by Aubrey Irons
“Or I could leave,” I hiss through my teeth.
“You won’t,” he tosses over his shoulder.
“Watch me.”
“I will. I’ll watch you with your mountain of college debt and your father with his mountain of medical debt leave my property.” He turns to look at me over his shoulder, a hand coming up to brush the hair from his face. His free hand slips into the pocket of his pajama pants and comes out with a pack of Marlboro Reds, bringing the pack to his mouth and using his teeth to pull a cigarette free of it.
Some things don’t change.
He nods at the guitar case sitting by my suitcases as he slips the pack back into his pocket and flicks open an old metal Zippo lighter.
“Maybe you could play corners down in Soho or something. Take requests on the subway maybe?”
I hate him.
I hate the casual way a man with more money than God can smile as he suggests literally throwing my father and me out on the street when we’re each at our lowest and most vulnerable. I hate the way working for him feels like indentured servitude. I hate how being back in this fucking place brings back everything I ran from years before.
“You’re an asshole,” I spit.
“And you’re my employee.”
“Not yet I’m not.”
The cherry at the end of his cigarette glows red in the gloom of the room as he drags on it slowly.
“The papers are on the desk.” He nods at a manila envelope and a stack of papers lying open on the sheet draped over the old desk, a pen lying next to it. “Sign them.”
My hand tightens into a fist at my side. I don’t budge.
“Texas,” he sighs. “Just sign the fucking papers. We both know it’s an easy choice.”
I shake my head as I turn and stare at the contract laying open on the desk.
“Why?” I say quietly, my voice small. “Why me? There have to be a hundred other—”
“Maybe I just like having you around,” he growls smugly.
I bark out a sharp, singular, brittle laugh. “You never liked having me around. I think you made that abundantly clear.”
Bastian just shrugs. “It’s not going to be on me to sell you on this. You can put up a fight and make yourself feel better if you want, but we both know how this ends.”
Yeah with me giving up my dreams when I was THIS close to touching them, so I can come back here and be Bastian Crown’s fucking gardener and save my father’s job.
That’s how this ends, and as much as I absolutely hate even thinking it, he’s right.
I am going to sign it because there’s no scenario where anyone with a conscience doesn’t sign it. I don’t say a word, and I ignore his eyes on me as I walk over to the desk, pick up the pen, and sign at the “x”.
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it.”
My lips are pursed tight as I drop the pen and glare up at him. Bastian only smiles as he turns.
Crick.
Crick.
He stagger-steps back to the doorway to the dark, gloomy hallway again, his cane striking the floor with every step. Smoke curls around his head in the dim stillness of the room as his free hand comes up and pushes a button on a panel by the doorframe, which blinks green for a moment.
“Mrs. Tottingham will show you to your room.”
I frown. My room?
“I’d planned on just staying—”
“In the cottage? Well, it’s missing a wall, thanks to your father, and the water and electricity have been turned off due to the smoke damage.” He turns, shrugging with a sneer on his face. “But have at it.”
I meet his look with one of my own, unblinking and naked in its disdain.
“Fine.”
He snorts. “Petulant as ever, Texas.”
“Asshole as ev—”
“Watch it.”
I jump a little at the sudden ferocity in his response - the icy coldness in his voice that lances through me, shutting me down.
“Remember that as of right now. As of you setting foot in this house and signing that?” His eyes narrow at me. “As of right now, I own you.”
The words hang in the gloomy silence of the study, and I’m just staring at him, seething, when I hear footsteps behind me.
“You rang, Mister Crown?”
Hearing Mrs. Tottingham - the motherly housekeeper and cook to the Crown Estate - is a moment of homecoming I’m not able to enjoy as I stand there frozen, staring at this monster of a man.
I hate him.
“Mrs. Tottingham will show you to your room,” Bastian repeats with a growl, dragging on his cigarette and turning his back to me again.
“This way, dear,” Mrs. Tottingham says quietly as I pick up my bags and guitar and start to turn. She steps from the room opposite the doors Bastian entered from when I hear his voice behind me.
“Anastasia.”
I close my eyes, my gut clenching like it always did when he said my real name instead of his little nickname. My breath comes shaking, and I pray it doesn’t show in my shoulders before I square them, clench my jaw, and turn to him.
His dark, shadowed eyes pierce right through me from under the flop of hair across his brow.
“Please remember one thing.” His lips pull into a grin. “Here, in this house? You’re mine. I own that petulant, back-talking, opinionated ass of yours.”
I hate him.
My lips purse, and my eyes narrow at him as I slowly shake my head and start to turn my back on him.
“You don’t.”
“We’ll see.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself not to turn back as I hear his gravelly, low chuckle, followed by the cricking sound of his cane as he slowly makes his way from the room, leaving me alone.
I hate Bastian Crown. I hate him because years ago, at one point, for one night, I was stupid enough to think I loved him.
And I’ve been paying for it ever since.
The door to my quarters slams shut behind me. I grimace, snarling angrily at the nerve of its loudness.
Fuck, I need a drink. My head’s still pounding from the hangover of the night before, but I need to stabilize. I need to even out.
