Tormented: A Dark High School Bully Romance by Esme Devlin

Author:Esme Devlin [Devlin, Esme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

The rest of the dinner goes down like you’d expect any normal engagement dinner to go down. People who I don’t know come up to me and congratulate me, they make small talk.

I smile.

I smile so much my cheeks hurt.

Liam parades me around the room like he’s just won first prize and I’m the trophy. He acts like we’ve known each other for years. He looks at me like I’m making him the happiest man in the world.

It would have been a nice engagement dinner, had any of it been real.

I hold my tongue in the car on the way back to the house. I can sense my dad is uneasy, but he won’t be the one to break the silence. He won’t be the one to ask me how I actually feel about any of this. I say nothing until we get home. I’m beginning to process Liam’s reasoning, but I don’t understand why my dad would agree to it, especially since he has no idea about the so-called trouble I’m in with the ‘cult’.

“Why did you do it?” I look him in the eye as I ask him the question, my expression blank. We’re standing in the hallway, and his gaze shifts uneasily before he turns and heads into the kitchen.

“McGuiness made me a very generous offer, Lacey,” he says, his back to me as he walks away.

“A very generous offer? Just how generous do you need to be to buy a daughter? Asking for a friend,” I say, following him through.

“He’s making me a partner in the company. Can you believe it?” He busies himself in the kitchen with useless shit, putting plates away and rummaging in the cupboard. Anything to keep from having to look at me. “Years of hard work finally paying off. I see the potential. Potential so great that we’d be made for life. It will make you. Your children, your grandchildren, it’ll set them up for life. You’ll never have to work like me. Isn’t that what every father wants for their daughter?”

I watch him, my eyebrows pushed together in confusion and disbelief. “No. This isn’t normal, Dad. You don’t get to choose what kind of life is best for me.”

“Liam isn’t a bad choice. His father assured me you were well-matched. He said you were fond of Liam, and that he’d been courting you. I know it’s soon, honey. But I really do think this is best for everyone,” he says, finally looking me in the eye.

I can’t do this. Not because I don’t have one-thousand things I want to say to him — but because it hurts. At least Liam thought he was doing it for the right reasons. To know for sure that your own father values shares in a company more than he values you, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

“I’m going to bed,” I tell him, pivoting and walking out of the kitchen.

“You’ll feel better in the morning. You’ll see it makes sense,” he calls.

I doubt that very much, Dad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.