Page 151 of No Rings Attached
“You think you have it so bad, Ellie? After I showed my fans your book and my post went viral, the reality show Wedding Bells reached out to me, and Kyle proposed that week. And then I told my followers I was archiving the video and thanked them for keeping my book their little secret.”
Holy shit!I had a feeling Kyle was in it for the exposure. He’d always said he wanted more than his job in finance.
“So you’re upset with me because your cruel joke backfired and your fiancé isn’t marrying you for love? And why is that my problem?”
Her eyes flashed. “Excuse me?”
“Every time something good comes into my life you find a way to take it or make it all about you.” The words poured out of me now. “Kyle. My ideas. My boyfriend. Why do you hate me so much?”
Say it. Finally say it out loud.
Once the words were out, I realized how true they were. How long had I been carrying this question, this weight, this desperate need to understand why my sister treated me like an enemy. “When we were little, we were friends. What happened?”
I hated the tears that filled my eyes. I should hate my sister too, but that little girl I’d once been missed the closeness we had shared before everything went wrong.
Celia stomped her foot like a toddler. “You don’t get it. You never have.”
I was stunned by the venom lacing her words, the rawness of it.
I took a step back before I could stop myself.
No. Stay strong.
She pointed at me and shifted so close I had to take a step back. “You were always thesweetone. Thegoodone. The oneeveryoneliked. I was just the sister in a pretty dress with the right smile, and the parents who paraded her around needing to look perfect.”
What?
I had no idea she’d felt this way. All this time, I’d been jealous of her—of the attention she got, the way our parents doted on her. And she’d been … “I wish you’d told?—”
Celia’s hand slashed between us, making me flinch. “You get everything without even trying.” She pointed at Drew. “You didn’t even want him. Your relationship was fake, yet here he is declaring his love for you. Somehow youalwaysget what you want.”
Is she serious?
How had my sister created such a twisted version of our shared history?
I got what I wanted because I worked my ass off for it. Because I learned to expect nothing and appreciate everything.
“I have all this pressure to be perfect. You go through life without worrying about that and still come up smelling like roses.”
The words landed like slaps, each one revealing how differently we’d experienced our childhood. Where I saw favoritism, she saw pressure. Where I felt invisible, she felt trapped.
How had we grown up in the same house and learned to view everything so differently?
“How long have you felt like this?” My voice came out softer than I’d intended.
The question hung in the air between us. It didn’t matter that I saw our upbringing through a different lens. It didn’t matter that I’d felt jealous of the relationship she had with our parents. It also didn’t matter that we’d both been damaged by the same people in completely different ways.
I just needed to understand where this all began.
Celia crossed her arms over her chest. “The play.”
“The play?” Acting had always been Celia’s thing, her passion.
“Fourth grade when I got the lead role.”
Now I knew exactly which day she was talking about, but I still didn’t get why. “I wasn’t even in the play. I was working backstage.”
“Exactly. You. Weren’t. In. The. Play. Yet, you were the one everyone surrounded when it was over. Not the lead. You were the one everyone thought wassoamazing.”
