The Breaking Season: An Arranged Marriage Romance

by K. A. Linde

  “That son of a bitch,” I snarled. “I’ll kill him.”

  Monica reached out and grasped my arm. “Please, don’t do anything rash. It’s long since over. I just want a relationship with you.”

  “You don’t know the half of what he’s done in his life. This is just… the icing on the cake. The point where I’m fed up with his absolute bullshit. He’s done nothing but push me down my entire life. A bully trying to keep others in line. Well, I won’t stand by and let him do this any longer.”

  “Camden, I know that you think you know your father, but if you go after him like this, he will try to ruin you,” she said desperately. “It’s in his nature.”

  “Well, he won’t succeed,” I told her. “He might have raised me, but I’m twice the man he’ll ever be. And I know how to finally stop him.”

  “Camden, please,” Monica cried. “Please… just stay here tonight. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t trust him. Please.”

  She grasped my arm in her hands, and I looked back to see my mother begging me, pleading with me. My mother. The woman I’d spent so long looking for. The woman I’d blamed for abandoning me, only to find out it wasn’t true. And she wanted me here. She wanted me to stay.

  So, I nodded. And I stayed.

  My father would get his due.

  I would damn well make sure of it.

  36

  Katherine

  “I brought you clothes,” Lark said early the next morning as she entered my hospital room.

  I was still waiting for a doctor to discharge me. They were swamped, and the nurse had kept putting me off. I didn’t particularly like it, but it didn’t seem like there was much that I could do. So, I’d been sitting around in this horrid hospital gown until Lark showed up with a change of clothes.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the bag from her.

  “I cannot believe they cut you out of an Alexandre D’Oria original.”

  “Tell me about it. I haven’t told him yet. He’s probably going to cry.”

  “I feel like crying,” she said as she sank into a seat.

  I eased out of the bed and slid into the soft leggings and long-sleeved shirt she’d brought me. I’d told her how freezing I’d been all night. When I sank back into the bed, I saw she was wearing the Lark concerned face. I should have expected it earlier. I was amazed she’d even managed to hold it off for that long.

  “I really don’t want to hear it.”

  “And I really don’t care,” she snapped back.

  I winced at her tone. Lark didn’t often get mad. But when she did, she reverted back into her old self, in which she exploded. I prepared myself for that.

  “You know the entire crew wanted to come here, but I told them that you wouldn’t want all the fanfare.”

  “I appreciate that,” I told her.

  “But I should have let everyone show up,” she said as she began to pace. “I should have let you see how many people care about you. How many people worry for you. How many people you could hurt by doing this shit again, Katherine.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “And you’re still denying it!” she yelled at me.

  “I was sick,” I amended. “I was sick, and I didn’t realize it. Even when you asked me about it in Puerto Rico. I was sick then, but… I didn’t know it.”

  I’d had all night to think about it, and I’d come to the conclusion that I hadn’t seen what was going on in my life. That I’d been too wrapped up in my own misery to realize it. Yes, I was exercising more. Yes, I was seeing a nutritionist. I was still depressed and worrying about my body image to a point that was beyond reality.

  But I was getting better. No matter what Camden had said about my fainting. I’d been pulling myself out of it with his help.

  “You think you’re magically better?” Lark asked.

  “No. I think that I was on the mend, and now, I’m here. Everyone is freaking out for no reason.”

  Lark shook her head. “You’re unbelievable. You always think you’re one step ahead of everyone. Even one step ahead of yourself. Well, could you put on the brakes and look at the situation at hand?” Her lips quivered. “We’re worried about you, Katherine. We’re scared. I’m scared. You need help.” She stepped forward, taking my hand. “Please listen to me when I say that I want you to get help. And I’m going to be here and annoying you about it until you do.”

  The first thing I wanted to do was argue. I wanted to yell at Lark to mind her own goddamn business. But when I looked up at my friend, I couldn’t do it.

  I saw only love in her eyes. She’d stood by me through thick and thin. We’d known each other too long for bullshit in this moment. She was worried about me. She had reason to worry.

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll start going to therapy again. I’ll see what my psychiatrist says.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t want everyone to worry about me. I don’t want to be the person I was when this was bad.”

  “I didn’t think it’d be this easy,” Lark admitted.

  “It’s not easy. I’m still mad. I don’t want to be here. I don’t think that I’m bad enough to be here. There could have been another way.”

  “What other way?” Lark asked. “You weren’t listening to us. If you hadn’t ended up in the hospital, would you have ever come around to going to therapy again?”

  No. That answer was on the tip of my tongue.

  I knew that I hadn’t wanted to go back to therapy. Even seeing the fear in Lark’s eyes, I hadn’t wanted to consider it. Until I’d ended up here, I hadn’t even stopped to look at it. It had taken a night in solitude to make me see the reality of what had been happening.

  I didn’t think that I looked too skinny. In fact, I still felt like there were places that I needed improvement. But wasn’t that normal? Didn’t society tell us to keep working on our body? That we could always be healthier? Hadn’t people complimented me on my newer, smaller figure? Wasn’t that what everyone said they wanted? I’d been given all of these opportunities because my body was smaller.

