Page 38 of Bad Boy Neighbor

“I did… back home.”

“With your girlfriend, Bianca?”

I’m taken aback by the mention of her name. I don’t recall mentioning her unless Seb has said something.

“How do you know about Bianca?” I ask with a reigning curiosity. “Let me guess, Sebastian?”

“Google.” She coughs, covering her mouth.

“You googled me?”

“In my defense, I had to make sure who I was jumping into a car with before I decided whether you were a serial murderer.”

“And what did you find?”

She stares at me, softening. “The um… accident.”

It was bound to come up. I couldn’t run forever, even though I tried to every moment I was awake. Perhaps I should have been honest from the beginning, eliminating her curiosity to avoid tense moments like this. Seb warned me, but I was stubborn and refused to listen.

There will be a time and place, and now is not that time.

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” she says in a flat, monotoned voice. “It must have been awful.”

“It was.”

“You can talk about it. I mean, I’m half naked with you in a spa,” she offers with a friendly smile. “If that counts for anything, you can trust me.”

“I’m just not ready.”

“Okay…”

She almost looks hurt, but she doesn’t understand the pain which followed. It held me hostage, tormenting me, watching me suffer relentlessly. This doesn’t feel like the moment to relive every sordid detail of falling off the bike and seeing death seconds away.

“How does the water feel?”

“I haven’t felt this good in a long time,” she admits, a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “I don’t even remember the last time I went to one of these places. Probably with my mother and sisters, some sort of girls’ day out.”

“You have sisters?”

“Two. Both older. Clara and Antoinette.”

“You guys close?”

She laughs as if I just threw around a joke.

“By close, do you mean I’m constantly ridiculed for my life choices?” She pulls out her hair, letting it fall against her wet skin. “Let’s see, why would a girl want to go to college when Daddy could marry you off to a senator? After they caused a stink about having to attend three years of college, my father almost didn’t bother with me. But no, I demanded he send me. He agreed, only so he could tell people his daughter was good enough to get into an Ivy League school.”

“Why do you let him control you? You’re what… twenty-four?”

She nods, swishing her hands against the water. “Turning twenty-five soon. I can’t explain it. My family is very influential, and my father gets his way. If I disobey him, I’ll be cut off by the family.”

“C’mon, surely it’s an empty threat. No parent would do that.”

She shakes her head, her expression downturned. A dark cloud hovers above her, shadowing the beautiful sunshine which graced me only moments ago.

“You don’t know him. He will do everything in his power to get his way. This time away from everyone, I had to literally beg for it.”

All I hear is the voice of someone scared to follow their own path. It seems unfathomable that a family could disown their own daughter over a choice to marry someone she didn’t love. Unless, of course, she does love him.

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