“Aerin, I had no choice.”
“Bullshit,” she gasps, abandoning the book. “Oh my god this is humiliating. How can I show my face? How can I—” She cuts herself off and covers her mouth with one hand. “What did he say?”
“He was going to kill me because he believed you had been raped. I had to prove that wasn’t the case.”
Aerin’s brows dip slightly and a strange look passes through her eyes, something that reminds me of when I told Pidge what happened with my ex. Painful understanding.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to betray you, and I didn’t do it to save my life. I did it because you deserve more than lies sullying your name.”
Aerin slowly lowers her hand as the blush on her cheek fades to a pink. “I…shit.”
“I’m sorry, Aerin. He was very concerned about you.”
She slowly shakes her head. “No, he wasn’t.”
“Yes he?—”
“No.” She cuts me off and slumps back against the bench. “Sweet of you to pretend, but I know my father. All he cared about was that I’m still a v…still a virgin, right?”
I don’t want to admit the truth, not if it will hurt her. Remaining silent feels like a confirmation so I shake my head, seeking a way to spin the truth to her. “Aerin, I…”
“It’s okay,” she says quietly. “As soon as he introduced me to Frederick, I knew. No man like that would be interested in someone like me otherwise.”
“Someone like you?” Confusion swirls through me and tightens my chest. Aerin is beautiful. I’m sure Frederick saw that, I’m sure everyone sees that.
“Look at me.” She glances at me, but only for a second. “I’ve seen the other women in this world. No important guy wants to be lumped with a woman who has to check the sturdiness of a chair before she sits down, or who gets nervous getting into a car because everyone will feel the vehicle dip, or who is constantly trying to hide herself. The only thing I have going for me that has any value in any way is the fact I’m a virgin.”
Each word is a knife to the heart. Since I first laid eyes on her, I thought she was beautiful and nothing else crossed my mind.
Even when she was in the shower drunkenly trying to taunt me, I thought everything about her was crafted by a goddess, but she speaks about herself with such callousness that it almost hurts to listen to.
I ache to tell her she’s wrong. That how she views herself is born from years of terrible remarks and mirrored visions from family and not how she truly is, but I would be crossing another line.
I’m already on thin ice.
“Aerin,” I say quietly. “Your father was worried about you.”
“We both know that’s a lie.”
“It’s not.”
“Oh god…” She groans suddenly and her eyes screw closed. “This means everyone knows.”
My brow tightens. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Aerin. You were attacked and you survived. That’s something to be proud of. Half the people in the estate certainly wouldn’t be able to walk away from something like that with half as much dignity as you’ve retained.”
Aerin looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Not that, dummy. Now everyone knows I’m definitely avirgin. This is so fucking humiliating.”
19
AERIN
“Aerin, darling, are you in there?” Mom calls from outside my bedroom door.
I’ve spent the past three days ducking and dodging all my mother’s attempts to spend time with me. As much as she plies me with faux concern over the attack, I know she’s sentences away from talking about my impending wedding.
As a girl, I dreamed of such a thing. I’d wander Mom’s closet and marvel at her gorgeous dresses, imagining myself dressed up in one as I married a handsome prince from my storybooks and made everything picture-perfect.
Reality is different.
