Chapter Two
739 Words
The drive home felt longer than it should have. Every red light, every street felt unfamiliar, as if the city itself was quietly judging him. Her voice replayed in his head persistently.
The gates to their mansion slid open with mechanical precision. The house stood immaculate and unforgiving. A place where nothing messy was allowed to exist for long. His father was waiting in the study. Today, he was meant to be at the family dinner. But he realized he had made the wrong choice immediately he got in.
“You’ve been seen,” Franklin Grayson said without preamble. “Photographs and statements are already circulating.”
He barely had time to look up before a newspaper hit his chest.
“Read it,” Franklin snapped. “Read the headline.”
THE GOVERNOR’S YOUNGEST SON SAVES A COMMONER FROM TRAGIC ACCIDENT
Earl didn’t respond. Franklin Grayson read it aloud anyway.
“You involved yourself in something public,” his father continued, voice controlled. “Messy. Emotional. Do you understand how that looks?”
Earl thought of Ariel’s trembling hands. The way she had clung to him like the world was slipping.
The promise.
“She needed help,” Earl said finally.
Franklin’s eyes narrowed. “People like us don’t help recklessly. We help strategically.”
That word followed Earl down the hall later.
Strategically. That's how his father had always viewed the world.
In his car, he loosened his tie, staring at nothing. The compound hummed with disciplined silence, but his mind was loud. Maybe too loud.
He had just learned her name. But he knew one thing with frightening clarity:
He had crossed a line he wouldn’t be able to uncross.
He had almost watched a girl lose her life. Almost hadn’t reached her in time and her face came back to him without warning. He had never seen anything that beautiful. And somewhere in the dark of his car, the journal awaited. He knew the right thing was to return it, but it wasn't the time yet. He opened the safe and took it out His thumb hovered over the first page before he flipped it open.
' This book belongs to Ariel Triny. Don’t open it, you freak.'
A corner of his mouth lifted despite himself.
He already had.
He closed it carefully and returned it to the safe. Then he took out his phone.
First ring.
Second.
“Pick up,” he muttered.
“Ariel speaking.”
As soon as he heard her voice, relief washed through him so fast it startled him.
“Hi,” he said. “It’s… it’s the guy from earlier. Earl.”
“Oh,” she said.
He swallowed. “How are the nurses treating you?”
“They’re kind,” she replied quietly. “I like that they’re kind.”
That made him smile.
“They’ll probably discharge you tomorrow,” he said. “Try to rest.”
“Okay.”
He hesitated. “Ariel?”
“Yes?”
“Promise me you won’t ever try that again.”
Silence.
“Are you still there?”
“I… I promise,” she said finally.
“I believe you,” he said before ending the call with a good night wish.
Ariel lay on the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling. The steady beeping of machines dragged her backward through time. If he hadn’t stopped her, she might have seen her father again. He had been her first love—the only one that had ever been unconditional.
She remembered his hands guiding hers around a paintbrush. Her first painting was her mother, her father, and her. Messy. Crooked. Perfect. He had hung it in the dining room anyway. Showed it to every guest with pride. That was why she painted. Why she sculpted. Why she studied art at the university.
Because he had believed in her before the world taught her how not to.
Tears burned her eyes.
The sheets rustled as she shifted and the sterile scent pulled another memory loose, she remembered her mother. Once warm. Once present. Gone after her father died on a Tuesday night.
By sixteen, her mother had chosen a new life and Ariel hadn’t fit into it. She had been disowned by her own mother. Now she was twenty-one. And didn't seem to understand what life meant to her yet.
She turned onto her side and closed her eyes.
Sleep came slowly.
- Writer
