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Because to Susannah Hart, how you looked on the outside was all that mattered.
“I said no, Mom.” I forced the words out, hating how, even now, after all the therapy, they still sounded so unfamiliar and wrong on my lips.
She let out a disappointed sigh. “It was only a suggestion, Aurora. You don’t need to take that tone with me.”
But I did.
Time and time again, I had to set healthy boundaries between my mother and me. It was exhausting—she was exhausting. But, unlike Austin, I’d never been able to truly cut her off. Because, unlike him, part of me understood her. And because unlike him, the emotional damage I’d suffered at her hands had changed me.
“I’ll never model again. You know that. So please don’t bring it up again.”
“Fine.” She tsked. “Well, I suppose I’d better leave you to your unpacking. Call me soon.”
“Sure, Mom. Bye.”
She hung up. Just like that. But it was nothing I wasn’t used to. When a conversation didn’t go her way, she shut down. It was years of living in her mother’s shadow, always trying to be perfect. To please Grandma Iris. To be seen and not heard.
It was a heavy burden to shoulder.
I knew.
I was her daughter, after all.
But today’s brief conversation—if you could even call it that—was a painful reminder that I would never amount to more than a disappointment in her eyes.
I would never be pretty enough. Thin enough. Worthy enough.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as memories slammed into me, one after the other. Mom dragging me to get another photoshoot determined to mold me into her protégé. Stand taller. Suck in your stomach. Angle your shoulder down. Over and over, I was told to be something I wasn’t until I looked in the mirror and no longer saw myself anymore.
That kind of damage stayed with you. Lived inside you. Festered and spread like a poison until it was impossible to see anything except the imperfect, flawed person they made you out to be.
“Dammit.” I slammed my hand down on the desk, annoyed that she still had this kind of effect on me.
I’d spent years in therapy trying to undo all the hurt and pain she’d caused. I sat opposite numerous therapists and doctors, trying to learn how to love myself again. How to accept myself.
I still wasn’t there—especially not after the setback I’d had in senior year—but I wasn’t the little girl I was back then either.
They’re only words. They mean nothing.
But they didn’t mean nothing. No matter how much I tried to ignore them, the truth was words hurt. And the more you heard them, the more they stuck.
The more they scratched themselves on your soul—the very fiber of your being.
Until they were an intrinsic part of you.
I awoke to muffled moans. A bed creaking. Skin slapping.
Somebody was home, and they were having sex, rather loud, boisterous sex if the noises were any indicator.
Sliding my hands under my pillow, I pushed it around my ears, trying to block out the sounds. It wasn’t Connor and Ella. I’d had the misfortune of overhearing them the other night, and the moans were all wrong. And Austin had promised me he didn’t bring girls back to the house, which only left Noah.
My heart sank.
After everything he’d said earlier, acting so offended that I’d had the gall to judge him when I knew so little about him. And I’d fallen for it. For a second, I’d felt guilty for chastising him when he was right—I didn’t know him or his story.
Yet, here he was, fucking some puck bunny into the stratosphere if her muffled, breathy cries were any sign.
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of bunny she was. Energizer Bunny or a Jessica Rabbit, most likely. I’d caught Noah looking at my boobs more than once. He seemed like the kind of guy who would be a boob guy.
