Page 7 of Pretty Heartache

Resting the heels of my hands on the edge of the sink, I hang my head low. Tears sting the back of my eyes. The warm liquid spills over my lashes and warms my already-heated cheeks. I inhale a shaky breath, my sobs working their way up my throat. Ruby places her hand on my back, and her touch radiates across my body, and the floodgates burst open.

“He wasn’t always this way.” My chin quivers and my stomach flips. “Only… there was this change in him, like the flip of a switch. It was so fast and so sudden. I didn’t see. I didn’t know it would—" I can’t finish. My words linger in the air, dissolving through the thick oxygen filling this tiny bathroom.

“It’s okay, Adeline,” she soothes as she runs her hand gently down my back.

I finally turn my head and look up at her. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone,” I whisper.

“Adeline.” Her soft voice wraps around me like a blanket.

“I don’t want this to become a headline,” I say in a rush, twisting my fingers. “I don’t want to read some distorted version of the truth.” I inhale a shaky breath. “I just want to go. Quietly.”

I look back down and stare at the sink and the single drop of blood still resting in the drain.

When did I become this person? When did I become the model who fell for her abusive manager? Being with him is costing me everything.

Every dream I’ve ever had has disappeared.

At some point during my sobs, with Ruby’s hand on my back, something in my mind clicks. Reality crashes into my thoughts with unrelenting force. I’m not this person, and I won’t allow this to become my life.

I can’t explain it, but this place doesn’t feel like home. I always believed I wanted to leave my life back in Boston. Iwanted to run away as far and as fast as I could. The shadows and recessed corners of the place I used to call home were hanging over me like a dark cloud. My heart was begging to see more of the world, but now that I’m here, on the opposite side of the country, I’ve never felt more isolated and alone. I don’t recognize the woman I’ve become.

A comforting warmth spreads across my chest at the thought of returning to the East Coast. An inexplicable pull tugs at my chest, like an echo vibrating through my bones.

“You’re coming back, though, right?” Ruby asks, her copper eyebrows knitting together. “I can black out your calendar for a while, but eventually…” Her voice trails off, then her eyes find mine. “You have a photoshoot scheduled in two weeks. You’ll still make it then, right?”

“I, um…” I inhale a deep breath and inflate my lungs until they burn before I release it. “I can’t answer that right now.”

“Oh, honey.” She places her fingertips gently to my cheek, but I hiss and jerk back. Her mouth twitches with pity and sadness, and the hole in my heart grows wider. Ruby has been a great assistant and friend these past three years. I hate that I’m leaving her this way, but there’s an understanding in her eyes that reassures me.

“I understand.” She nods.

“Thank you. I’ll keep you updated.” I nod, patting my cheek to dry the tears soaking into the makeup I put on only minutes earlier. I’m thankful she doesn’t hold my lack of commitment against me. I hate not giving her a concrete answer, and the uncertainty of not showing up for future photoshoots scares me. The fear of letting go of what I hold dear to me weaves into my broken heart.

I move past Ruby again and stuff my makeup bag and curling iron into my duffel.

Closing my eyes means I only see a road with no direction, no ending. But the thought of coming back to work and facing Maddox makes my stomach coil. It aches like a spring resting at the very bottom and twisting into knots, the sharp edges cutting into my flesh like barbed wire. The uncertainty of the future is scary, but the promise of returning to this life, the version I’m living in now, is even more terrifying.

I steel myself. Invisible armor wraps around my heart, giving me the strength to keep moving. It’s what I’ve always done.

Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I push through my trailer door for the last time and call one of the only people I’ve been able to rely on.

THREE

The pubs lining the small streets of London can often be mistaken for Boston’s. If I’m drunk enough, I’ll forget which country I’m in. At least until the bartender or stranger sitting at the end of the bar yells across the room, their distinct accents reminding me of where I really am.

Despite me being born in America to American parents, sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong country. Fuck, sometimes I think I was born into the wrong family. The motto ‘the grass is always fucking greener’ is constantly playing in my mind, everywhere I go, because no matter where I am, I’m always questioning if I should have been born into another family.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never fully belonged. My older brothers are mine but not fully. Half their blood has always been loyal to their mother. I have vague memories of her when I was younger. She was kind and treated me as her own during the times I was away from my own mother.

While I had my own loving mother, she always treated me as the outcast. Her treatment by the Harding line bled into me and how I was treated by anyone sharing my last name.

No one wants to be loved out of obligation, but that’s how my father’s love for me operated. That’s howheoperated.

He’s been dead for ten years now, rotting as a corpse in the cold, damp ground where he belongs. But sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see his piercing eyes staring back at me, and the older I’ve become, the more I swear I look like him.

I fucking hate it.

My phone vibrates in my front pocket, intensifying the hard on pressing against the zipper of my dark blue suit. This wasn’t the plan, but sometimes my dick decides to go rogue, abandoning all reason.

---