Lost Cause by Elise Faber

Author:Elise Faber [Faber, Elise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637491119
Publisher: Elise Faber

Nineteen

Lex

Surprise across her face.

Deep pools of emerald on mine.

Heavy, almost oppressive silence.

Then she spoke, and it wasn’t anything like the Frankie I’d come to know since I’d moved to Darlington.

It was soft and gentle and vulnerable…but it was also jaded.

Hurt.

Because she had been.

“I’m used to it.”

“Used to what?” I asked carefully, my intestines twisting, knowing that this wasn’t going to be something I liked.

Knowing it was going slice my insides to ribbons.

“Men treating me like shit,” she said, her chin coming up. A shrug, something different growing in her expression. Steel. Fire. That I liked. I hated the hurt, but I was so fucking proud of her for the way her chin lifted and her shoulders straightened. Strong. So fucking strong. “I grew up with it. I got used to it.” A laugh that wasn’t the least bit amused. “You know why I have a health shop?”

I knew a lot of things about Francesa Lyon.

But I didn’t know that.

“You know I had that team of people taking care of me when I was growing up.”

I nodded. Braced. Waited.

“I had more etiquette lessons than actual schoolwork, and a personal trainer and a dietician and a chef and a stylist and a makeup artist and an esthetician and a hairdresser from the moment I turned ten. Because I couldn’t be a Lyon and not be made presentable. Because—God forbid—I gained a few pounds or showed up at an event with a pimple that wasn’t properly covered or eye shadow that clashed with my outfit. God forbid, I did anything that wasn’t going to make my father proud.”

My lungs felt like they were going to explode.

“Eventually, though,” she whispered. “It was too much.”

“Baby.”

“It was too much, and I stopped eating anything that wasn’t explicitly put in front of me. I stopped having opinions about my hair and makeup and clothes. I stopped complaining about the workouts.” She sighed. “I stopped being myself. I stopped being anything but that facsimile of a person that was my father’s image.”

“Baby.”

Her hands clenched into fists. “And it wasn’t good enough. Not when I was under a hundred pounds and made up like a doll. Not when I was smiling and serving drinks in clothes that stole my ability to breathe and shoes that killed my feet. Not when I was doing every single thing he asked of me.” A beat. “And more. And then one day I looked in the mirror and I hated myself. Someone had brought me breakfast, and I couldn’t stomach a bite. I studied my reflection and I didn’t have a single strand of hair that was out of place, not one eyelash that was left uncurled or uncoated with mascara. My outfit was perfect, my heels expensive. And I could not live one more second in my life, my body, that house.”

An exhale, those hands relaxing.

I took one in mine, held it against my chest.

“So…I left.” She pressed her lips flat. “I don’t know where I got the strength. Or if it was just that urgency to not be in my own skin, but that night when my dad flew out, I just…left.

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