The Scars That Made Us Read online

  The

  Scars

  That

  Made

  Us

  By Inda Herwood

  Copyright © 2018 by Melinda Griffis

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted and/or trademarked status and copyright and trademark owners of the various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: Melinda Griffis

  Cover photo: Pixabay

  I always knew he would be my forever.

  I only wish that I could have been his.

  – M.G.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  -1-

  A Birthday Surprise

  Oh, hell no.

  No, no, no, no, NO.

  “Cyvil, please, let us explain,” my mother pleads to me across the table, her cornflower blue eyes looking at me with a mixture of worry and guilt, as they should. How could she even expect me to hear her out? This is insanity.

  Standing up from the dinner table, my chair falling backwards with a resounding thud on the marble floors, I notice out of the corner of my eye the way the wait staff is watching our family disaster, eyes averted but with small, amused smiles terribly hidden under their ducked chins. I frankly don’t give a crap if it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen in their lives. It’s not their world that’s flipping upside down, their parents throwing them under the bus on their eighteenth birthday.

  “Honey, sit down,” my father demands, his eyes trained on the table, hands turning white as they suffocate one another.

  For once, I ignore his orders.

  All I want to do is run. And run is what I do.

  I don’t look behind me, nor fold at hearing the broken voice of my delicate mother, calling me back. I run (although a little stunted) like I haven’t since I was a kid, heading for the only place that has ever been my own. The one area of our expansive vacation property that hasn’t been infiltrated by my parents, sister, or the rest of our staff.

  Finding the castle ruins at the back of the gardens, ones that have been sitting here for centuries, with stories of their own to tell, I fling off my high heels and climb up the dissolving stones until I hit the top of the staircase, the view overlooking the rolling mountains of France. Though I know it’s risky, I swing my feet over the side of the balcony, letting them dangle nearly a hundred feet in the air, having to trust the heavens not to let me go tumbling down with the tower, whenever it deems to finally fall with time and gravity.

  A cool breeze runs over the backs of my hands as I sit and stare at a distant point in the mountains, the only part of me that’s exposed. It’s the small amount of me that is ever allowed to breathe, the rest of my skin covered by the richest fabrics. But it feels like scratchy, over-washed cotton to me.

  Sick at the reminder that my life is ruled by shallow vanity at the expense of my own flesh and blood, I rip off the cashmere sweater and let it fall to the floor, in a mud puddle no less. Seeing it get so thoroughly destroyed brings a rare smile to my face, quickly dying when I remember what brought me up here in the first place.

  Marriage.

  My parents want me to get married.

  I shiver at remembering the look on my parents’ faces, the way my father said, “It’s time to grow up, Cyvil.”

  Grow up? I’m eighteen years old for heaven’s sake. And despite most government’s laws and policies, I don’t think eighteen counts as being an adult. Even with having lived most of my life with a more mature surrounding of people and experiences, I still see myself as a kid. I want to experience life and make mistakes, just like every other teenager. I want to go to college, make friends, find a job I love. And then maybe, maybe find someone to have a life with. But apparently my parents want me to skip the first three steps and fast track me to being some kind of trophy wife. As though I didn’t have plans of my own.

  My phone rings in my pocket, startling me enough to almost fall to my death on the pavers below. Scrambling backwards, I fish the annoying device out of my pocket and answer the call with: “What?”

  “By the tone of your voice, I’m guessing they’ve told you by now,” my sister says, not unsympathetically.

  I still at her words. “You mean you knew?”

  A sigh. “Yes, I’m sorry. I would have told you, but Mom caught me eavesdropping on her and Dad one day and she made me swear not to tell you.”

  I shift further backwards on the floor, letting my back lean against what’s left of the stone wall. “When was this?”

  She pauses, and I can hear the regret in her voice when she admits, “A month ago.”

  I close my eyes, feeling the betrayal sink in, slow and painful. My sister and I are tight, despite having a seven year age gap between us. We talk every day, and there isn’t a fact between us that we don’t know about the other. If it had been the opposite, and it were her my parents were forcing to marry, and I knew about it, I most certainly would not have kept her in the dark. I tell her as much.

  “Please, please don’t do that to me.” I hear her sniffle. “I already feel guilty as hell. Just ask Quincy. He’ll tell you how hair brained and weepy I’ve been this past month. It’s annoying, even to me.”

