Page 17 of From Angel to Rogue (Four Foxes #6)

KATY

My internal musings stilled when I felt a presence ease down beside me.

There were plenty of empty seats.

Yet he chose the one right next to mine.

In these past months, he’s been avoiding me like I was the bothersome broken piece of glass on his favorite carpet.

“It’s so good to see you eat again,” he muttered nonchalantly. Like it wasn’t the first cordial conversation he was making with me since the day he broke up with me.

I carried on dunking my chicken tender in my beautiful concoction of ketchup, mayo, and chili sauce. The best combo ever known to exist. Don’t knock it till you try it.

“You even put on weight,” he added.

Not at all what a girl wanted to hear.

Ever.

Well, you didn’t like me pretty and thin anyway, my mind voice replied to him.

“It looks good on you; you should eat more. You’ve always loved to eat,” Lan said, his voice like kerosene to my flaming blood.

“I don’t need your opinion to eat,” I bit out, and through my side-eye, I watched a faint smile lift his pouty lips.

In the beginning months of our breakup, I tried hard to push the narrative of still maintaining my lean, bony body.

But then I watched people eat normally, and I started to crave actual food other than salads and started to actually eat real food.

Although I craved peculiar foods more recently, developing distinct tastes, while other times, I gobbled everything I could find. I had zero self-control.

“You’re mad,” he said, tongue in cheek. “Good.”

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I didn’t say a word.

Yes, I was fucking mad.

Fury was searing my blood like the licks of burning lava.

“You fucking left me,” I steeled sharply.

“I didn’t fucking leave you; we are just taking a break.” He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Well, you can officially make that little break permanent because I don’t want anything to do with you,” I fired back, biting a big chunk of my chicken, and moaned at the taste of crispy coating and the juicy meat.

My breath hitched, and my heart jerked when I felt his lips brush the edge of my ear. “I think that little request is impossible, angel.”

“But you…” I stammered, snapping my eyes to him. “You left me, you… you abandoned me,” I blubbered, feeling the warmth flow down my cheeks before I could stop myself.

Fuck, was I crying?

Why the hell was I crying?

“Katy,” he gasped, his eyes widening as he frantically wiped my tears away. “Fuck, don’t cry.”

I flicked his hands away and scrubbed my eyes with the back of my sweater.

I was swollen-eyed by the time my stupid tears halted.

“I’m sorry,” Lan whispered while our bandmates cast a few concerned glances our way, and my brother even asked firmly if I was okay. I quickly schooled my expression, nodding that I was fine.

Even emotional, I didn’t lose my appetite and went back to eating my chicken tenders like the last five minutes didn’t happen.

I think I had finally lost my mind.

Thankfully, the lights dulled down, and the Sinners took the stage, a distraction I welcomed.

Lan didn’t attempt to speak to me for the rest of the night.

Instead, he folded himself back into his brooding self.

He liked to do that a lot.

The only person Lan liked to be a part of his loner boy shadow was me. Otherwise, he was like a rogue in the wind who let his hair fly while he reveled in the freedom of life.

I could never be like that.

I needed to plan, schedule my day, have a purpose, and an end goal.

It wasn’t like I always needed that, but I’d practiced it too much these past years, so it had become my toxic trait.

Deep down, I was jealous of his carefree persona while I felt restricted by the chains I confined myself in.

Now I didn’t have a purpose. I was lost and confused and angry and also hungry, and I felt fucked by life, barely keeping my head afloat in these murky times.

Later that night, I holed myself up in a nice hotel room while the others went to the after-party.

Hotel rooms soon became my home. I lived there like a nomad so that one could actually get a hold of me.

I didn’t want to go back to that glass house where he broke my heart and fucked me with undying passion that made me feel free and quiet in the head for the first time in my life.

And now, I was exhausted and stressed.

Lan wanted me to find me, but how the fuck does one find themselves in their mid-twenties when they spent their entire lives feeding on lies.

An unfamiliar ring on my phone snapped me from my thoughts.

Frowning, I thumbed it open. “Hello,” I said in a skeptical tone.

“Katy, is that you?” A sharp melodic voice poured through the line.

“Yes.”

“It’s me, Colette. I’ve been trying to reach out to you forever.”

“Hey, Colette,” I replied, stifling a groan.

Ever since that night , I had taken a hiatus from all my high society friends, not like they missed me or I missed them. It seemed to be moot to be in that circle of serpents. I had lost my Lan anyway.

“Katy, I’m calling you about that banquet at the Beverly Park. I need the place this weekend, but they say they are fully booked. But I know you can pull some strings and make it happen.”

The one good thing that came with my job and all that saccharine pretending I did was the number of contacts I gathered throughout the years.

I knew almost everyone important in this city, and I knew I could make it happen.

But Colette was a stiff bitch who used to look down on me once upon a time, and she only called when she needed something.

Right now, I was too tired to be the people-pleasing Katy.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered, not even waiting for her answer as I cut the call and blocked her number for good measure.

Maybe this was the first step I needed to take; block everyone unnecessary out of my life.

I dragged my day-old hoodie and sweatpants self to the massive bed in my presidential suite.

