Part of Your World(98)

“You’re dead inside. You’ve lost the thing that gives you life.”

I watched her quietly. “Is that how you felt when Nick left?”

She scoffed. “Fuck no. You’re way worse than I was.”

I snorted.

“Seriously, I wouldn’t give that jackass the satisfaction. But you? You’re a mess.”

I laughed a little.

She turned to look at me. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah…”

“If you could wipe your whole life clean and rebuild it from scratch and nobody would question how you’ve done it, what order would you put it in? Royaume first? Then your parents? Then Daniel?”

I shook my head. “No…”

“Then what?”

I paused to think about it a moment. “Daniel. Then Wakan. Then Royaume and everything else.”

She jabbed a finger at me. “That’s why you feel like shit, Ali. You’re all out of order.”

I blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

She propped herself on her elbows. “What I mean is you have been conditioned your entire life to live for everyone else. To do what’s expected of you, to blindly serve. You were promised to Royaume Northwestern before you were even born. And it’s a super important thing and I’m not saying it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. You can decide to put yourself first—you do have a choice. It’s not an easy choice. It’s not without consequences. But you do have a choice.

“If your life is this bad without Daniel in it, then maybe you need to take another look at your priorities. Derek did. I mean, for him to do this Cambodia thing, he’d have to have felt like you feel right now, don’t you think? I don’t think he didn’t care about Royaume or you or his parents. I just think at the end of the day he just didn’t care more than he cared about her.” She shrugged. “She was his nonnegotiable.”

“His nonnegotiable…”

“Yeah. The one thing he couldn’t live without. Everything else was just everything else.”

I shook my head at her. “But…but I can’t leave Royaume—”

“I mean, can’t you? You’re going to help people, no matter where you end up, Ali. Yeah, it’s not gonna be on the scale that you can at Royaume. But you can still save lives. Derek is. He found a way. And personally, I think a hundred and twenty-five years is a nice round number to end it on, if you want my opinion.”

I sat up and gawked at her.

“What? Seriously. If you left, would you feel worse than you do right now?” she asked. “If you just said ‘Fuck it’ and dipped, would you be as unhappy as you are today?”

I blinked at her. Because the answer was remarkably simple. “No.”

“You don’t have to feel like this. You literally don’t. Quit. Leave. Pick him. Pick yourself.”

I stared at her a long moment. Then I started to breathe hard.

I wasn’t allowed to think about leaving. I couldn’t be the one to make this suggestion, because it was too selfish and too self-serving. It was a forbidden fantasy, too traitorous for me to even entertain. But the second Bri spoke it into the universe, my heart grabbed onto it and ran.

Because what if I did?

What if I quit?

What if just for once I did what I wanted? Instead of thinking about my parents or the legacy or the plethora of people I’d never met who would benefit one day from me staying where I was.

My mind immediately went there and played out quitting in my head, like a movie on fast forward.

I was mentally in my car, driving to Wakan, diving into Daniel’s arms, sobbing into his neck, begging for his forgiveness.

The relief at just thinking this was palpable.

The thought that I could end my misery, stop my suffering, was such an enormous weight off my shoulders, I felt like I wanted to jump off the bed and bolt from the room. I could feel the idea getting so big and alive in just the few moments it was out, it no longer fit into the tiny box of impossible things that I had kept it in.

What if I did…

But I couldn’t. Could I?

How could I live with the guilt? With the shame?

Without my parents…

Because for all their faults, they were still the only ones I’d ever have. And if I did this, they would never speak to me again. It would be worse than what Derek did. I’d be ending the legacy. It would never be forgiven. Ever. I would lose them forever.

But then how could I live with losing Daniel forever?

How could I wake up every day for the next fifty years and function like this, knowing that I didn’t have to. That feeling this was a choice, a decision I made. That I’d picked this for me and him.

And that was the most crucial part of all.

How Daniel must feel, having this breakup thrust on him against his will. Having no say in any of it. Wasn’t that worse than all the rest of it? Hurting someone I loved whose only crime had been unconditionally loving me back?

My parents had never loved me unconditionally. Never. So then why was I loving them that way? Why did they deserve that? Why did I think I had to sell my soul instead of them maybe learning to be open-minded or tolerant or just quiet about the choices their children were making?

But I knew why I thought I had to give them that…