I kick away the empty beer cans as I shuffle through the room, past filthy dishes stacked on a side table, past old laundry heaped across the sofa in my living area, past framed pictures - the glass cracked and shattered as they hang lopsided or on the floor.
It’s hot in here. Or maybe it’s not, it could just be the sweats. I’ve been getting those more and more these days, which probably isn’t a good sign. “Probably” nothing - it’s most definitely not a good sign as Dr. Moreland reminded me the last time he came by to check in on my leg and refill my prescriptions.
The truth is, booze shakes and sweats are a sign that I’m falling the fuck apart. The other truth is, I could honestly care less at this point.
My eyes narrow on the mostly empty bottle of bourbon sitting on my bedside nightstand.
Yeah, that’ll do.
I grab an empty coffee mug from the mantle of the huge fireplace, sniffing it and deciding I don’t mind the hint of coffee smell before I unscrew the bourbon and pour a healthy double. I bring it to my lips and swallow deeply, feeling the familiar warmth of the booze creeping through my broken body.
It burns. It ignites my veins and clears the haze from my eyes. It brings that sort of fuzzy focus I’ve learned to prefer over reality in the last few months. And reality is something I’m happy to escape from today. Because I underestimated the feelings having her back here would bring. I underestimated what it would do to me.
Anastasia Bell.
Years later, and I’m still getting the same damn look from her.
The disdain.
The indifference.
The looking down on me for what I am, instead of worshipping me for something I’m not like most people always have.
And worst of all, the pity. It’s not because of the accident, either. I got this shit from her years a
go too - like she pitied me for being me.
I scowl as I slug back more whiskey. I’d say that’s the reason she’s here, instead of literally any other girl on the planet - to finally Lord who I am over who she is, or a chance to remind her that she’s not better than me, despite her misplaced belief that she is - but that’s a lie.
She’s here because she’s her, and she’s here for much more than saving her father’s job, she just doesn’t know it yet.
She’s here to save an empire - my empire.
But fuck her pity.
Fuck her disdain.
Fuck her indifference to me.
I own her now.
The whiskey clears my head as much as it buries it. I slump down into the high-backed chair near the massive fireplace of my room, clearing away more empties and pulling a sour face at the makeshift ashtray in what used to be a cereal bowl.
Mrs. Tottingham grows a new wrinkle every time I refuse her entrance to my quarters, which have slowly become more of a health and safety hazard than a living area. But this place is my sanctuary, and no one comes in here but me. Not Mrs. Tottingham. Not the few friends I’ve got left. Not the nameless women, though even those have stopped since the wreck, and my leg.
My quarters are a dump is what they are, but it’s me. Broken and shredded, and torn down from the opulent, old-money prestige and pedigree it once was. A bit like me.
Almost killing your best friend and then being put under house arrest will do that.
I don’t remember shit about the crash the night of my twenty-seventh birthday six months ago. I’d say that’s a good thing, except more and more these days, I want to remember. I need to remember because I need the pain.
I deserve the pain.
Deep down, I know it should be me in that hospital bed, not Dylan. It should be me lying broken and breathing through fucking tubes, not wasting away in this old house, counting down the days until the life I know gets taken from me. I swig back more of the whiskey, trying to blur out the memories of coming to in that hospital bed - my leg in a cast, my head in a fog, and three state troopers standing solemnly over me.
Not my finest birthday, I’ll say that.
Glancing around my room here, at my parents’ house, the only saving grace of this place - the only thing that points to humanity of any kind is the makeshift glass and metal structure in the corner near the double doors to my balcony. I’ve got the heat lamps going twenty-four hours a day, I’ve got the drip water system hooked up as best I can, and I’ve got the “crushed, fossilized mineral protein” that cost a fucking small fortune from the horticulture place I found in Paris that apparently specializes in rare flowers.
But I know it’s a losing battle. I am not Hank fucking Bell with his magic green thumb. I’m not even my mother, with her love of these roses. I mean, they’re pretty, I guess, but to me, they’re just flowers. And yet, here I am keeping the one surviving plant from that fire alive as best I can, like it matters.
Who the hell knows why we do the shit we do.
This is why I drink, by the way.
The whiskey goes down quicker than I imagined it would. I fill my coffee cup with the last of it before I throw the bottle vaguely in the direction of a trashcan.
Why the fuck did I bring her back here.
There’s the disdain, and the pity, and indifference that I remember from the day-to-day of existence with Anastasia Bell in my orbit. But then, there’s the one other look from her that’s forever seared into my memory. That look I only saw the once, but once was enough for it to have tattooed itself across my memory. It was the last look she ever gave me, on that night years ago. That look of betrayal, and anger. The look of understanding.
It was the look of finally truly realizing just how much of a monster I was. Am.
The look she gave me just now is different, in a way, but deep down, it’s the same one. Shit, it’s been nine damn years, and though time and life have dulled and eroded the rawness of that hurt from before, it’s the same fucking look.
I was a monster back then, and time’s only made me worse. The accident’s only buried me deeper into that darkness inside. Putting Dylan into a coma, being chained up inside this house that’s more a mausoleum to my parents than anything else, and finding out that all of this and everything I have might get taken away by the time I turn twenty-eight?
