3. Andi
Andi
There’s something strange about waking up in your childhood bedroom as an adult.
Maybe other people don’t mind it.
Me, on the other hand?
This room is a fucking prison.
Literally.
It’s been a week of being locked away in here. A week since Stuart came to my door after I sobbed for hours with a meal—my carefully curated, rabbit food fucking meal with the same portion sizes I got when I was fourteen—and told me that I had essentially lost all my rights.
The conservatorship was approved. Suspiciously quickly. I don’t know what proof Gina got together so quickly—probably all things that have been manufactured or manipulated, just like her throwing herself down the stairs and blaming me—but the end result is the same.
I roll over with a groan, my neck sore from the absolutely terrible pillow I slept on. Unfortunately for my spine’s alignment, all of them are ridiculously overstuffed.
I can’t even find peace in sleep and I’ve been sleeping a hell of a lot more since being locked away. I’m pretty sure I’ve slept away half of each of the days I’ve been here. I don’t even have a clock, so I’ve had to gauge things based on the sun.
Isn’t this kind of thing a torture method? Probably. It feels like torture.
Especially when I’d gotten used to being around the guys.
Beck was right when we first started this whole fake-dating-turned-real-dating situation. Omegas really aren’t supposed to be alone.
I’m starting to notice the effects of being deprived of human interaction.
When Stuart brings me my rabbit food meals, he mostly ignores me. And I’m only fed twice a day, so that’s only four minutes max of seeing another human face. Gina hasn’t even deemed me worthy of her presence since the day she threw herself down the stairs.
The only other person I’ve seen has been Camille, my mom’s stylist. She came in with Stuart on day two and wordlessly dropped off a whole new wardrobe in the empty closet.
A wardrobe where all the clothes are a minimum of two sizes too small for me—my mom isn’t subtle at all.
It’s just me, my thoughts, and the small collection of books I have on a shelf by my bedside from years ago. They’re the only reason I haven’t gone insane—I think.
Even so, I’m halfway there, but I’m losing weight at an alarming rate and my skin is starting to take on pallor that appears almost sickly.
Looks like Gina is going to have to book me a spray tan before whatever stupid event she decides to send me to when she finally lets me out of here.
She has to be the one to do everything for me now.
Because of the conservatorship, I have fewer rights than children do.
At least kids are allowed to make their own medical decisions after a certain age. I can’t even do that.
I swing my legs out of bed. The room is just as basic, just as beige, as it was when I was growing up.
I can’t help but notice the lack of color in the space.
It makes me long for the flash of overwhelming color in the room my dad showed me—my bedroom...
the one that he couldn’t bring himself to change the color of after all these years.
I don’t think I ever would have been someone who existed in a beige space by choice.
Yet another way Gina seems to want to suck the life out of me.
I sink into a scalding bubble bath, overwhelming my senses with the sweetest scented bath products I have, trying desperately to mimic the sweet, comforting feeling of Beck’s perfume. But no matter how hard I close my eyes and try to delude myself, it’s nothing like the real thing.
I stay in the bath, my hair piled above my head and the steaming water making my cheeks flushed until the water starts getting cold and my fingers and toes are wrinkly.
The sound of my bedroom door unlocking cracks through the air like a gunshot.
The door swings open, and even though I can’t see the door from my vantage point in the tub, the footsteps differ from Stuart’s.
Who in the world is in my room?
I get my answer when Ezra Fletcher, my ex-boyfriend, walks right into the open door of my bathroom, holding a tray of the rabbit food I’ve been fed for the past week.
“What the hell are you doing in here!” I yell, hugging my knees to my chest. The water in the tub splashes along the edges. Because I’ve been in the bath for so long, it’s gone clear, despite the products I added earlier, which means I don’t even have bubbles to hide behind.
“Shit! Sorry,” Ezra says, his dark eyes wide.
“Get out!”
I don’t know what I expected, but he listens—quickly too.
One second he’s there, standing in the open doorway of my ensuite bathroom that I didn’t bother to close because what would be the point when I’m locked in here—basically in solitary confinement and the next, he’s turning around and shutting the bathroom door behind him.
