SWNOVELS Alluring Darkness: Chapter 25
To say that there is tension inside our family dining room is the understatement of the decade. The very air is practically crackling with it, and the clinking of our utensils against the plates is so loud in the thick silence that it’s nearly deafening.
At last, Mom’s restraint snaps and she slams down her knife and fork on the table. “I still don’t understand why!”
There is confusion, disappointment, and quite a lot of accusation in my mother’s eyes as she locks them on me.
Yesterday, she finally found out that I had quit the chemistry teacher program and instead enrolled in Blackwater University. She called me and Connor immediately and demanded that we come home the next day for a family meeting. I have already spent the past hour explaining to her that yes, this was my decision, and no, I’m not changing my mind. Connor has been suspiciously silent throughout the entire dinner, but I’m pretty sure that he has already told Mom exactly how terribly I’m failing all of my classes because she has brought that up several times.
“Because I wanted to,” I reply, cutting off a piece of chicken and popping it in my mouth.
“Stop with the flippant attitude, Raina,” Mom says, angrily flicking back her long blond hair. “And explain why you threw away your future as a teacher to do this… this… whatever this is.”
“I didn’t throw away my future. If this doesn’t work out, I can still re-enroll for the teacher program next year.”
“I can already tell you that it won’t work out. You know it. I know it. Your brother knows it. So why would you enroll at a university that you have no business being at?”
A flash of annoyance shoots up my spine, and I grip my fork harder. Since I don’t trust myself to reply politely just yet, I take an extra couple of seconds before speaking as I look back at Mom.
The lines around her pale green eyes are more visible when she’s angry. And she is angry, there is no mistake about that. But so am I. In fact, it is taking all of my willpower not to slam my fist down on the table just to hear the satisfying rattle that would fill the air when all the fine plates and dishes would jump up from the tabletop. Or to snatch up one of those crystal glasses and hurl it at the wall and watch as the red wine splashes against it and then runs down like blood, staining the stylish white wallpaper.
Drawing in a long breath through my nose, I at last grind out, “I have every right to enroll at Blackwater. I am Harvey Smith’s child too, am I not?” I stab my knife in Connor’s direction. “Just like he is.”
Across the table, Connor is staring at a pile of broccoli with enough singular focus to make it seem like it’s the most fascinating thing he has ever seen. Cutting piece after piece, he eats furiously while looking like he would rather be anywhere but here.
“Of course you are,” Mom replies, her voice softening. Her eyebrows smoothen into a sympathetic look as she meets my gaze again. “But we’ve talked about this, Raina. You’re not cut out for that line of work. Your father, God rest his soul, agreed with that too.”
“Yeah, you and Dad agreed. But what about what I want?”
“You’re making our family look bad!” she snaps, the words ricocheting through the elegant dining room like a bullet.
And there it is. The thing she has been wanting to say from the moment I walked across the threshold. My poor performance reflects badly on the family, and that will ruin our chances of recovering from this financial and social mess. Or so she thinks. If she only knew what I’m really doing.
I glance towards Connor. He is shoveling rice into his mouth as if his life depends on it. And he doesn’t contradict Mom, which means that he agrees with her assessment.
Setting down my fork on the polished wooden table, I turn back to face Mom fully again. The silver candleholders on the table have been lit, and they cast flickering golden light over Mom’s gorgeous face. I look so much like her. Apart from the black hair I got from Dad, I look almost like a carbon copy of her. But even while noting all of that, I’ve never felt less like a part of this family than I do right now.
For a second, I consider telling them what I’m really doing. That I enrolled for the sole purpose of drawing Eli’s attention away from Connor so that he could finish out his senior year without any interference and then restore our family’s reputation. But my rational mind shuts down the idea immediately. If Connor were to find out, he would put a stop to my plan without hesitation in order to protect me. And the plan is working. Eli hasn’t messed with Connor since the day I keyed his car. So I do what I’ve been doing for weeks now. I lie and deflect.
