Page 80 of Hateful Games

The media being a greedy mass of hawks didn’t miss my absence. Especially once I came back home after my graduation. The chatter that there was trouble in paradise spread like wildfire.

And once again, Nova and I were thrown together.

The sight of him after three years of emptiness was an electric jolt to my system.

He looked nothing like the boy I remembered.

A sharpness and cold-bloodedness made home in his warm brown eyes. They didn’t stare at me with cruel mischief like every time in the past. It was replaced by barbed wires of hatred and hostility.

I was so taken aback when he didn’t throw any insult or threat.

He stared right through me.

Slicing me straight down in the middle.

Our fathers had called us together to give a long-ass lecture about how we needed to be seen together in public. And so began my role of a trophy fiancée. The company dinners and functions I was forced to parade around on his arm. Even then, he hardly spoke two words to me and treated me like I was just an extension of his arm.

It should’ve relieved me.

Instead, it did the opposite.

I felt like a cheap whore. Arm candy he had paid for the night. From the same man who had claimed that I was his equal. Thus, proving he was nothing but a selfish liar.

The older version of Nova was vicious. Cold. Cruel.

Meanwhile, I found a few fleeting moments of freedom where I didn’t act like my world was one big fairy tale. Only because not a soul knows about them. Not even my two closest best friends, Bianca and Iris.

Everybody saw me as a dumb and spoiled heiress.

I was far from it.

“Let’s hope it’s true because it’s too late to back out now,” I finally reply to my mom. While secretly wishing she would listen to her motherly instincts and tell me that it’s not too late. That if I said the word, she’ll cancel the wedding.

They never come.

“I wouldn’t choose just any man for you, my love,” she says. “You need to trust me.”

“Are you going to tell Dad about the dress?” Disappointment pinches her features when I disregard her words.

“Of course not. But I still think you should reconsider it. You’ll survive a day without wearing black.”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“I told you we should’ve kept goth wedding as the theme, Mom.”

Both of us turn to my older sister Jasmine’s amused voice reaching us from the doorway. She stands with her two-year-old daughter, Suhana, perched on her hip. Both of them twinning in identical floral traditional Indian kurtis and leggings.

The tension dissipates from the room and I jump down from the bed to get to my adorable and chubby niece. She starts to wiggle in her mom’s arms to excitedly come to mine. My heart has never been so full than when she showers me with love.

“Come here, my little fairy,” I whisper in a baby voice, taking her from Jasmine. “Masi has missed you so much.”

She babbles something intelligible, making me chuckle. Swinging her in the air, I place kisses all over her cute face and her laughter spills in my ear. My dog, Bunny, seeing the commotion, runs to us and sits near my feet, wagging his tail and waiting.

I bend and let him lick Suhana’s tiny hand before straightening.

“I see the preparations are in full swing,” comments Jasmine, as Mom joins our little circle and hugs my sister.

“Waste of money since the wedding isn’t happening here.”

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