  It was a total mind-set change to realize… maybe my body size didn’t even matter. It certainly didn’t mean that I was healthier. I’d seen girls who were waif thin, who were deathly ill, that society still complimented.

  I hated the whole thing. Everything that told me that being smaller, taking up less space, made me more, better, worthy. I was Katherine Van Pelt. My personality took up the entire room. And somehow, my body had to take up no space?

  Why was that what brought value to my life? Why did others make it the highest priority? And… was there ever going to be a way to stop it?

  “I hate feeling like this,” I said softly to Lark. “I don’t know what to do. People praise me for looking like this.”

  “And since when does Katherine Van Pelt care what other people think?”

  “Always,” I whispered.

  Lark sank against the bed. “Listen, I’ve known you for a long time. I know that this socialite business hangs on your appearance. You’ve always been beautiful and thin, and you think that matters, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with it. Like with the work you’re doing at the hospital for the children. For Jem. That’s what matters more than any body image out there.”

  “Jem,” I whispered. “She’s such a ray of sunshine even though she’s sick.”

  “Society would say she’s not the standard of beauty. But the girl didn’t even wear a wig! She wants everyone to see her bald head or her head scarf because that is beautiful to her. We cannot define our worth based on what is dictated to us by the media.”

  “I know. I know.” I shook my head. “I know that intuitively. But at the same time…”

  “At the same time, society has decided what beauty is. And women have to fit into that mold.” I nodded at her words. Lark shrugged. “Fuck it.”

  I laughed. “What?�
�

  “Just fuck it, Katherine. You don’t have to live up to anyone’s standards but your own. And I know it’s not that easy to dismiss everything we’ve learned. I know there’s a long road ahead of you. But I’ve been doing research on anti-diet culture, and I bet it would really help to find a therapist with that mind-set. Your body size doesn’t make you any happier. If anything, the skinnier you get, the more miserable you are.”

  I bit my lip. She was right. I’d lost weight when I was unhappy. And then I’d kept losing it because it seemed to make more things right.

  “What even is anti-diet culture?” I asked warily.

  “It’s the belief that diets don’t actually work. Most people lose the weight and then gain it right back, plus some. And that it’s damaging to have an unhealthy relationship with food, to offer good or bad qualities to food, to count calories or macros, to weigh yourself, to limit what kinds of food you can eat, to be heavily restrictive, even to take before and after pictures, as that focuses on the skinnier body being the better body. It’s just learning to live and love yourself again without qualification.”

  “That sounds… impossible.”

  Lark shrugged. “It feels like that at first. But I’ve tried to give up all my preconceived notions about it. I eat a burger when I want it. I eat a salad when I want it. I thank them both for nourishing my body. At the end of the day, I want to be happy and healthy and not constantly worrying about what I put in my body.”

  “Well, I guess I could try it.”

  “Along with therapy,” Lark said quickly.

  “Yes. I mean… it took over a year last time in therapy for me to be human again. I can’t imagine not looking at food that way. But… I’ll talk to someone about it.”

  “Good. That’s the first step.”

  Lark opened her mouth to say something else, but then a knock at the door stalled her. A second later, the door opened and revealed, to my shock, my mother.

  “Hello, Katherine.” She tipped her head at Lark. “Lark.”

  “Mother.”

  “Mrs. Van Pelt,” Lark said, jumping to her feet.

  She glanced over at me once with wide eyes. So, she hadn’t been the one to tell her.

  “Do you mind if I have a minute alone with my daughter?” my mother asked.

  “No, of course not.” Lark snatched up her purse and darted to the door. “I’ll be back later. Text me if you’re let out early.”

  “Will do.”

  And then she was gone. The door closed behind her. It was just me and my mother.

  “How did you find out?”

  “The real question is, why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure that you’d care.”

  My mother dropped her bag off in the chair and came to stand next to me. She looked as imposing as ever in a Chanel pantsuit. Her hair styled and makeup perfect. Everything I’d learned about how a woman was supposed to act came from her. And I felt so small and insignificant under her gaze.

  Then her hand came to rest on mine, and I saw something else there.

  “Of course I care, Katherine,” my mother said, emotion thick in her voice.

  I remained silent. A deer ready to bolt at a single provocation. I’d never heard that sound in my mother’s voice, and I didn’t know what to expect.

  “I was the first person to put you in the hospital,” she continued. “I was the one who had found you. I don’t know if you even remember. I’d come home from a luncheon, and I found you on the living room floor. You were barely breathing. I panicked. I had no idea what to do. I called 911 and rushed you to the hospital. I’d just lost my husband and my son.” She choked on the words. “I couldn’t lose you, too. I wouldn’t lose you. So, when the doctors said anorexia, I made you stay in that hospital. I didn’t think twice. I knew you might hate me for it, but if I kept you alive, then that was all that mattered. Because I didn’t know whether or not you’d live.”

