I wince.
She laughs softly, but it’s not an amused laugh. “Yeah. So with one more failed college experience under my belt, my parents sent their family manager to tell me that I would no longer be financially supported by the Merriweather-Brown fortune. Effective immediately. No money except what I had in my purse. They took my security team and chef and stopped payment on my rental house and disconnected my phone fromthe family plan. I didn’t know how to cook. I didn’t have any credit cards that weren’t tied to them, and they stopped those too. I should’ve set myself up to take care of myself in basic ways already—I was old enough. But I was still in college and I’d never had to learn. They used their money and my own ignorance to try to control me, and when they realized it wouldn’t work, they cut me off with no idea how to get by in the real world.”
I rub my chest.
I’m running away. I’ve put plans in motion to give away a significant portion of the fortune I was born into, and I’m developing plans to give away most of the rest of my money as well.
But I’ll keep enough to live a comfortable life—more than a comfortable life, honestly—so that no one else ever has to take care of me. So that I can invest in learning how to be a normal person with normal hobbies and interests and goals without worrying about paying my bills for the rest of my life.
Shit. I’m boring.
“That’s—” I cut myself off, uncertain what word is right to describe what her parents did.
“Like turning a ten-year-old loose in the world for all that I knew about how to manage the critical everyday parts of life, with the added bonus that the entire world knew I was suddenly on my own,” she says. “They thought I’d come running back to them and promise that I’d quit protesting and that I’d finally finish the next college degree program and that I’d go work for the company like Margot did so that they could look like the big, happy, money-making family that we were.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Fuck them. If they didn’t want me, then I could want me enough to be my own whole family.”
It’s not lost on me how much more I have in common with Daphne than I ever would’ve dreamed.
I didn’t lead protests to… I don’t even know what all she’s protested in her lifetime. Can’t begin to guess, in fact.
But I know this trip, my life, my future—this is a bigfuck youto my parents.
“What did you— How did you get through it?” I ask.
“I’d made a friend in a couple classes. She let me move in with her. She taught me how to drive—better, I mean, when I didn’t have money to pay for those speeding tickets—and how to cook the most basic stuff ever. She helped me find a job. She taught me about money management and paying bills and how to clean up after myself, and she didn’t make a fuss about the fact that my aging dog kept crapping all over the carpet when she had enough else to worry about in her life. She saved my life.”
“She sounds like a good person.”
“The. Absolute. Best.” She giggles softly.
I slide another look her way.
She shakes her head like whatever’s funny, she’s not sharing. “I realized about two years ago—my parents cutting me off was the best thing they could’ve done for me. I still don’t want anything to do with them, but it’s not because I’m mad anymore. I mean, no more angry than anyone would be over parents dumping a kid they hadn’t prepared for the real world. Maybe I’d feel differently if I had to see them regularly, but I don’t sit around fuming about what they did anymore. I’ve realized they don’t deserve me, and that’s a good thing.”
“Healthy attitude,” I murmur.
“Or incredibly egotistical and self-centered.”
She’s wrong, but I don’t correct her. I’m already feeling too close for comfort with her today. “Margot didn’t help you at all?”
“She offered. Tried to insist on it, in fact. I told her no. Because once it was all gone, it was—well, terrifying and horrible for a little bit, butafterthat, I realized I was stronger and smarter than I’d ever given myself credit for. Making it on myown—it’s—I can’t fully describe the satisfaction that comes with knowing that everything I do in my life, every change I make in the world, every personal interaction I have that makes someone else happy—it’s like I finally understand why I was born. What I’m supposed to do. And it’s—it’s magic to know that it’sme. Powerful, I think, might be the right word. I was never supposed to be able to take care of myself, and here I am, operating a budget and holding down a real job and having real friends who like me for me, goddess only knows why some days, but they do.”
Dammit.
I shouldn’t have asked.
Shouldn’t have brought it up.
Because now I’m sweating.
I’m sweating and heading toward a panic attack because Daphne Merriweather-Brown, my ex-fiancée’s chaos-loving, criminal-record-holding, tattooed, multicolored-hair sister, is not only living the life I want, but she’sowningit.
And that’s sexy as hell.
It’s like my entire libido has been asleep since my father was arrested, and it’s now awake and remembering women exist, and Daphne is the only woman on the planet.
