Holy shit. I’m pretty sure I just forgot how to breathe.
SEVEN
LAUREN
And that’show he leaves me—standing there in the kitchen with my heart pounding and my entire body humming like a live wire, questioning everything I thought I knew about myself.
What the hell was my life a week ago? Yesterday? Was I even the same person who woke up in my mother’s spare bedroom this morning, sending out résumés to companies that would never call me back?
Is this really me?
Because as completely insane as it sounds, it’syesterdaythat feels like the dream world now. This—standing in a magical castle after being swept away by a god with wings and a tail—this feels more real than anything I’ve experienced in years. Like my entire life was just a waiting room, and today, in that plaza by the fountain, it finally began.
And not because I met some man.
But because when something shocking and extraordinary finally crashed into my boring, dead-end, pathetic excuse for an existence, I didn’t run screaming for safety like everyone else.
I jumped off the fucking cliff even when there was every chance of jagged rocks or hungry sharks waiting below.
I’m not the girl who leaps. I’mneverthe girl who takes risks.
When I met Michael, I was this painfully shy college student just one year away from graduating with my Library Sciences degree—yeah, I was going to be a librarian, because apparently I was born to live the most stereotypically quiet life possible. A few girlfriends had to literally drag me kicking and screaming to a bar for my twenty-first birthday. I’d commuted to school for three years, lived at home to save money, never partied, barely dated. I was about as exciting as white bread.
When my bestie started flirting with a group of guys at the bar—who turned out to be Michael’s fratboy friends celebrating his startup getting its first round of funding—I never thought the cute guy with the perfect hair and practiced smile would give me a second glance. Not when I was out with friends I considered way more attractive and confident than me.
I didn’t leap that night. The alcohol just loosened me up enough to giggle at his jokes and lean in when he sat down beside me, telling me all about his brilliant new company and how he was going to revolutionize e-commerce. I thought it was pure luck that I got laid on my birthday by such a seemingly successful, good-looking guy.
Even if the actual sex consisted of him pumping into me exactly twice before crawling up to jerk himself off all over my face like I was some kind of human tissue.
When he called the next week offering me a “prestigious summer internship” at his company, I was just excited about the professional experience. I didn’t recognize it for the classic narcissist-seeks-naive-victim recruitment strategy that it actually was.
God, I was such a fucking sucker.
He saw exactly how desperate and insecure I was, how hungry for validation. Then he got three years of free labor and a live-in bangmaid to boot.
Was he cheating on me the entire time? That question still torments me when I let my mind go there. Michael liked what was comfortable and convenient. He’d recently moved out of his mommy’s house and needed someone to cook, clean, do his laundry, and stroke his ego because managing his precious startup was “just so stressful.”
But I had a boyfriend! We lived together! He told me he loved me, that I was vital to his business success. At least in the beginning. Sure, I was still making barely above minimum wage, and he’d never “gotten around to” officially promoting me to Operations Director because he was “so swamped with investor meetings.” But that was just the way of genius entrepreneurs, right? He was about to close another funding round and was under enormous pressure. I needed to support him, help him de-stress, keep the whole team focused.
I slam my fist against the silk bedding, frustration boiling over. Ugh! I’m supposed to be living in this magical moment, not letting that narcissistic asshole take up another second of my mental real estate. I hate that I still think about him. I hate that he still has the power to make me feel small and stupid and worthless.
I never wanted to be one of those women who pine over some guy, especially now that I know what a manipulative piece of shit he really was.
I idolized him for so fucking long. Believed in him and all the motivational-speaker bullshit he constantly spouted. And then to realize that the nagging voice in the back of your mind—the one saying something was seriously off—was right all along? All those questions I asked that he somehow always turned back on me, making me feel guilty and paranoid for even having doubts...
It shattered my faith in everything. In my own judgment, in love, in the possibility that anyone could actually want me for me.
He was a lie wrapped in expensive clothes and fake charm. I’d been living with a complete stranger for three years, and I was the fool who fell for it. The entire foundation of my world just... crumbled.
And then I crawled back to live with Mom, who was a different flavor of toxic entirely.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this world anymore. Couldn’t trust my own instincts, couldn’t believe in anything or anyone.
But then, when something wild and magnificent and dangerous dropped out of the sky, I knew I was ready to take the leap. Not just because I was desperate to escape the suffocating life I was trapped in, but because I wanted to believe in something magical again. Even if it turned out to be dangerous. Even if it destroyed me.
Wasn’t that what real adventure was supposed to be?
Not some sanitized Disney version with happy endings guaranteed. Sometimes there are dark, twisted woods full of things that want to eat you alive. Always thrilling to read about in books, maybe a little more terrifying to actually live through.
