Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

And then I finally let the dam burst. I laughed.

And as the elevator car finally reached my floor, and as it descended to the next, and the next, I laughed and laughed some more.

My laughter died as soon as I hit the lobby.

It wasn’t until I’d shown myself out through the revolving door that I realized the tears brimming in my eyes weren’t the funny ones. They were hot and stinging, tears of rage, desperation, and utter despair. Soon I realized that I really wasn’t laughing at all anymore, not even in that hysterical way people do when they feel like they’ve got nothing else they can do to chase the pain away.

No, I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard it hurt, so hard my chest felt like it would split in two, so hard I was sure I could feel my ribs starting to cave and poke at my lungs.

I was standing on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets in the city bawling my eyes out in the afternoon rush. Cars and taxis whizzed by too fast for me to see anything more than the blur of their movement, but somehow I was certain that the dark eyes inside them were all on me. Passersby craned their necks to ogle at the crying woman slowly wandering toward home, fascinated by me like I was some kind of moaning spirit haunting 47th Street, a jilted bride still searching for her lover or a desolate mother seeking her long-lost child.

They made the whole thing feel more dramatic than it was, but for the most part, they all left me alone. That was fine by me. The last thing I needed at that moment was a stranger’s pity.

I steadied myself for a moment on a parking meter near one of those pruned-just-so trees cities put up along the sidewalks to imply they weren’t completely destroying the environment. It was every bit as fake as the offices I used to pretend to work for. I could feel cold sweat making long trails down the lines in my palms despite the shade, and my chest felt like someone had taken the muscles and stretching them out paper-thin. I knew what it was. I’d experienced it before. In fact, panic attacks had become a common occurrence since I’d started working at ExecuSpace, and even Zoloft couldn’t seem to keep them at bay. Human beings weren’t meant to work the way ExecuSpace expected them to. Human beings weren’t meant to endure such constant, debilitating stress.

As I sucked in long, slow breaths, I tried to entertain myself with happier thoughts. It’s for the best. Think about your health. Think about your peace of mind. This job couldn’t have been good for you. Even if it was putting food on the table, who’s to say that you wouldn’t end up in the hospital for stress a few months down the line? It’s not like they offered health insurance. You were one medical disaster away from being destitute, anyway…

It was all true. But the fact remained that I wasn’t one medical disaster away from financial ruin anymore. Now, thanks to a rage that had been building for far too long and a mouth that didn’t know when to seal itself shut, I was already there.

I changed tracks on my train of thought, trying to get a grip on something solid—a plan, maybe. The damage was done, and there was no way to undo it, but what I could do now was find a way to move forward.

I knew the job market. I’d been searching for a replacement position for months now in secret. I’d only had one interview, and that position had offered even less in the way of compensation. Still, I was sure I could find something, but time was a factor, and I had no safety net.

That particular thought made my vision blurry and my blood boil. It didn’t have to be like this…

The reason I had no safety net had a name, and it was Mother.

My mother, Amanda Hearst, didn’t believe in being supportive. She believed in “tough love,” as in, “you better not screw this up, honey, ‘cause you’re on your own.” She had made it clear to me from a very young age that my mistakes were my own. My successes, however, she attributed to her stellar parenting. Classic mother.

“Those other kids failed because their parents let them,” she’d tell me, her carmine lips twisted into a smug smirk. “If it wasn’t for me and how hard I’ve pushed you, you would be just like them.”

I had comforted myself for a time with the idea that she was only that hard on me because we were broke. We were the kind of broke that nobody liked to talk about—lower middle-class, just poor enough to scrape by, but somehow too wealthy to qualify for any kind of assistance. My father had walked out on her when I was just a baby, and for years I told myself that his abandonment and the way the system has spurned her had made her feel like if she didn’t teach me to rely on myself—and only on myself—then I would fall to the same fate. She didn’t want that for me, I always thought. She just chose to show it in a cold and hurtful way.

That illusion had shattered three months ago when my mother had announced her engagement to Charles Harvey, the billionaire CEO of Harvey Enterprises. I had no idea what their business actually entailed, but whatever it was, it brought him more money than God, and as my mother was oh-so-quick to inform me, I wasn’t entitled to a penny of it.

“I didn’t raise you to be a leech,” she’d told me when I’d said that it would be nice not to have to worry about money for a change. I hadn’t meant that I intended on blowing it on some kind of shopping spree. I’d always wanted to finish my college degree, and work was getting in the way…

That didn’t matter to her.

Her scowl had sent chills down my spine and twisted my guts into knots. “You’re not an infant, Madison. You’re an adult. That means you make your own way in this world.” She’d looked so devastatingly disappointed as she added, “I thought I’d taught you better than that.”

In my anger, I’d asked her what, exactly, I would have to do to be worthy of a little help every now and then. It felt like she’d punched me right in the face when she answered, “Marry rich.”

I’d realized then that my mother had never had my best interests in mind. My father leaving hadn’t made her protective of me. It had made her protective of herself. It had made her selfish and cruel, and I hadn’t spoken to her since.

Which was why I couldn’t call her now. I couldn’t dial her number and say, “Mom, I need help.” She wouldn’t give it. I doubted if she would even bother to answer the phone.

As usual, I was on my own.

I was still trying to achieve a stiff upper lip when I let go of the parking meter and set off down the sidewalk in the direction of home. Unfortunately, the moment I did, I barreled straight into a man who’d had the misfortune of stepping between me and my downward spiral.

His chest was so hard under his button-down shirt that I was sure he’d broken my jaw, but the material of his blazer was so soft that it felt like I’d landed on a cloud. It was silken, almost, and as I gently pressed it with my fingers, tilting back my head to look up at who I’d just assaulted, I felt his breath hitch at my touch.

As the halo of the sun faded behind a cloud, I got a good look at the stranger’s face. My throat clenched and I utt

ered a sound that was half a snort, half a wheeze.

“Preston? Seriously?”

“Maddy,” he said, his stormy blue eyes glittering as he spoke my name. “Well, this is a surprise…”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to push him away and sweep past him in a fit of disgust. I wanted to walk so fast down the sidewalk that I left all memory of him in my wake, a spoiled brat who got absolutely everything his heart desired while I couldn’t even manage to convince my own mother to keep me off the streets.

But I couldn’t do any of that. Instead, to my shame and horror, I buried my face in his expensive blazer and cried.

Chapter 3

I stood on the sidewalk, frozen in place as Madison Hearst cried into my chest, her delicate shoulders racked by the sobs stealing from her throat. I wasn’t used to hanging out with a lot of crying women, but I knew enough to know that these weren’t tears of pain or sorrow. These were hot, angry tears, tears of rage and frustration held in so long that the damn had burst, and now they had to come spilling out.

I grimaced before gently placing my arms around her. I’d shed a few of those kind of tears myself in my life, and it seemed like offering her the comfort I’d always been denied was the right thing to do, no matter how awkward it might look to the people surrounding us.

It wasn’t just that Maddy was crying, though I was certain that was strange enough on its own. What really made me feel like a spectacle was the fact that we were brother and sister—or at least, we would be in just a few short weeks.

My miserable fuck of a father was marrying Madison’s shrew of a mother. They may have deserved each other, but I held onto the opinion that neither Maddy nor I deserved either one of them. It rendered us stepsiblings, which I had assumed would count for something, but up until this moment, I’d been one hundred percent sure that Madison hated my guts.