I sipped on my vitamin water, huddling up in the center of my bed on a mountain of pillows while I thumbed through every contact in my phone, blocking most of them as I scrolled through.

I only had fifteen contacts left in the end, and all of them were my friends and family and my assistant, Chris, who handled almost all of my work calls. I didn’t know why, but clearing up my phone in turn cleared some of the fog in my head.

But it still didn’t fill the gap of missing him.

Lines creased the corners of my eyes when I landed on a text chain from an unknown number from months ago that I failed to open. I hardly got any spam since all our devices were firewalled with high security, so whoever it was had to have known my number.

Terror crippled me when I thumbed open the message and saw myself from another point of view.

There was no doubt that it was from that night.

I was wearing the same pink dress, which crawled up so high that the lace end of my panties was visible.

My sad form looked dead to the world, the position making my cleavage spill out of my small partying number.

It felt violating and disgusting.

I felt violated and disgusted.

This only confirmed my worst fear—that night wasn’t just me dragging my drunken self and crashing into a hotel room because I was too exhausted to call a taxi home.

Something else had happened, something that I didn’t remember.

And someone else knew the truth.

Someone who took these pictures and had the liberty to send them to me with a note calling me a FAKE.

I recognized the truth of that label, but it still didn’t make me feel any better.

A lick of trepidation thudded my heart. If someone was there in that room with me, then did something else happen? Did something that shouldn’t have happened happen?

That thought made nausea lurch up my chest.

It didn’t matter how many times I tried to wreck my mind to just remember something; it seemed impossible.

But everything else from that day I remembered in vivid colors, except for what happened after. It was a Saturday, the night our society girls gather every week at the Fairmount in LA, a time of my life when I was good at pretending and faking the life I lived.

It was just like any other party, the drinks flowing with the air filled with hot gossip and expensive dresses, so I wasn’t expecting anything to happen.

But the last thing I remembered was clinking my glasses with Ava and Helen on our third round of drinks at around seven p.m., and then everything was pitch black.

That was until I woke up later that night with my heart at my throat, right at 3 a.m.

My dress was in a disarray in a room at the same hotel, booked under my own name, charged with my own card, and no one had a clue what happened to me.

Conveniently, none of the cameras worked that day, and the hotel staff wasn’t able to help much, and neither were my so-called friends.

It was the fear of what happened that night, the fear so shrill, so cold that I stumbled and kept stumbling. I was so stricken with the terror of the unknown that I had a nervous breakdown in front of Lan and lost everything I held tight in a matter of minutes.

I knew it was all because of me, but then it all started because of that night.

The more I stared at those pictures, the more the nausea riddled my gut, and I just couldn’t take it anymore as I dashed to the bathroom.

My fingers clutched the toilet seat in a murderous grip while I heaved my guts, the burning sting of acid and remnants of my dinner and vitamin water washed out of me.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand as I crashed on the floor, too exhausted.

What the fuck was I doing, hiding in a hotel room when everyone was out here living their lives?

Was that what I, Katy Evans, had become? Had been reduced to?

Wasn’t I so much better than that?

Did I do all that I did to end up here, puking my guts out in a nowhere hotel room while I lost everything, the only person I loved more than I loved myself?

The more I sat there with that thought, the more the blurred lines became clearer.

I slowly dragged myself off the floor and washed my mouth twice.

The girl in the mirror staring back at me was tired and sad, but there was fire in her eyes.

Fire that wasn’t there before.

Fire because realization dawned on her.

I finally understood what Lan was trying to say.

He didn’t abandon me.

He didn’t leave me.

Instead, he gave me the freedom to do anything I wanted without having a reason, without having to explain myself. He stepped back before I could derail us to the point of no return.

It wouldn’t take a fool to realize that I was gone.

So far gone that I dug myself into a deep hole, so deep that I was on the brink of completely losing myself.

If I had stayed with him any longer, I would’ve broken his heart more than I already have been doing the past six years.

Because how many times had he asked me out on a date these past six years and I said no?

How many times had he initiated sex and I evaded with an excuse?

How many conversations had he tried to have, and I made myself busy?

All the while, he stayed quiet, patient, and understanding. Only because he loved me or loved the girl who I created.

I let my weakness, my humiliation of not being able to be a complete woman, a woman who couldn’t give him everything, sink me into a destructive path that I created for myself.

Lan did the hardest thing a man in love could ever do—leave the woman he was still in love with, while he waited for her to find herself again.

I could’ve never done that. I would have clung to him and destroyed us both.

My dumb head didn’t even get that. I guess at the end of the day, Lan did know me better than anyone.

Maybe he even saw the real me underneath all that fakeness.

Maybe he saw it all along, even at times when I didn’t.

A different kind of fear shot through my heart.

If I… If I uncovered all the layers, and if maybe, maybe I became the version of myself that I was truly happy with and was truly proud of, would he even like her?

He said he would, and I chose to believe him.

At this time, what other choice did I have anyway?

But if I could write a plan to become someone else, I could also write a plan to find me again, right?

Somewhere amid all the layers I created, the real me was still there, alive and breathing, right?

Right?