  Pinching the phone in my hand, I regretfully admit that I believe her. Atillia Montae is the sweetest and most sarcastic person you will ever meet, but also the guiltiest. Even the slightest things cause her to have breakdowns. Forgetting to tell you someone called, accidentally staining your favorite shirt when she borrows it from you, missing one of your texts. They all send her into a tizzy of guilt, and I know that keeping something like this from me must have almost killed her. Especially when she’s eight months pregnant with her first baby.

  “They shouldn’t have made you feel that you had to keep it a secret from me, especially in your condition,” I say as I watch a bird come to sit on a perch high over my head. I swear, if that thing poops on me, especially with the day I’ve had, I’m going to –

  “My condition? Just because I am ridiculously pregnant doesn’t mean I can’t still kick ass.”

  I close my eye
s, groaning. “That’s not what I meant. They know how you get with your nerves. And anyway, they shouldn’t have dropped this on me today without any kind of warning.” Or at all.

  “I agree, it was wrong of them to do this to you and me to keep it a secret. But can I ask…how did it go?”

  Rolling my eyes, I flick a stone off the edge of the balcony. “How do you think? They told me, I freaked out, and then I ran. Bing bang boom.”

  She snorts. “Bing bang boom? What, have you turned into an Italian gangster since I last saw you?”

  Of course that’s what she’d get stuck on: my terrible comebacks. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway because I’m not going through with it. Ever.” As in no way no how. Marriage is the death of being independent, of having your own mind. It steals you of life experiences, individual growth. It’s the opposite of what I want at this age, when I’m just starting to find myself. And anyways, it’s the twenty first freaking century. Isn’t there some kind of feminist law I can pull to get out of this?

  “Okay, before we go all emo, why don’t you tell me what they said first, and then we can complain about it together. Sound good?”

  Shaking my head, my eyes are drawn down to the raised scar on my left hand, specifically my ring finger. The one that nearly wraps around the entire thing. Inspecting it, I don’t even think a ring would fit over it. The irony of which finger holds the largest scar doesn’t escape my notice. It also forces me to remember the conversation my parents decided to have with me over my eighteenth birthday dinner. The one I never wanted in the first place.

  Sitting down, I could tell something was up immediately. My mother’s posture was too stiff and my dad looked uncomfortable, and being a hard man with a nearly unreadable poker face, I know it takes a lot to move that unyielding exterior. It instantly set me on edge, and the entire meal I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And sure enough, I was right.

  It started with my mother asking about my future, what my plans were. Now looking back, I wonder why she did. If she knew it would be pointless, then why give me hope? Why make it seem like they were being supportive of my dreams for once?

  After I told them of my plan to go to college for pre-med, hopefully in Europe, my mother practically deflated, her eyes saddening as she heard me get excited about my future. I’ve always wanted to help people, like the ones who saved me when I was a child. It’s been my driving force, giving me motivation in my studies to make it to Oxford, and then beyond. They have known about this my entire life, and still, they decided to take it away from me.

  “Darling, you know how we love you, and admire your…courage, to dream so big. But do you really think that this is the best path for you?” my father had asked over his steak.

  I hate steak.

  And yet that’s what they thought my birthday dinner should consist of.

  I could feel my toes curl in my shoes underneath the table, my face trying to be impassive. “Yes. Why?” I realize now that I shouldn’t have asked the question.

  “It’s just that…you have issues, honey. Physically, I mean. How do you expect to help people when…” Mom had trailed off. But I knew what she meant. I had seen that look many times before.

  “How do I expect to help people when I can’t help myself,” I finished for her, voice rigid.

  Another line appeared over her brows. “No, I didn’t mean it like that, really I –”

  Dad had cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Yes, you did, Georgette. And it’s the truth. Don’t apologize for stating the facts.” Turning to me, his light, golden brown eyes, which I inherited, grew serious. “Cyvil, you know that with your muscle damage that a career in such a physically demanding field would be nearly impossible for you. And since you don’t seem to have any less stressful back-up plans, your mother and I have come up with an option of our own.”

  I should have been offended by the pointing out of my shortcomings, but I wasn’t. I had been told of them since I was seven years old by parents, doctors, teachers, friends. I have always been doubted where it concerns me physically. No one has ever given me the chance to prove them wrong. Becoming a doctor was going to be my way of doing it.

  “What? What other option?” I hadn’t heard of any of this until then. It left me wondering when they had decided that what I wanted didn’t matter anymore.

  Pushing his plate to the side while my mother picked pointlessly at her food, I got that bad feeling in my gut again, the one that had been stirring since I sat down…

  “You’ve seen how happy your sister has been, being with Quincy. She’s found a whole new meaning for her life other than what she had first intended. Plans can change, darling. It doesn’t always mean they’re bad.”

