45. Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Four
Scarlett
The sudden sound of ringing wakes me up with a jolt. I sit up in bed, over-ear headphones falling forward as I rummage around under and over the covers for my cell phone.
Ugh! It’s so close. I can feel it vibrating as it rings!
My headphones fall off onto the bed as I move my pillows and finally locate the phone.
I grab it and answer, without pausing to check who’s calling.
“Hello?”
“Scarlett, I’m so glad you picked up.”
Oh. It’s Kendra. I didn’t think I’d be hearing from her again.
Didn’t I block her number? I thought I did.
“Uh, okay,” I murmur, feeling kind of weird about speaking to the manager who dropped me when I didn’t take the crazy-good offer she got for one of my songs.
It’s not like she’s an asshole, but I know she was exasperated with me after that whole thing.
“What’s up?” I ask, when she doesn’t immediately start proposing something.
“I just needed to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
I should probably just hang up.
There’s nothing she could say to me to make me change my mind about that song.
Instead, I wait, lying back down on the bed while the silence on the line makes me worry about what might be coming.
“Kendra? Are you still there?”
“What are you doing, Scar?” she asks, disappointment in her tone.
“Uh … What do you mean? I told you why …”
“I know you want to be the one who sings your own song,” she cuts in. “But how can you do that, if you’re pretending to be something you’re not?”
“Excuse me?” I sit back up, the hairs on my neck standing on end.
“You’re an Omega. And you’re pretending like that’s not important. Like it’s not a part of you.”
She knows? How could she know?
My thoughts race as I try to figure it out.
This can’t be happening.
If she knows, who else knows?
“I’m not …” I start, ready to lie my ass off to cover it up.
“Stop,” she says. “You’re only lying to yourself now, Scar.”
“I am?” I don’t get it.
“You want everything on your own terms, but you don’t understand what that really means.”
“What? No. I know …”
“Shut up, and listen for once, okay? You’re shooting yourself in the foot and expecting to stand up without bleeding. You can’t be a whole person if you’re hiding one of the parts that make you special.”
Ugh. That word. I hate it.
“That’s just it. I’m not special. I’m a regular person.”
She sighs. Whatever point she’s trying to make, I’m clearly not getting it.
“I don’t know why I bother. You never listen.”
“So, stop calling me.”
I hang up the call and toss my phone to the floor.
It’s probably time to get up and start the day, but her exasperation is going to follow me around like a bad smell and I know it. Sighing, I get up and go into my bathroom.
I’m uncapping the toothpaste when my reflection smirks at me.
What the hell?
“You think you’re so smart.”
Okay. I’m on a bad trip.
It all makes sense now.
My reflection is acting like a bitch, and I’m not crazy, I’m just high.
Ignore it, and she’ll stop talking.
Probably.
“You’re upset because some guy thinks you’re Sapphire,” she tells me. “But you have no intention of showing anyone who you really are, ever. What do you think that means, Scarlett?”
Some guy? How can she call Kian from Chaos Burning “some guy”?
“You’re deflecting,” she sings, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.” She points at her head. “I’m in there too, duh.”
Ugh, you’re so annoying.
“No shit, I’m you.”
She smiles brightly and blows me a kiss.
A creaking sound makes me turn away from the mirror, and the second I do, I realize I’m not at home at all. Blinking as I wake up in the private jet’s cabin, everything feels kind of hazy.
You weren’t tripping after all, you were dreaming.
I don’t know if I should be relieved, or horrified.
Everything that happened to get me here floods back, and I can’t help thinking it would have been easier if I’d imagined all of this. The worst I’d have to deal with back home would be my roommates and their problems. I could sleep off a bad trip.
I can’t pass out here and hope it makes everything better.
Clearly, all that’s gonna do is make my brain find fresh new ways to torture me.
I sit up straighter in the comfy seat, and I do a series of little stretches while I properly wake up.
By the time I’m ready to put my Sapphire mask back on and get through the rest of this nightmare of a twin swap, I realize her purse is on the table in front of me, and her shoes are on the floor at my bare feet. Oh, and her jacket is over me like a blanket.
Huh. I definitely left everything with Kian.
I guess he brought it all back to me.
Pulling the purse forward, I check inside it and find my notebook, now closed.
He must have put it inside. Makes sense. He would have had a lot of stuff to carry after I ran off.
Guilty, angsty feelings rise up inside me, and I push them away.
I can’t deal with these guys if I’m Scarlett pretending to be Sapphire.
I need to fully be Sapphire from now on.
I’ve no idea how to pretend my own feelings aren’t there, but I’m gonna have to learn if I want to survive this shitshow.
Taking a tissue out of the purse, I wipe off the small bits of dirt and sand from the soles of my feet, before I step into the painfully low-heeled shoes.
I groan at the sight of the hairclips that were starting to give me a headache.
I can’t put them back in, but I guess I don’t have to.
Another riffle through my purse helps me locate a scrunchie.
It’s kind of more Sapphire when she was a teenager, but whatever helps me feel like her is better than nothing.
I leave her jacket in the seat as I get up and go into the bathroom to put my hair up in the kind of locked-in style of my twin sister.
Sapphire has never been a hair out of place kind of girl.
I feel more like her as I look into the mirror.
This time, my reflection doesn’t smirk at me.
When I step out of the bathroom, I see Xane is in the cockpit.
I freeze halfway down the aisle, afraid I might catch his attention.
He was outside when I stepped into the cabin.
He caught me and stopped me from stumbling to the ground.
Then he saw I was upset and he sounded furious.
Not with me, but with whoever hurt me.
That’s not something I can just forget.
But you have to.
You’re not Scarlett.
And even if you were …
I swallow as I pick up my purse.
Even if I were me right now, I couldn’t let myself fall for him.
Because that’s how it would go if I let myself be me.
I wouldn’t sleep with them for fun and leave as soon as we could get away from each other.
He’s not like every other hot guy on this planet.
These are literally the only men I could see myself with, for anything resembling a lifetime.
It cuts deep to admit that to myself, but I can’t ignore it.
I can’t let myself get caught up in feelings.
Not here, and not now.
It’ll only hurt me in the end.