Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Allegra nodded, expression grim. “That’s the price of our privilege. I have to hide who I am from people until I can trust that they’re hanging around because they like me for me. And you … you learned that lesson for me, so I don’t have to. But now you have so many walls up, it’s a miracle you’re friends with Sloane.”
I didn’t know how to respond because she spoke the truth. A lot of truth.
“And what about men, Aria?” Allegra pushed. “Are you going to spend the rest of your life pushing guys like North away because you’re afraid to be hurt?”
“What is your obsession with this guy?” I huffed.
“Your reaction to him. There are plenty of guys who come through those castle doors who are flirty, charming, cocky actors, and I bet you don’t speak to any of them the way you speak to North.”
I tried not to show in my expression that she was right.
She still seemed to know she was right, anyway, because a smugness glinted in her eyes.
Irritated, I blurted, “You don’t understand. It wasn’t just one guy, Allegra. It has been almost every man I let myself get close to. They’ve betrayed me, one after the other. Do you know what that’s like?” Tears burned as the buried hurt tried to uncover itself. “If our mother didn’t do a good enough job of shredding my self-esteem, those guys finished her work. And it hurts too fucking much to keep letting them in. So yes, I would rather be alone than feel every day the way they made me feel.”
Allegra’s eyes grew shiny and round with emotion. “I want to kill them all. And I want to shake Mamma so badly for all the things she’s said to make you not like yourself. Because you’re, like, the best person ever. I’d give everything to be you, Ari. I wish you could see yourself how I see you. And I won’t stand by and let these assholes ruin your future. All you do is work. You’ve isolated yourself. Sure, it’s a beautiful place. But you’re lonely, Ari. I won’t let you wither away. I’m going to force you to be brave and truly live again.”
I blinked in surprise at her passionate speech. Love for her filled me until I felt like I might burst with it. And it was enough. To have her affection and admiration was enough. Shimmying along the couch, I wrapped my arm around her and she snuggled into me, resting her head on my shoulder like she used to as a kid. “You, my sweet girl, are going to stop worrying about me because I’m fine. Let’s just focus on you and your future.”
Allegra didn’t protest.
So I stupidly assumed that meant she agreed.
Seven
NORTH
If something didn’t change soon, I was afraid I might lose my mind.
The hiding had begun to feel more like imprisonment. Sure, nicest prison in the world if so, but Ardnoch’s walls were closing in on me.
I needed something different to happen.
Preferably for my career to come back.
Shipping my guitar from my apartment had only helped for a bit. The feeling of restlessness and lack of productivity was making me so bloody angsty. And I couldn’t bear to think about how abandoned I felt by this thing—acting—that had brought me so much joy.
My pen swept over the page as I committed these feelings to paper. When I was thirteen, after what happened with Gil MacDonald, a child therapist had suggested I write everything down. For a boy who had been hoarding his anger and pain since he was seven years old, the act of unleashing at the end of every day into a journal was shockingly helpful. It was a way for me to voice everything I bottled up but where it was still safe. Where I only had to be vulnerable with myself.
I didn’t grow up in a very forward-thinking area. Boys didn’t talk about their feelings. We just took the piss out of each other and if it all boiled to a head, it usually ended in a brawl. There was always one arsehole who brought a knife to the fight, though, and I’d had a few lucky escapes.
By the time I was fourteen, however, between what happened to Gil, talk therapy, and my newfound self-therapy in journaling, I was a different wee boy. I moved to a better foster family in a village west of Falkirk and started a new school where I could reinvent myself. I studied harder and by chance fell into acting when my girlfriend, Donna (who I fancied myself in love with at the time), begged me to join the local youth theater with her. If my mates from my old life had seen me, they would have kicked the utter shit out of me. And at first, the acting classes were mortifying. But it turned out, I was a natural.