Never Mine

Part 4: First Day

I woke before my alarm, sunlight cutting long, soft streaks across an unfamiliar ceiling, and for a moment I didn't know where I was.

Then it came back — the wedding, the drive, falling asleep at my laptop trying to write my way back to something that felt like normal.

I hadn't even noticed falling asleep. It had simply arrived, the way exhaustion sometimes does, without asking permission.

The moment my eyes opened, the strangeness of the house started scratching at me again, low and persistent. It was too much. Too big. Too hollow, in the particular way that only extravagant places can be — like the only way anyone here knew how to fill a void was with more furniture, more square footage, more expensive silence.

The wardrobe alone was at least three times the size of the one from our old apartment. My bed, enormous, built for two people who would never actually share it. But none of it felt luxurious. It felt vacant — the kind of empty that no number of objects could ever talk its way out of. A coldness that ran deeper than the actual temperature of the room, a loneliness that didn't even bother pretending otherwise.

I dragged myself upright and made my way to the wardrobe. The uniform for my new school was already hanging neatly inside, pressed and perfect. Courtesy of Amanda, obviously. She hadn't asked. She rarely did. She simply decided, arranged, executed, and expected gratitude for the privilege.

She probably thought of it as helpful. It always came off instead like control wearing kindness as a disguise, the way she'd hidden the wedding from me until the very last second.

I shut the wardrobe harder than necessary and went to shower.

The bathroom was, frankly, absurd — a shower and a bathtub both, framed in marble, larger by a wide margin than my entire old bedroom had been. Three different shelves held three different sets of shampoos.

Maybe I should have been impressed. Grateful, even. A new home, better education, opportunities most people spent years clawing toward. The kind of things people were supposed to dream about.

All I felt was guilt — the particular, specific guilt of feeling like I'd betrayed my father simply by existing inside this house.

I caught my reflection in the mirror and held it there for a long moment.

I had to leave. Before this house changed something in me I wouldn't be able to change back. Before I stopped recognizing my own face in mirrors this clean.

I stepped into the shower and let the water run down my back longer than it needed to, picking a shampoo at random and hoping the scent might rinse some of the unease out of my skin.

It didn't.

After I'd dried my hair and dressed, I stood in front of the full-length mirror and just looked at myself for a moment. The uniform looked like something out of one of those glossy high school dramas.

I swiped on a little mascara, a neutral lipstick, barely-there — I didn't want to stand out today. I wanted, more than anything, to simply survive it.

Shoes next. Black leather, polished enough to announce itself against marble. I grabbed my bag, my phone — the only two things I felt entirely willing to carry into that house's version of a new day.

Down the hallway, the spiral staircase curved in both directions like something built for a gallery rather than a home. I followed the sound of clinking silverware and low, distant voices until I found the dining room.

Amanda was already seated, her smile splitting her face two sizes too wide. "Good morning, sweetheart! Come sit — we were just waiting for you."

James glanced up from his tablet just long enough to nod, then returned to whatever report had claimed his attention. I pulled out a chair and reached for a plate.

There were at least five kinds of cheese, a platter of croissants and an entire bowl of berries.

"First day at your new school," James said, conversational, like it cost him nothing. "Excited?"

I gave him a tight, careful smile. "Should be good."

Inside, I laughed at myself, bitter and private. Nothing about this was good.

“You’ll settle in quickly,” he continued. “Finn will introduce you to a few people. It’ll help you adjust.”

The sound of his name pulled my eyes instinctively to the empty seat across from me. Still empty.

Then I heard footsteps. I looked up just as Finn descended the stairs, moving with that same infuriating calm like he didn’t even exist in the same gravity as the rest of us.

Black slacks. White polo. Neat as always. Controlled. Cold. He walked into the room like it bored him.

Then he saw me.

Our eyes met, barely, for less than a second. His expression didn't shift dramatically, but the way he looked at me carried a weight that indifference never could have.

It wasn't indifference.

It was worse than that. It was the specific look of someone doing the mental math on how quickly they could scrub a stain out of otherwise pristine wallpaper.

"Finn?" James said, his voice carrying an edge sharpened just enough to be noticed without being loud. "No good morning?"

Finn exhaled like the request had physically cost him something. "Morning." Flat. Entirely unbothered. He pulled out his phone and gave it more attention than anything at that table deserved.

Amanda tried to smooth the moment over, her voice going syrupy in a register I'd never once heard directed at me. "You should eat something, sweetheart."

I stared at her for a beat too long.

"I'm not hungry," Finn said coolly. "Lost my appetite somewhere between last night and this morning."

James gave him a look that carried weight without needing volume behind it at all.

The tension at the table prickled against my skin like static electricity building before a storm. I set my fork down.

"I'm full," I said, my voice clipped tighter than I meant it to be. "Maybe we should go. Don't want to be."

"Good luck," mom said as we stepped away from the table, her voice light and hollow, like she was signing a greeting card she'd never actually read the front of.

Outside, the air felt clearer than anything inside that house had managed all morning. Wind moved soft and warm through the trees, carrying the smell of pine through my hair, and for a second I let myself breathe like the day hadn't already gone wrong.

I waited by the front steps, assuming Finn would fall in beside me the way he had the night before.

Instead, he started walking in the opposite direction entirely.

"Where are you going?"

He didn't glance back. "You didn't seriously think we were going together, did you? The driver will take you."

Then I saw it — parked further down the long curve of the drive, a motorcycle.

He strapped on the helmet, swung one leg over, started the engine.

Moments later, a sleek black car eased up to the steps in his place. I opened the back door, slid inside, and rolled the window down just in time to watch him tear past — the wind off the engine tearing through the silence he'd left sitting in his wake.

Within seconds, he was gone. Out of sight.

And somehow — even knowing I was leaving soon, even knowing none of this was supposed to matter to me — some small, unreasonable part of me watched the empty road long after there was nothing left of him to see.