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Before Asher could promise me anything, he had to know everything.
So, releasing a deep breath, I took his hand, pulling him toward Violet’s narrow bed that still occupied one wall of her former bedroom.
Apparently, multi-million-dollar apartments came fully furnished.
Drawing him down beside me, I reached up and tugged off the stupid cat ears, tossing them on the floor and kicking them under the bed with my foot while I prepared to tell Asher all the reasons why I wasn’t someone to bet on.
“When I was seventeen, I was engaged to be married.”
Chapter thirty-two
Asher
Whattheactualfuck?
For a second, all I could do was stare, the implications of what she had just said not quite registering in my brain.
“You were what now?”
I couldn’t have heard her right. There was no way that anyone in their right mind would think that a teenager—a person barely capable of not qualifying as a literal child—was in any way ready to be married.
“You said I didn’t have to be defensive,” she reminded me with a glare, and I nodded, putting my hands up in surrender.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I want to hear it.”
“Then shut up and let me talk,” she snapped, but I could see the smile under all her sass. My Ricki was coming back out of her shell. “Growing up, I guess I always knew something like that would be expected of me,” she went on, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the plants that littered the other side of the room. “My family had always had lofty expectations of their children; how we dressed, what schools we went to, who our friends were.” Shaking her head, Ricki let out a soft laugh. “My mother was never shy about letting me know when I did things that she wasn’t happy about. My personal fashion choices were a particular thorn in her side, as was my friend group.” Cutting her eyes to me, Ricki grinned. “If you think I’m a handful, you should meet my friend Francesca. She’s a firecracker buried under a pastel sweater set and pearls. My mother hated that we were friends, and she let me know, loudly and often.” Her face fell as she sighed. “I had been disappointing my parents at every turn for as long as I could remember, so it really should have come as no surprise that they’d try to marry me off as soon as possible, right? How better to break a girl’s spirit than to tie her to a man she can’t stand.”
I clenched my teeth, my jaw aching with the pressure I was putting on it in an attempt to keep my mouth shut. I just kept picturing a younger Ricki, wild and feisty and bucking every expectation anyone threw at her. It was probably the saddest thing I could imagine, anyone wanting to stifle that fire inside her that I loved so much. That fire that called to me and kept me guessing was one of my favorite things about Ricki, and I was glad she had somehow managed to escape that fate.
But judging by the interaction with her brother, it wasn’t a clean break.
“I remember the night I met the man my parents wanted me to marry. Connor Van Rensburg. He was a friend of my brother’s from university, nearly ten years older than me, and someone my father thought would be an excellent contact for our family. I mean, who wouldn’t want their daughter to marry the heir to a South African diamond empire, right? They didn’t even give me a fucking chance to get to know the guy. They just sprang it on me one night at dinner, sitting me next to him at the table and informing me that the wedding was set for the following spring.”
Ricki lifted her eyes to mine, and I could see the hurt in them, the pain that her family’s actions had caused her as fresh as the day they’d essentially sold her off like a possession.
“I told my parents I wanted to go to art school, that I wanted to continue to study my passion for creating art, but they shut me down immediately. No daughter of theirs was going to waste her life drawing pictures when she could be helping secure the family’s future by creating the next generation of venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, right?”
“What did you do?” I asked when it seemed like she wouldn’t continue her story.
“At first, I tried to make them happy. I went into the situation with an open mind, thinking that maybe this would be the thing I could do that would finally get my family to really see me, you know? To look at me with pride rather than disappointment.”
Blowing out a breath, Ricki shook her head in defeat.
“But it didn’t matter because Connor had no more interest in being my husband than I did in being his wife. He was a total man-whore, schlepping around town with a different bimbo on his arm every night, constantly in the society pages and social media for his exploits. And my young, naïve ass was devastated, you know? Like, why agree to marry me if he had no interest in actually being married?”
“Money?” I guessed, and Ricki nodded.
“Fucking money. Turned out that his family had connections in the import and export business and my father had a senator in his pocket. So, when Connor’s dad needed someone to turn a blind eye to shipping something a little more risky than diamonds, that was how they were going to get it done.”
“By ruining your life in the process.”
“Exactly.”
I couldn’t imagine it, honestly. There was no amount of money in the world that would convince me to do something like that to Bretton. I just didn’t understand how Ricki’s family could have valued her and her happiness so little.
“So,” I asked, riveted by her story and beyond interested in knowing how it ended. “How did you get out of it?”
“Well, my mother wouldn’t hear of calling off the wedding. Seemed she didn’t care that Connor had no intentions of honoring his wedding vows. She actually told me that my father had never been faithful to her, and it was just something men in our world did. So I should just get used to it.”
