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If it means I can finally breathe, then yeah.
I get that. I really do. But there has to be more to life than just the absence of struggle. There has to be hope for something beyond not-terrible-all-the-time.
And I just need to know I’m not alone here.
I don’t need Ivan to love me; I’m not that delusional. I’m aware that this isn’t a real marriage. It isn’t even a real relationship. But still, I need to know I’m more than just the burden that cruel fate or terrible luck stuck him with.
Again, I see the simmering rage in his gaze, the curl of his sneering lip as he glared down at me.
Maybe a burden is exactly what I am.
Before I can think about what I’m doing, I grab my phone off the bed and tap in a familiar number. Unlike Dad, Mom answers on the second ring.
“This is Evaline.”
I could hang up. I’m calling from a new phone. She’ll never know who it was. She’ll probably just assume it was a spam call or a wrong number.
But her voice is a lifeline floating in the water and I’m slipping below the surface. On sheer dumb instinct, I lunge for it.
“Hi, Mom.”
She inhales sharply. “Cordelia? Is that you? Are you alright?”
I sigh. It’s the first time I’ve called her since I left. I should have expected she’d suspect something is wrong.
To be fair, somethingiswrong.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Check if you’re okay.”
It’s more than she’s done for me. At one time in my life, she was my everything. It was the two of us against the world.
“You and me, me and you,” she used to whisper over whatever dinner we managed to scrabble together.
I believed her wholeheartedly. She was my mom. Why wouldn’t I?
Then someone better came along and I became an afterthought.
“Who is it?” a muffled voice in the background asks.
It’s the same voice I overheard at Ivan’s party. The same cruel voice that still plays in my nightmares from time to time. Alexander McAllister.
My stepfather.
“Don’t tell him,” I beg her in a desperate whisper. “Lie.”
“Evaline, who is it?” he asks again.
I can hear her hesitation. She’s probably chewing her lower lip and glancing over her shoulder at him. I get my inability to lie from my mother. My father was always remarkably good at it. You don’t start a secret second family without a few gnarly lies up your sleeve.
“Mom,” I rasp.
Still, she says nothing. But with that, she has said more than enough.
I hang up the phone and blink back the tears burning in my eyes.
My mother chose my stepfather over me years ago. When we moved into his mansion and she let him auction me off to the highest bidder, to Mikhail—that was her choosing him. I don’t know why I expected anything different today.
My own parents don’t love me. Why do I think anyone else should? Maybe a loveless marriage built on mutual convenience is the best I can hope for. If I was smart, I’d get on my knees and beg Ivan to make this official.