The hint of his coffee scent lingers in the air around me. It’s not twisted or bitter in the way it was the last couple of times I saw him. It’s just... him. Him without the anger that seemed to be his constant companion towards the end of our relationship.
What in the world is he doing here?
The answer is obvious.
My mom is scheming—of course, she is. Even so, sending Ezra up to my bedroom after what he did to me?
I’m glad he left, because the sight of Ezra next to the fancy granite countertops of my childhood bathroom counters would have sent me into a spiral I don’t think I could have handled.
My inner omega is practically screeching, clawing at the inside of my skull for the comforts I’ve gotten used to with my guys.
Is this why my mom decided to confine me to my room? So that I’d be more pliable, more willing to cooperate with the first alpha she sent in here?
After a few minutes of trying to calm my racing pulse, I convince my body to get out of the now-chilly bathwater.
I catch myself gripping the wall a beat too long when I stand up too fast, the room tilting before it rights itself. I used to only get that lightheaded on the rare mornings I skipped breakfast before a shoot. Now it happens every time I stand.
I grab the one towel I have in here. It’s smaller than the ones I have in my own apartment and far rougher, worn from years of heated washes. Yet another thing I’m sure she calculated, because I know Gina Sterling owns better towels than this ragged thing.
My closet is a walk-in closet connected to the main room, which means I need to go out in nothing but my towel if I have any hope of getting dressed.
I take a deep breath, gripping the doorknob and trying to wrangle my perfume under control.
I’m sure Ezra will still be able to tell I’m panicking, but the last thing I want is for him to feel pressure to try comforting me or something—I couldn’t handle that right now.
That’s probably exactly what my mom wants.
When I crack the door back to the bedroom open, Ezra is standing there, in the center of my room. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his designer jeans, and the tray of food he was carrying earlier is set on the vanity.
I take a second to take a good look at him.
He looks different. Not in a drastic way, just... not like how I remember him.
For example, his signature bright red hair is still just as bright, but he’s let his dark roots grow out.
His eyes dart to meet mine in the doorway for a split second before he averts his gaze, keeping it locked on the floor, respectfully.
It is long enough for me to see his eyes are clear—and he’s not twitchy.
This is the most still I’ve seen him in a very long time, and not necessarily because of the drugs either.
He’s always had a big personality. Probably because in order to feel like someone important within the massive shadow of his father, he had to make a lot of noise to get any sort of attention.
But in the privacy of my childhood bedroom, without the substances he abused pumping through his system, he’s finally still.
“Well, this situation sucks,” he says, finally breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” I agree, the single syllable leaving my lips on an exhausted exhale. He’s not wrong.
I should tell him to leave. To get the fuck out.
But I don’t.
Because there’s a stupid, needy part of me that needs someone else to be a witness to this shit-show.
To see what’s happening to me because I know the moment Gina Sterling starts letting me outside that the only thing the world will see of me is Andromeda Sterling, the perfect bitchy nepo-baby princess my mom wants to showcase. Not the real me. Not Andi.
And unfortunately, the first person to acknowledge that this situation sucks is Ezra. Despite our past, despite the fact that he hurt me, his acknowledgment still means something to me.
“Turn the fuck around, I’m not giving you a show,” I bite out, proud when my voice doesn’t waver. “I have to get dressed.”
He turns without protest, walking over to the window and staring out of it.
It overlooks the carefully manicured backyard. A space Gina makes sure is spotless because she often does confessionals for her reality TV show, The Real Omegas of Beverly Hills, by the pool.
Clutching the rough and uncomfortable towel tighter to my body, my feet pad over the spotless carpet to the walk-in closet. I start digging through hangers and looking through the clothing.
I don’t know why I’m even looking, like something in the pile Camille brought over will magically be my size.
This should be considered a torture method.
Though Gina probably doesn’t view this as torture at all.
Knowing her, she thinks she’s helping me with the carefully curated meals and the new wardrobe.
I let out a strangled sound of frustration that I can’t hold back no matter how hard I try.
“Everything okay in there?” Ezra asks.
I whirl around, my eyes narrowing, but Ezra is still staring out the window.
He hasn’t turned around.
The raw anger at the situation sputters out into a duller frustration.
Crazy to think that Ezra, out of all the people in my life now, is the one to actually listen to me.