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351 Words
2
Brook smelled Clive as she descended the stairs. Past experience warned her he would be around the corner, standing propped against the other side of the wall, awaiting her covert antics that never happened, just so he could hop out and pretend to catch her doing nothing.
Sinking to the second step, she swept her still-wet hair over her shoulder and pressed her forehead to the divider. Her chest rose high with a sigh as she prepared to irk his less-than-clever mind once more. “I thought you would be gone,” she said.
“You don’t seem to understand, Brook. I’m not going anywhere.”
Beneath an impressive eye roll, Brook’s teeth ground out her frustration—though, did she have the right to blame a male whose life was as out of his control as hers had become? “You say that as though you do not have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice, Brook.” A quiet pause followed, before he said, “They just don’t always like their options.”
She couldn’t dispute his words. Brook had been given a choice—one of which her father approved.
Clive or Stefan.
Stefan’s murmured threats—ones he only shared when no one but Brook could hear—had lost him her vote. And at constant rebukes and her refusal to acknowledge Stefan, Clive had assumed himself the winner.
Of Brook.
“Besides,” Clive said, “I made my choice a long time ago.” A quiet scrape travelled down the other side of the wall. “I Chose you.”
“I was never an option.”
He gave a low growl. “Your father says otherwise.”
“My father does not own me.”
He chuckled. “Your father believes otherwise.”
“He has no right to dictate my life.”
“That I’m standing here at his order tells me otherwise, Brook.”
Her teeth ground again, as she realised he had been sent to summon her. “What does he want?”
“He wants to see you.”
“You make that sound like an amicable request. Why don’t you quit with the falsities and simply tell me I have been ordered to his office?”
“Dammit. You’re difficult on purpose, I swear. Get yourself to the house ‘cause your dad wants to see you—now!” His feet stomped on his way to the door.
***
- Writer
