Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Do you donate hair for kids with cancer?” I asked.
“Of course, as long as it’s long enough and untreated. Have you dyed your hair before?”
“Never.”
“Keratin treatments or perms of any kind?”
“No.” I smiled. My stomach was tight, and my nerves were making me a little jumpy, but I was excited.
This was the moment I took my life back.
“Well, then. Your hair would be perfect, but we would have to cut it to at least here,” he said, picking up a lock of hair between two fingers and bringing it just below my shoulder.
“What do you think about here?” I asked, moving his hand up to my chin.
“Honey, whoever he is, he isn’t worth it. I mean, this is not the best way to mend a broken heart. You should go on a drinking spree and like fuck his best friend or cut up his clothes. All of that is fine. That is recoverable, but don’t do something as permanent as chopping off all your hair for a breakup. No man is worth it. It will take years to grow all this back.”
“This isn’t for a breakup.” I smiled. “This is shedding my old skin—the old me.”
“And what is wrong with the old you? If I’m going to do a complete lifestyle makeover, I need to know that it’s for the right reasons. I don’t want you coming back tomorrow screaming how I destroyed your hair.”
“My parents died in a horrible car crash. I was stuck in the car with them freezing for sixteen hours, and since then, I have been wallowing in a pit of depression and wine. I let other people dictate the terms of my life, and I am done. It’s time for me to shed the skin of being the girl I was after the accident to the girl I am now, who is on the path to healing physically and mentally. I don’t want to be the broken orphan girl anymore. I want to be the bad bitch survivor. I’m becoming fierce, more independent, and less sad. I promise you this has nothing to do with a man. Nobody has broken my heart.”
“Hmmm.” The stylist looked at me, tapped his shears against his lips, then moved in front of my swivel chair, looking me up and down like he was considering all of the options. “We will do an edgy asymmetrical bob, having it come forward so it’s going to be higher in the back and longer in the front. What do you think?”
He moved behind me and grabbed my hair, bending it up and trying to give me an idea of what my face shape would look like with the new hairstyle.
“I like it,” I said, “but I have one very important question.”
“What’s that, darling?”
“Would you have time to dye it as well?”
“Absolutely. What were you thinking? Maybe a nice balayage or just some face-framing highlights?”
“Pink.”
“Pink highlights? Like a rose gold?” He tilted his head like he was trying to envision it.
“No, bright pink. All over.”
“The new you is coming out bold, strong, and fierce.” He looked at me in the mirror, meeting my gaze, and he lowered his face just above mine. “I love it.”
After talking to Emma for a while, I’d ended up calling the event planner that I had always used to see if she was looking for any help.
I’d passed on Emma’s information, explaining that she came from the same world I did but had had a recent lifestyle adjustment. I explained that she knew exactly what was expected at high society events and the proper way to behave and set a table.
She was also a hard worker and determined to work her way up. The event planner I used gladly took her name, and I was reminded that sometimes it wasn’t what you knew. It was who you knew. And that even without my family’s money, I still had something to offer.
Even if that was just sheer stubbornness.
Lucian Manwarring treated me like a trophy wife, like a good little girl, because that was what I was acting like.
That was what I was bred to be.
I wasn’t so sure that was what I wanted to be anymore. Maybe if I became too much for him, too much work, too much effort, then he would drop it.
Maybe I would still have to live with him for the three years, maybe he’d still even insist on sleeping together, but maybe my sentence could be commuted to just the three years instead of till death do us part.
Ideally, I would create a look that was so far from what he wanted that he moved me into Charlotte’s old room, forgot me, and left me there until I became of age. From what I’d heard, that was pretty much what he had done with his daughters. Why couldn’t I get the same treatment?