Nineteen
2012
THE NIGHT OF MY TWENTY-FIRST birthday was the night I tried to run away. It was my first attempt at it.
Something had snapped in me, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
Over dinner that night at the Knightsbridge house, he looked at me like I had sprouted three heads because it being my birthday, I said I didn’t want to hit him that night. For once, I was making the rules, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. I made him sit across from me and eat a meal I had prepared and he ate it begrudgingly, like I was force-feeding him food. He looked mercilessly unhappy and didn’t try to appease me. Didn’t give me a gift, or a kiss. It was a Thursday and he said that he was taking me to Paris, Saturday through Monday, and that he’d give me my birthday gift then. I knew it would be some so