  Tears welled into my eyes. My mother had never told me this story. I’d known the outcome, of course. I’d known that I’d been furious at her. That I’d blamed her for so long. For being callous. But… had it actually been the opposite?

  “You cared about me so much that you sent me to the hospital?” I whispered.

  “Of course. It was done out of love. Even if you never saw it that way. I was terrified to lose you.”

  I swallowed. Oh god. “I never… I never knew.”

  “That’s my fault as well,” she said, dragging a seat closer to me and sitting down. She looked so impossibly… frail in that moment. My mother, the giant… looked frail. As if life had hit her so much harder than she’d ever let on to me. “I wanted to do right by you. But in trying to do right, all I did was push you away. And… I think that’s what Camden tried to do last night.”

  I sighed. “So, Camden messaged you?”

  “He did, and I’m glad that he did. He’s looking out for you, even when you don’t want him to.”

  “I do wish that looking out for me didn’t always end up with me in a hospital.”

  “Katherine,” she said, drawing my attention back to her, “he loves you. He cares for you. And he’s not going to ruin your life like your father.”

  I winced at the words. “How do I know that?”

  She gave me a perfect Celeste Van Pelt bitch, please face. “Because you do.”

  And she was right. I was mad at Camden for what he’d done. But if he was half as worried as my mother had just admitted to being, as Lark had admitted to being, maybe… just maybe, he’d done the right thing. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t think I needed to be here.

  But he had.

  There hadn’t been another option either.

  He loved me, and in his own way, he had been taking care of me. I didn’t want to end up like my parents. I didn’t want a loveless marriage where I was doomed to be unhappy. I just wanted… Camden.

  “I think I probably need to talk to him.”

  My mother tapped my hand twice, and a real smile split her features. “I think you do, too.”

  37

  Camden

  I’d stayed with Monica—my mother—all night. We’d talked and shared stories and had a lot of alcohol. By the time morning came, I was ready to deal with my father and his decades of lies. I was ready for it to be over.

  She didn’t approve.

  I could see it in her expression. I could see the fear still buried down in there. It didn’t matter that she had left him over thirty years ago. My father still elicited a fearful response from her. She didn’t want to see this all go up in smoke. But she only knew half of the man that I had become. She’d seen the Camden Percy who came to the bar. The one who needed an escape. Who knew that he could be nothing but himself, even in unassuming clothing. But she didn’t know the man in the boardroom. The man who had made something of himself.

  My father had done his best to keep me down. I’d long thought that it was something to do with me. Something to do with my mother. But now, I knew the truth. He was just a worthless, piece-of-shit human, and he would tear down anything in his path.

  I’d spent my life silently saving my friends. Enacting revenge on the people who had hurt them. It was time to do the same for myself and for my mother. Time to take matters into my own hands.

  On my way back into the city, a group text came in from Lars, letting all of us know that Candice was about to have the baby. Elizabeth responded immediately, saying that she and my father were on their way. I didn’t respond. Just tucked the phone away and changed the direction of the limo.

  The hospital it was.

  I arrived thirty minutes later and headed up to Labor and Delivery. Part of me wanted to check in on Katherine first. But knowing her, she’d need more time to process what had happened. I would have liked to have her at my side through this though.

  My father and Elizabeth were in the waiting area when I arrived. Elizabeth stared out a window. I could see the anxiet
y in her body language. My father was seated, reading The New York Times. Not a single care. I was surprised he was even here for this.

  “Oh, Camden,” Elizabeth said, rushing toward me and enveloping me in a hug. “I’m so glad you could make it. Have you heard from Harmony? Or Katherine? I thought they’d both be here already.”

  I shook my head. “Katherine isn’t feeling well. I’m going to check on her after this. No word from Harmony.”

  She sighed heavily. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But at least you’re here.”

  “What took you so long?” my father asked, folding the paper and looking up at me.

  “I wasn’t in the city last night.”

  My father raised his eyebrows. “It was the Fashion Week gala last night.”

  “I am well aware,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Leave him be, Carlyle,” Elizabeth said, returning to her window.

  “Allow me to parent my son,” Carlyle snapped. It was more forceful than I’d heard him be with Elizabeth.

  A hole in the careful facade of their relationship he’d put up. I hadn’t seen them argue. Not that it meant they didn’t argue. But usually, my father was careful with who he showed his faults to. This was his fourth wife after all. He likely had a system down.

  Elizabeth didn’t say anything. She clenched her jaw and looked away. Apparently, she was going to let it slide. Big surprise.

  “Parenting? That’s rich,” I spat back.

  “I have done nothing but give you every opportunity to succeed. You’re helping to run my company. You’re living on the penthouse of my hotel.” He stood to his considerable height. There were a few feet between us, but we might as well have been nose to nose. “A little gratitude goes a long way.”

  “Gratitude,” I said with a shake of my head. “How could I feel gratitude to someone like you?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You’re really going to make me spell it out, aren’t you?”