Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
And worse, I’d seen what had always been there when I used to pour over photos of the two of them together in the past, that something that was hard to miss, that thing that had made me become obsessed with having it and had caused me to throw caution to the wind even when I feared losing because I just had to have it for myself.
It’s not something that can be easily put into words, but I know it when I see it, and I’ve only ever seen it in them, like two halves to a whole. It wasn’t about her beauty or his drop-dead gorgeous looks; beautiful couples are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. It was more, something deeper, something rare and ethereally beautiful in itself.
Anyone in their vicinity would be hard-pressed to miss that chemistry that seemed to flow between the two of them; it was so hard to miss, even when they weren’t trying. He’d never held me like that, never cared about me like that, he’d never even tried. There’s no way that it was natural.
Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe I was slowly losing my mind, but it started racing in all directions. What if she’d done the same thing I had? What if she’d hired someone to put a spell on him, too? The thought made me feel slightly better; I can fight fire with fire.
I started to run with it, but something niggled at the back of my mind and brought me up short. No, that’s not it. No one knows their story better than I do, and I know for a fact that he’d fallen for her long before they’d ever met, that their love for each other had grown naturally and had been heralded as one of the rarest in the industry.
Everyone had been rooting for them; well, everyone except Mary and her daughters, but except for them, it seemed like there was a time when the whole world was in love with Ryder and Elena. They’d captured the hearts of everyone from one end of the globe to the other, and I was only one of the million young girls whose hearts had burned with envy and want.
But I had done something with mine; I hadn’t just wished from afar. I’d gone after what I wanted, what I knew was the only thing in this world that could make me happy. It had been a great source of happiness for me the day my ultra-conservative father had agreed.
Well, to the public, he’s conservative; behind closed doors, it’s another matter, but that’s no one else’s business, and everyone does it. I know that better than anyone. Hadn’t I just spent five years convincing the world that I was in the happiest marriage the world had ever seen when the reality was that my husband hadn’t even looked me in the eye since the day of our wedding?
Why wasn’t I able to win his heart? Why had he kept me and everyone else out? Why had he longed for her the way he had until he made his way back to her? And why did she accept? I’d done everything in my power to make the wedge between them deeper and deeper, and yet, it had all been in vain.
I had her beat. Everything had gone well up until the wedding. I’d convinced him, with the help of the others, that I was his spiritual bride, the one who would save his soul. He’d been in such a dark place because of the lies we’d fed him that it was like taking candy from a baby.
She’d lost spectacularly, and I’d reveled in her misery for years, finding my only joy in the fact that she was suffering and he was by my side. After a while, it had stopped mattering that he wasn’t the same man with me as he had been with her. She became my main focus, hurting her, degrading her, making her life hell had made up for the cold bed I was made to sleep in night after night.
It had become my purpose in life to torment her. Would she now do the same to me? I know the face she shows the world and what he thinks of her, Miss. Perfect, and in all this time, she has never retaliated against me, but maybe now that she had what she wanted, would that change?
That fear crept in again, and I realized that the drugs were having an odd effect on me. I didn’t feel high; it was more like my mind was reliving my every deed, almost as if it were forcing me to confront myself, something I had no interest in doing.
I felt hunted and trapped as my mind conjured up all the things that I had done to harm her, and the fear that she would do the same back to me became paramount in my mind.