Page 70 of Rescuing Nathaniel

“What does it look like I'm doing, Mother? You're standing in my apartment. One I provide for myself. And I take care of myself. I escaped from those people. Me. Not anyone else. When are you going to understand that I don’t want the life you think I should have?”

“Provide?” Mother scoffed as she looked around the small kitchen. “You live in an apartment with two other people. Andhe’shere. I think we can all agree that you don’t make good choices. Which is why you need this little push. Despite your ridiculous behavior and atrocious lack of care for your family’s legacy, Bentley is still willing to marry you. Something with all your challenges you should be entirely grateful for.”

Beside her, Nathaniel gave a cold chuckle as he pushed to his feet. “Yeah, it takes a real genius to figure out why a man who has to be in his fifties is interested in a woman almost half his age.”

While Ava didn't bother to hide her giggle, Nathaniel had echoed the same thoughts she’d always had about the creepy older man. Her parents and Bentley Jones all stiffened in righteous indignation.

“If you think Ava is a good catch, then it only goes to prove that you know nothing about the world she grew up in. The world she never should have left,” Mother said with that arrogant smile Ava had always loathed.

“I can assure you, I would be bringing much more to the table than Ava would,” Bentley said, his voice so smarmy she literally cringed.

She’d been seventeen and a couple of months away from leaving for college when her parents had first introduced him to her as the man they thought would be a suitable husband. He’d been forty. The very thought of being sold off to him had been so repulsive to her back then that she’d literally run to the bathroom and been sick.

That hadn't changed in the last decade.

But she had.

No longer was she a kid who had been forced to endure several dates with a man old enough to be her father. He’d seen her as nothing more than a pretty, young possession that he could flaunt to make his friends and colleagues jealous. He’d always found excuses to touch her, and she was sure he hadn't forgotten what had happened when he tried to kiss her.

He’d stupidly thought that just because they were in a fancy restaurant she wouldn't make a scene and would let him put his disgusting lips on hers.

He thought wrong.

She’d screamed and everyone had looked, forcing him to back off.

Thankfully, the next day had been her eighteenth birthday, and her parents could no longer force her to go on dates. They hadn't cared that she’d virtually been assaulted, instead, they were angry with her for making a scene and ruining the marriage they wanted to sell her into.

That was the day she realized that letting them push her around was not an option. That was the day she’d wised up and finally accepted that her parents didn't love her and didn't care about her happiness.

Clearly almost losing her hadn't changed anything.

They still didn't care and they never would.

If they thought she would be more susceptible to manipulation because she’d almost died, they were so very wrong. Now she’d seen her own strength, her own bravery. She’d escaped. She’d survived against the odds.

“After all,” Bentley continued with another of those nausea-inducing smarmy smiles. “What kind of intelligent woman leaves a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet sitting with a doorman.”

Her gaze landed on the small red velvet box in his hand, and she realized she’d forgotten to pick up her grandmother’s bracelet from the desk downstairs when she got home last night. She’d been too busy talking to Nathaniel, getting him to open up to her. The bracelet would have been safe with the doorman until she got to it. If she’d believed otherwise, she would have had the jeweler deliver it to Prey. Ava knew how lucky she was that the jeweler had realized something was wrong and not considered the bracelet abandoned property, instead holding onto it and keeping it safe.

“If you're going to be so careless with your belongings then you really should be with someone who is capable of replacing them for you when you lose them,” Bentley said, his tone so condescending even a child could figure it out.

“You left a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet lying around with a doorman?” Nathaniel asked. “Like it was just easy come, easy go?”

Hurt lanced through her chest at his coldly spoken and cruel words. Now he was against her too? From the look of fury dancing in his normally warm chocolate brown eyes, she guessed that he was, because he was looking at her the same way the others were.

Like she was some ridiculous, childish, little girl who needed to be looked after for her own safety.

* * *

March 8th

8:37 A.M.

“Even he gets it,”Mrs. Hendricks snarked, her expression smug as she looked at her daughter.

Oh, he got it all right.

Got that Ava was so ridiculously out of his league that he’d been kidding himself, thinking any amount of not allowing his past to dictate his future could account for it.

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