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It takes all my self-control not to turn around and rearrange his face. Instead, I take an easier route. I grab Evangeline’s arm when she passes me, making her halt immediately. Her bright, brown eyes snap up to mine, and she frowns.
She smells like vanilla and soap, and her lips are painted a pinkish-brown colour. She isn't tiny, nor tall. Her forehead reaches my shoulder. All the missing details are filled in now, and I really didn’t want that to happen.
I needed her to disappear from my mind, but instead, it’s her who moved across the street from my house, making her my neighbour. She’ll never leave my thoughts now. Never. But praise the lord, they are met with detest now. I could have forgiven her insults, but never the fact that she’s related to Clairwater.
“What do you want, Chester?” Her lips protrude as she speaks my name.
“Frederic Clairwater is your brother?”
“Obviously.” Her small hand drops to mine, attempting to pull it off of her arm. It’s cold but soft with long, elegant fingers. One diamond ring is situated on her index finger.
“That explains a lot.” I realise now, staring at her gorgeous face. Her breathing hits my chin.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snaps, stepping closer to me. She’s feisty; I knew that from our conversation last night. Frederic loves confronting people and getting in their faces, and apparently, so does the sister.
“You must be just as cruel, dishonest and selfish as him.” I nod my head towards Frederic, while keeping my eyes focused on her. Her steel glance hasn’t changed, but thecornersof her lips lower as her face falls.
“I’m nothing like him,” she whispers and forcefully tugs my hand from her arm. A second later, she’s running after her brother.
Her white outfit consists of a short dress, a pair of white socks pulled up high with matching white shoes. Tennis. It’s a tennis outfit.
“Just so you know, Evangeline, all Clairwaters are liars,” I yell after her, meaning every word.
Chapter Six
Evangeline
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Frederic lets out after being silent and broody in his seat. He grits his teeth and grabs the steering wheel hard, the leather cracking under his force.
“Bastard,” Frederic yells loudly, slamming his hand against the wheel, but I ignore him. I’m too deep in my own thoughts about what happened, and I’m not willing to entertain my brother’s tantrum.
All Clairwaters are liars.
It rings through my ears repeatedly. The way Chester said it, sounded like a fact rather than something up for debate. He mentioned it as if he could prove it a million times over and state it with multiple arguments.
“Boyd is the dirt of this world. I can’t bloody stand him.”
“Why did you pick that house, then?” I mumble, my energy already drained just by some small remark made by my neighbour. Frederic first lived in an apartment in the centre of the city, before moving to the townhouse when I landed back in London.
“I didn’t fucking know he lived across the street.” His eyes switch from one side to the other as his fingers twitch.
Liar, and now I’m deemed by Chester as a dishonest person just like my brother is, but I rarely lie. I keep certain things to myself, but they don’t harm others. The worst insult one could aim at me is that I’m anything like Frederic.
I hate my brother.
“Sure, Frederic. It would be crazy if you moved there just to vex him daily.” His brown eyes flash my way, and for a second, I wonder if I went too far. Anger brews in his eyes immediately and it makes them even darker. I swallow when they don’t leave mine after a while.
His menacing glare is meant to threaten, and my heart is a racing mess because I’m terrified as to the punishment he’ll dole out. There’s a promise in his eyes of something sinister, and I don’t want to bear witness to it.
I flick my eyes down to sever our connection and to hopefully deter him from lashing out at me. I drop my hand on my heart, feeling how hard and fast it pounds out of fear.
Silence falls over us, and I’m pulled back to what Chester so carelessly said.
The thought that someone compared me to my brother hurts. It frightens me that I could be like him. Frederic is selfish, arrogant and mean. But my choices and values prove that we couldn’t be more different. I fight to not live a selfish life, to not take the number on a bank account and status as a measurement of a successful life, while Frederic has made it his life goal to take himself to the top. And he doesn’t play fair or nice.
“We lost everything because of him. Fucking everything,” Frederic whispers, breaking the silence once again.
“What really happened?” I ask, hoping that my brother will finally share what went down to almost bankrupt us. “I moved from New York to London to marry—”