“No one knows that I’m Con’s sister,” I say with a carefree shrug. “They all just think that I’m a random Smith.”
“The other students might not know,” Mom says. “But the teachers definitely do.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, and?”
“And what? Who cares if the teachers know?”
“You…” she begins, but then she trails off. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she closes her eyes for a few seconds and draws in what sounds like a calming breath. When she opens her eyes and lowers her hand again, most of the anger has been replaced by pity. “Look, Raina.”
A cold oily feeling snakes through my chest at the pity evident both in her eyes and in her tone.
“I’m sorry for what your father put you through when you were young,” she says, holding my gaze with sad eyes. “I know that it made you a little messed-up in the head.”
Hurt flashes through me, and I think I even jerk back a little. Messed-up in the head. I know that I’m crazy. That I don’t function like normal people. That I lack some of the common restraints and emotional responses that I should probably possess. But hearing my mom say that I’m messed-up in the head still hurts more than I expected.
I think she misinterprets my reaction, though. Maybe she thinks I flinched because hearing her say that brought on flashbacks from all those times with Dad. It has to be that, because she looks at me with even more sadness.
“If I had known about it, I would’ve put a stop to it,” she says, her green eyes searching my face. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I manage to press out.
She reaches across the wooden tabletop and places her hand on my forearm, giving it a little squeeze. “I wish you hadn’t quit therapy, sweetheart. If you had continued going while you were still a teenager, I think maybe things would have been different. Better.”
Disbelief pulses through me. Blinking, I pull my arm away from her as I sit back in my chair. “I didn’t quit therapy.”
“Yes, you did. When you were fifteen, remember? You were starting to make progress, but then you just suddenly stopped going.”
“I didn’t quit therapy,” I just repeat like an idiot, because I can’t believe what is coming out of her mouth.
“Sweetheart, I—”
“I stopped going because Dad had my therapist killed.”
Shock crackles through the living room like a lightning strike. Even Connor looks up from his plate to stare at me with wide eyes. At the head of the table, Mom just gapes at me in stunned silence.
“I had told her that Dad was a hitman,” I continue. “Since, well, it’s kind of a huge part of why I went there in the first place. And Dad couldn’t risk her telling anyone else and blowing his cover, so he killed her and made it look like an accident. That’s why I stopped going to therapy.”
The silence in the dining room is so loud that it’s practically vibrating through the air. Light from the candles dances over the white walls and casts flickering shadows over Mom’s and Connor’s stunned faces. Since Mom and Dad were always such a perfect team, I assumed that he had told her about this. But then again, given how Mom had reacted when she found out the other secret concerning me that he had been keeping from her, I probably should have known that he hadn’t dared to tell her.
“Oh,” is what at last makes it out of Mom’s mouth.
“Raina,” Connor says. His gray eyes are so full of emotion that it sends another pang through my chest. “I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t.” Forcing a casual expression onto my face, I pick up my knife and fork and continue eating again, even though the chicken has now gone cold. “And the damage is already done, so don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t!” Mom protests, wrapping her hand around my wrist and stopping me before I can put the bite of chicken in my mouth. “This is all the more reason to stop this ridiculousness at Blackwater.”
I yank my arm from her grip and raise my fork again. After holding her gaze while chewing slowly, I try to muster up all my patience for an articulate response. But I find that particular attribute nonexistent, so I just swallow and simply reply, “No.”
“Raina,” she groans, frustration bleeding into her voice. Leaning back in her chair, she rakes her slender fingers through her loose blond curls and stares up at the frescos in the ceiling while heaving a deep sigh. Then she at last meets my gaze again. “Please. I know that your father has messed you up in ways that can’t be fixed, but please. This is our family’s only chance to regain our previous standing before we’re ruined. Your brother is our only chance. So please, don’t screw this up for him.”
Pain slashes through my chest like sharp claws.
Slumping back in my chair, I stare unseeing into the flames while those words echo through my brain.
Messed-up in the head.
Can’t be fixed.
I really am broken beyond repair, aren’t I?