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Me and Brianna.
She was a present for me, a way to keep me out of trouble. If I had someone to occupy my time with at home, I’d have less time to go out and find myself knee-deep in shit. She was an artist, a loner, someone who didn’t have friends—and that made her controllable.
But just because she was an artist like me didn’t mean I’d automatically like her. Right now, I wasn’t very impressed, though her defiance was amusing. She might make for a fun plaything for a little while, but soon enough I’d get bored and need to cross over to the illegal side of things.
Alistair and Nicole returned to the table for some drinks. Nicole scooted closer to her daughter, having a low conversation out of my earshot, which left my uncle to sit beside me and give me a hard look.
“What?” I asked, huffing out the word in annoyance. This wedding could be over anytime now. I was bored of it. I wanted to get home. All these people, friends and family alike, who pretended like they cared about Alistair and his new wife could go blow themselves. They were all liars. You couldn’t trust a single one of them.
You definitely couldn’t trust me.
“Be nice,” my uncle’s voice came out low, a warning for me to take it easy on Brianna. “She’s your family now.” It wasn’t the first time he’d warned me that things had changed, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
“I was nice enough,” I muttered.
The look he gave me told me he didn’t believe me, that he knew better than to swallow that flavor of bullshit from me. He leaned closer to me, his voice a bare whisper as he said, “Gareth—”
I waved him off. “Go dance more or something.” Really, I just wanted him out of my face.
Alistair straightened himself out, running a hand down the front of his suit. He turned to Nicole and offered her his hand, asking pleasantly, “Shall we get back out there?”
Nicole grinned and slipped her hand in his, and together, they returned to the dance floor, leaving Brianna and I alone at the tables.
My eyes darted to her, finding she was staring at me with a frown on her face. Whatever her mother had told her, I had to assume she didn’t like. Perhaps her mother nagged her about making nice with me as much as my uncle had done to me about her. It was rather annoying, I had to say.
We stared at each other for a few moments, neither one of us daring to look away. The more I stared at her, the more I wondered what it was about her that made Alistair think she would make a good plaything for me.
Was it the defiance? Was it merely the fact that she enjoyed art, like me? Was there something else under the surface I hadn’t seen yet?
In the end, it was Brianna who looked away first, mumbling something about needing to use the restroom as she walked away. My eyes followed her as she hustled around the dance floor, eventually disappearing into the hall, out of sight.
Hmm. I doubted she really had to go. I’d bet anything she just wanted to get away from me.
Let her. She wouldn’t be able to run soon enough.
Brianna would come to realize that this wedding wasn’t about her mother and my uncle. It was about us, about me and her. Soon she’d see that she’d been chosen for me. A plaything. A doll, basically. A living, breathing doll for me to play with.
Hmm. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, having her with me in the house.
Not only there, but in school, too. We’d drive together, come home together… have a lot of alone time together. Maybe, once I peeled back her layers and dug down to what was underneath it all, I’d discover the reason why Alistair thought she was so perfect for me.
Brianna was my present. I owed it to my uncle to toy with her.
Chapter Four – Brianna
It wasn’t like I’d lied. I did have to pee. I, uh, also wanted to get out of there. Let’s just say my mom had noticed the harsh looks I’d been giving Gareth, and she’d had a few choice words to say to me about it.
Funny how she managed to see my poor attitude, but she was oblivious to Gareth’s.
Actually, no. She was willfully oblivious to his, because he was a Montgomery. He had money, just like Alistair… and that meant he meant more in the scheme of things, more than I did to her, anyway.
It didn’t surprise me to hear my mom already playing favorites between us. It was merely a foreshadowing of what was to come. Gareth would become the son she’d never had; she’d shower him with love and affection and everything else she’d never shown me in my eighteen years of life, and I’d become a footnote. Just a tiny, semi-forgotten detail of her life.
That was fine. It wasn’t like my mom and I were BFFs. It did sting a little, though. Gareth was such an ass. He didn’t deserve her love.
After I peed, I stood in front of the mirror in the restroom for a few minutes, staring at myself. With heavily made-up eyes and my hair curled and pinned to the back of my head, I hardly looked like myself. The red dress on me was a big part of it, too.
I wanted to take the dress off and rip it up. I wanted to storm out of here and tell my mom off, something I’d been dying to do my entire life. This wedding was a joke, just like her marriage would be. She wasn’t marrying into a family; she was marrying into money. That’s all this was about. The life she’d had before today had never been enough for her.
