I Begged The Real Heiress To Take My Life Away Chapter 10

I Begged The Real Heiress To Take My Life Away Chapter 10

Something about that sentence lit a fuse in Josie.

She laughed once, but her eyes went red.

“A daughter you raised.”

“And what about me?”

“I’m your real daughter. Your blood.”

“I suffered out there all these years, and I finally come home, and you’re still thinking about her.”

“I mess up once and you’re disappointed.”

“She’s been useless for eighteen years and you still can’t let her go.”

Something in my chest dropped.

That didn’t sit right.

Eleanor’s expression turned cold.

“Josie, watch your words.”

Tears spilled down Josie’s face.

“I’ve watched my words my whole life.”

“Since I was a kid I told myself I had to be exceptional, be first in everything, be better than everyone.”

“Because I thought if I was good enough, the day my real parents saw me, they’d finally be proud.”

“But I come home and find out you already had a daughter.”

“Even if she’s useless, even if she can’t do anything right, you’re all used to her.”

“So what does that make me?”

Eleanor had no answer.

She was brilliant at negotiations. Terrible at holding a daughter who was falling apart.

Josie suddenly grabbed the hot grits off the table and hurled them at me.

“Watch out!”

Frank came barreling out from the kitchen and threw himself in front of me.

The grits hit his arm.

He hissed in pain.

Everything in me went blank.

“Dad!”

Peggy rushed out too, grabbing his arm to check it.

His skin was already turning red.

Not serious, but I was shaking all over.

Josie froze too.

The bowl slipped out of her hand and hit the floor.

“I wasn’t trying to hit him.”

I looked up at her.

“So it’s fine to throw it at me instead?”

Her lips trembled.

“You’re the one who stole…”

“Enough!”

I yelled at her for the first time.

The whole diner went silent.

I pointed at the door.

“Josie, you hate me. Fine, I accept that.”

“You think I took your eighteen years. Fine, I accept that too.”

“But they raised you for eighteen years.”

“The man you just threw scalding grits at is the same man who gets up at four a.m. to knead your dough, who tucks a heating pad into your bed in winter, who won’t even buy himself hand cream when his own hands crack open from the cold.”

“If you want to lose your mind, go do it at the Sterlings’.”

“Not here.”

Josie’s face went bone-white.

Peggy said, eyes red:

“Josie, honey, what happened to you?”

That single sentence hit harder than any insult could have.

Josie staggered back like she’d been slapped.

Eleanor finally spoke.

“Josie. Apologize.”

Josie spun toward her.

“You want me to apologize to her too?”

“Apologize to Mr. Doyle.”

Josie clenched her jaw, tears falling in heavy drops.

“No.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You’re all wrong.”

“The hospital was wrong.”

“Daisy was wrong.”

“All of you were wrong!”

She turned and bolted out the door.

Eleanor started after her.

I stopped her.

“Let her cool off.”

Eleanor looked at me, something complicated in her eyes.

“You don’t hate her?”

I looked down at the shattered bowl on the floor.

“I do.”

“But I’m more scared she’ll actually break.”

Because I knew that feeling.

Living in a world that demands you be correct, exceptional, and composed at all times, getting pushed slowly

into a corner.

One more step and a person shatters completely.

I just chose to play dumb instead.

Josie chose to unravel.

That evening, Sebastian showed up at the diner.

He’d brought burn cream.

Frank refused flat out.

“We can buy our own.”

Sebastian was quiet for a second, then set the cream on the table anyway.

“I’m sorry.”

Frank froze.

I froze too.

Sebastian apologizing was rarer than Newton bowing to me.

He looked at me.

“Josie’s missing.”

I nearly jumped out of my seat.

“What?”

“She didn’t go back to the house. She didn’t show up on campus either.”

“Her phone’s off.”

Eleanor and Weston already had people out looking.

I grabbed my jacket immediately.

Peggy caught my arm.

“Where are you going?”

“To find her.”

Frank frowned.

“After everything she did to you?”

I pressed my lips together.

“I can’t let her get hurt.”

“If something happens to her, you and Mom will be devastated.”

Peggy’s eyes went red instantly.

Sebastian looked at me, voice low.

“Do you know where she’d go?”

I nodded.

“I do.”

Josie hated me.

She also envied me.

And the place she was most likely to be right now used to be the place I hated most.

The top floor of the old Sterling mansion.

The top floor had a glass conservatory.

As a kid, whenever punishment got to be too much, I’d hide there and cry.

I always thought no one knew about it.

Turns out, after Josie moved into the Sterling house, she’d started going up there too.

Two people trapped in lives that never fit them, and even their breaking point was the same place.