I was horrible before, but what Anastasia Bell might not know is that everything that’s happened since that night has only done one thing.
It’s made me worse.
My gaze slides to the table beside my chair, my eyes landing on the little lines of what’s definitely either crushed up Percocet or cocaine from last night on top of my laptop.
Perfect.
I could dwell more on why I brought Anastasia back here with her disdainful looks, and her hatred for me, and the demons she brings back with her. I could go deep and really mull over why it’s her, over anyone it could be.
Or I could do what I do best these days.
Slip into darkness.
The liquor and the drugs and the broken, shattered sanctuary of my quarters come easier anyways.
9 Years Ago:
It started how all stupid, fucking idiotic high school dares start.
With alcohol, of course.
Picture a ten-bedroom mansion on the beach. Now picture a hell-raising teenager with full reign of the place. Now remove the element of parents from the equation.
…Needless to say, basically every party that happened during my four years at South Neck High happened at my house, and every single one was balls-out, pedal-to-the-metal insane.
“You left some, you pussy.”
Dylan rolls his eyes and flips Tyler off as he brings the plastic Solo cup back up to his lips and slugs back the last gulp.
Ty shakes his head. “You know the whole point of chugging is that you’re supposed to finish on the first run, right?”
“Guess I haven’t been working on my gag reflex like you have.”
Ash snorts as Tyler flips the rest of us off. He reached for the pump of the keg we’re all standing around. We’re up on my bedroom balcony, the sounds of the party roaring through the rest of the house and out across the back lawn by the pool. It’s not even that late, but things are already getting wild. There are definitely some bare tits out in the pool, and at least two partygoers already passed out in the grass. Mike Garmon has Jen Blake - both seniors - on her back in one of the pool chairs while he fucks the shit out of her, heedless of the crowd around them.
You know, typical Friday night at the Crown Estate.
Some nights, I’d be down there with the rest of them, playing beer pong or taking body shots off Bethany Miller’s epic tits or something. But some nights - nights that’ve been increasingly more frequent recently - I prefer to just sit up here with Ty, Ash, and Dylan and watch, like the four kings we are, surveying our court.
“Surprise, surprise. Guess who’s not coming to your party.”
I blink, turning to see what Tyler is nodding at. Ana, who’s not at the party that’s going down two hundred feet from her cottage, of course. She’s outside on the small little hedged-in patio behind the gardener’s cottage, hidden from the rest of the party. But I’ve got a direct view from up here into her little hiding place.
I sometimes wonder if she knows that.
Tonight, she’s got her big clunky headphones on - of course they’re big and clunky and “vintage” or whatever. As if “I have to be different from everyone else” Anastasia Bell would ever be caught with little white Apple earbuds like literally every other person ever. And she’s playing her guitar. I can’t hear her, of course, over the ruckus of the party and the thumping hip-hop music, but I can still watch.
She does this a lot, actually - sit out on her patio and play around quietly on her acoustic, usually with those damn headphones on. I never really can hear what she’s playing, and I can’t imagine why I’d care beyond basic curiosity. But for s
ome reason, that night, I wonder what it is.
“The fuck is wrong with her?” Ty shakes his head, taking a slug of beer.
I say nothing.
“She doesn’t, like, do anything.”
“Looks like she plays guitar,” Dylan says with a shrug.
Tyler frowns. “Man, I mean she doesn’t party or fuckin’…I don’t know. Shit, she doesn’t even go out with anyone.”
Ash shrugs, taking a pull from the bottle of whiskey in his hands. “She went out with that Stedman kid.”
I look away at the mention of Josh Stedman, the guy Ana was dating last year.
Was.
“Yeah but then he was fucking Kendra Wallace or something behind her back.”
Tyler snorts. “Jesus, what are you, the Cosmo gossip section of South Neck High?”
Ash flips him off as he takes another swig of whiskey.
I just watch Ana play.
“You think he ever tapped that?”
That pulls me out of my trance, my eyes narrowing and my jaw tightening as I turn back to my three buddies.
“What?” I hiss.
Tyler shrugs. “Josh. I mean he must have banged Ana, right? They went out for like a year.”
I scowl. “How the fuck should I know?”
I do know. I know because knowing the answer to that question ate at my mind for fucking months before money and vague physical threats dragged the answer out of Josh.
He didn’t.
Tyler gives me a look. “Relax. Just a fucking question.” He turns his gaze back to her. “You think she’s a virgin?”
Dylan whistles. “Naaaaah. No way. She got way too hot last year to still be holding onto that.”
“You ever see her go out with anyone?” Ty turns to me. “C’mon man, you’ve gotta know. She ever bring any dudes over? I mean, hell, you can probably see into her room from up here.”
And I can, actually.
I shrug, reaching for my pack of cigarettes and avoiding looking at him. “No fucking clue. I doubt it. It’s a small house, and her dad’s there all the time.”
Ash shrugs. “Well, she’s got that guitar and her plants. Maybe she’s just one of those girls that’s not into it.”