  This is where I had really begun to worry. What did my married sister have anything to do with this? Giving my parents unsure looks, I asked warily, “What are you guys talking about?”

  Dad sighed then, probably having hoped I would come to the conclusion by myself. Spelling it out was an inconvenience for him. “We think it would be most suitable for you to find a partner, settle down rather than go to college.”

  “You mean get a boyfriend?” Not only was it the most bizarre thing I had ever heard come out of my father’s mouth at this point, but the idea itself had been horrifying. Just the thought of committing to someone instead of chasing my dream felt like the worst thing that could happen to me. But then my father went and made it worse. So much worse.

  “No, I mean find a husband.”

  There was a terrible silence, minus the sound of the grandfather clock ticking in the corner, the slight cough of a waiter standing near the doorway. Only to be broken by my scream of, “WHAT!” My silverware had clanked loudly as it hit the fine china my mother is so fond of, dropping it in my shock.

  She winced.

  “Don’t raise your voice,” Dad had said evenly. “Now, listen to what we have decided.”

  “Decided? Do I not get a say in this?”

  “That all depends on you,” Mom had said, that pleading look in her eyes killing me.

  “Darling, marriage isn’t a bad thing. It’s brought your mother and I, and also your sister, so much happiness. Being supported by someone else isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” he had preached, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All my life my father had drilled it into me and my sister how important it is to be self-sustaining, to not have to lean on anyone for help. And now he’s telling me all I’m good for is being some guy’s wife? That he doesn’t think I could survive on my own?

  “Absolutely not,” I said without softness, not bothering to pretend I wasn’t pissed with the insinuation. There was no way in hell I was entertaining the insane thought, let alone actually getting married. I draw the line at my life being taken into someone else’s hands. I had already been through that once before. I wasn’t about to go through it again.

  “There will be consequences if you don’t.”

  I had immediately paused at the severity in his tone. My father had never talked to me like that before in my life. Like I was one of his employees.

  “And they are?” I answered, just as flat.

  “You will not receive your inheritance when we pass. It will all go to your sister.” Though his voice was still gruff, his eyes had looked reserved, sad. But they had no right to be. He could easily pull the plug on this whole stupid scheme of his, but he wasn’t. He was forcing me into a corner, making me cow.

  I meant it when I said, “I don’t need inheritance.” I had been threatened before by this line, whenever I strayed too far from their wishes. I didn’t care then, and I didn’t care now. Money has never mattered to me like it has to them.

  “Maybe not,” he admitted. “But you do need college funds.”

  And that was the dagger in the back that had made me fall to my knees.

  Without my parents, I wouldn’t have the money for college, and time had already passed for getting scholarships. I had turned down all o
f the ones I had been offered because my father insisted that we don’t take handouts. Because we are the great Montaes, a family that came from nothing and slowly grew into one of the richest family empires in the world, all because of hard work and technology advancement. Now I think it was because he wanted to make sure his blackmail was air tight.

  “You wouldn’t,” I had said, holding back tears with a tight throat. They knew how important this was to me. How could they simply deny it because they had no faith in my abilities?

  “Yes, we would. But we are not without reason. If you do this, then we will support your college tuition. And then, if things don’t work out with your studies, you’ll have something, someone to fall back on.”

  I gaped, numbed to it all at this point. I honestly couldn’t believe that my own family was trying to blackmail me. Into a marriage for education, no less.

  They left me with only two options: either get cut out of the family, or marry some guy so I can have even the slightest chance at a college career. Neither was one I wanted to accept.

  “It’s for your own good,” Mom encouraged with a watery smile then, the silence stretching past her acceptable limit. All those five words did was enrage every part of me that was still working. Because she had been telling me that ridiculous line for years, with every decision they have made for me.

  Wearing long sleeves (even in the heat of summer) so no one saw the scars was for my own good.

  Not allowing me to participate in any sports at school because of my ‘handicap’ was for my own good.

  Not going to prom because of fear no one would ask me was for my own good.

  It’s all I’ve ever heard, and every time it hasn’t been for my own good, but for theirs.

  Today that ended.

  “You wouldn’t even be able to find someone willing to chain themselves to my ‘challenged’ ass,” I shot back, knowing they must have been thinking about it when they came up with this plan.

  “Cyvil.” Mom had practically admonished, her horrified expression making me want to roll my eyes. Always so dramatic…