Page 111 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
My heart stops.
It’s a picture of two teenagers laughing in each other’s arms, blue sky and tall pine trees making a magnificent backdrop behind them. The summer sun shines bright on their faces. They are young, carefree, and blissfully in love.
It’s me and Parker.
My mother took the picture three weeks to the day before he left.
THIRTY-THREE
My shock is so total I feel flash-frozen. Everything inside me hardens, crystallizes, chills to crackling ice. My brain refuses to allow my tongue to form words, so I stand there stupidly gaping, silent and unmoving as Parker walks past me into the room. He stops in the middle of it, examining the framed pictures. They cover most of one wall.
Other than all the pictures, the room is empty. Only a single plain bench is set opposite, so a person could relax and contemplate the display. It’s like a museum.
Or a shrine.
“I come here when I need a reminder,” Parker says sadly.
Why does he have that picture of us? Why isn’t he accusing me of anything? Why doesn’t he seem angry? What the hell is going on here?
I find my voice, a whisper of breath in the quiet room. “Of?”
When he turns his head and looks at me, his eyes are full of ancient sorrow. “Who I used to be. And everything I’ve lost.”
My gaze flashes back to the pictures. Some of them depict his parents at various parties and social events, his mother in silk and pearls, his father’s florid face grinning, always grinning that hateful, entitled grin. There are photos of the mansion where he grew up, family gathered on the green expanse of lawn, photos of football games, of Parker in his letterman jacket from senior year, photos of him from childhood, of the city of Laredo, of his favorite polo pony, and on and on.
And there isn’t just the one shot of the two of us; there are many more. In formal wear for a school dance, at a pumpkin patch close to Halloween, at my brother’s hospital bedside on his thirteenth birthday. I’m holding balloons, Parker’s holding my hand, and my mother’s got her arms around both of us. Everyone is smiling.
Inside, I’m sick. I’m a volcano with a vomit core, about to blow. But I don’t show it. I give him nothing. I’ve come too far. I have too much invested.
If this is the goal line, I’ll be damned if I’ll fumble the ball now.
I draw myself to my full height. I look straight at his face. In a voice devoid of emotion, I say, “Why don’t you explain what you mean.”
He takes a seat on the bench, slowly, as if it pains him to bend his legs. He props his elbows on his knees and drags his hands through his hair. When he speaks, it’s to the floor.
“I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life on hold. I’ve opened over twenty restaurants, fo
unded a nonprofit organization, traveled the world, met celebrities, politicians, and even a king. I’ve become wealthy beyond all my expectations, given away millions to charity, built myself an empire.”
His voice drops. “And none of it makes up for one mistake I made at eighteen.”
All the air is sucked from the room. The clocks stop ticking. The earth stops spinning under my feet. I’m no longer ice; I’m granite. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
Parker raises his head and stares at the wall of photos. “My father was a terrible man. Is a terrible man. The textbook definition of a bigot. Why my mother married him, I’ll never know. The woman is a saint.” He shakes his head. “I’m grateful she doesn’t know what I did. The shame would cripple me.”
The silence in the room is deafening. Into it, Parker sighs.
“The girl I told you about, you remember? The one who killed herself?”
He looks at me. I must nod, or make some other kind of acknowledgment that I don’t realize I’ve made, because he continues.
“That’s her.” He turns again to the pictures. His expression hovers somewhere between searing agony and crushing defeat. “Isabel was her name. She was my best friend. My first love. I would’ve done anything for her. So when my father made me choose between destroying my own life or hers, I chose mine.” His laugh is bitter, the laugh of a man who’s lived too long with guilt, whose soul has been corroded by it. “What a fool I was.”
Howling erupts inside my head, like a thousand wolves in a dark forest, muzzles raised to the rising moon. I can’t speak. I stare at the photos of myself, the girl I used to be, thick glasses and a crooked nose, crooked teeth to match, cheap clothes and deeply bronzed skin from spending so much time outdoors. That awful haircut my mother gave me. A smile like the sun.
I’m unrecognizable. That trusting, happy girl is just another of my ghosts.
Parker exhales a heavy breath. “Her family was very poor. Mine was filthy rich. In the beginning my father tolerated our relationship because he thought I was like him; he thought I was just sowing my wild oats. Getting experience.” His voice gains an edge of disgust. “‘You’re not a man until you’ve split the dark oak,’ he once said to me, clapping me on the shoulder. Like making love to the girl of my dreams was just a rite of passage. Like she was a thing to be used. That’s when I began to hate him. That’s when I began to hide my feelings for Isabel from him. To pretend.”
