings added the edge I wanted for my look.
Now the pink bob didn’t look like bubblegum pop. It looked like punk rock fierceness.
The only thing left to do now was to destroy what was left of the old Stella.
Old Stella did what she was told.
She was a good girl who dressed in the finest clothes, had the nicest hair, and had a gorgeous face that was only ever decorated with the most natural makeup.
The new Stella had style and edge and took the entire world by the balls—or at least tried to. I might still have a lot to learn before I was the new Stella, but I knew one thing the new Stella would absolutely never do: she would never let a man dictate what she wore.
I headed back to the Manwarring estate, again ignoring the butler as he yelled about who knows what.
He was demanding that I stop, turn around, and explain myself as if I somehow owed him an explanation for my whereabouts. Apparently, I was a teenage girl whose whereabouts needed to be accounted for every single minute, not a grown woman who could do as she pleased.
The old Stella would have stopped and tried to be reasonable, but the new Stella was done with reasonableness.
“You are acting like a teenager throwing a temper tantrum,” Hamilton said as I crossed into the bedroom that I shared with Manwarring.
At that, I stopped, turned around, looked him dead in the eye, and said something that I didn’t think I had ever said to anyone before in my life.
“Go fuck yourself.” I slammed the door in his face, locking it immediately.
If he wanted a teenage tantrum, then I would happily oblige.
I grabbed my phone, pulled up Spotify, found something called a ‘Feminine Rage” playlist, and turned up my phone’s volume as high as it could go. Immediately, a screaming guitar followed by the words ‘I don’t give a damn about my reputation’ began blaring from my phone, and it was just perfect.
On the side table, under some papers, was a pair of large black scissors, and they would be perfect for what I had in mind. I went to my closet and cut through all of the bullshit that old Stella had worn because it was what was expected of her.
It was pretty and feminine and delicate and gave men like Lucian Manwarring the impression that they had a right to bully, intimidate, or even touch me without my permission. Everything that reminded me of the delicate flower that I was supposed to be got shredded and then tossed out of the window.
Several Chanel and Dior dresses floated down to the streets below in shreds. One right after the other. There were visual symphonies of pale pinks, delicate greens, and baby blues, and then an absolutely unbelievable number of white, off-white, and ivory clothes.
It was like everything I owned was already washed out.
Like my wardrobe had worked so hard to be pretty and delicate but unobtrusive in any environment. I was never meant to stand out but to blend into pale watercolor paintings.
Half of my clothes matched the goddamn walls.
Hamilton was banging on the door, and I couldn’t be bothered. I refused to stop my tirade of self-discovery and destruction for a butler with too much self-importance.
It was as if somehow licking Lucian Manwarring’s shoes made him important enough to order me around. Well, fuck him. I had licked far more interesting parts of the man, but I didn’t let that influence how I treated people.
Soon, in a moment of silence between songs, I could hear the people outside yelling or screaming, trying to get the pieces of fabric that I had thrown out the window.
I slashed through a few Birkin bags and threw them out the window when I heard a woman scream.
I peeked out and saw her grabbing the bag, clutching the torn leather. She was actually quite pretty in a pale pink dress. However, unlike mine, hers was not designer, and it was not made to fit her body.
“Hold on,” I yelled down and went back to the wardrobe.
I grabbed a pale pink Kelly bag in ostrich leather and a Birkin that was in pale green alligator leather. My mother had simply loved the alligator leather and that pale green, saying that it would go with everything. But it went with absolutely nothing that I wanted to wear.
It was the epitome of the old Stella, but I recognized it was a piece of art. I would not be carrying this pretentious bag, but maybe the woman downstairs could get joy from it. Or sell it and buy a new wardrobe. I didn’t care.
“Hey, up here,” I called down to the girl and tossed both of the bags to her. Then I went back on my rampage. As soon as I had destroyed every piece of clothing that was some muted color, I also took care of every bag and even several pairs of shoes in pale pink and pastel blues, leaving only the blacks, browns, and a few vivid colors I genuinely loved.
My closet was practically empty.
In a closet the size of a studio apartment, which had been absolutely stuffed with bags, shoes, and clothes, what was left, what I considered acceptable, fit in one foot of hanger space.
I had four pairs of shoes left and only a single bag—an Alexander McQueen hobo bag that I had gotten as a door prize at someone’s party some years ago. I loved the structure and the brass knuckles at the top with jeweled skulls.
This was the vibe of the new Stella.
The clothes were an issue, but one that I could wait out if I had to. Or I could call Charlotte and have her get me in touch with her goth cellist friend, who might like to take another former rich girl turned punk rock shopping.
Once I was finished with the clothing, I turned to the rest of the room. Technically, this room wasn’t mine. I was expecting to stay with Lucian.
The question was, how much damage could I do before he kicked me out and demanded I sleep in a different room?
Hopefully, a lot.
I slashed the bed sheets, cutting through the expensive satin and the Egyptian cotton of the duvet, and even throwing around the pillows until they burst and feathers filled the entire room.
The matching antique Tiffany lamps, with their broken bulbs and shades, were tossed aside. I was even about to turn on his wardrobe when a loud thud came from the door.
Over and over it sounded, but I didn’t care.
The playlist began again, and I screamed along with the rage-filled lyrics.
“I don’t give a damn about my?—”
Before the word reputation exited my mouth, Lucian broke down the door.
He stared at me and the destruction around.
This was it. This was my moment to prove to myself that I had what it took to see this through.
With my chin held high, I stared him down. “What do you want?”