She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 211

(Sonia)

The apartment has not grown on me.

Whoever wrote the original listing should be shot.

It said the place was charming, which apparently just means old.

The radiator clanks. The window sticks.

The waiter at the cafe down the street still pretends not to recognize me, even though I’m there every morning and always order the same thing.

Of all the numbers in my phone, only two people ever text me back.

My mother and my stepfather.

I know how that sounds. I'm aware.

It's the kind of thing I would never have admitted in California.

There would have been no need to.

In California I had a phone that never stopped chirping.

I was the girl people wanted at the thing, because I was beautiful and I was a Morton and I came with access.

I confused the access for me.

That was a big mistake.

It took Paris to show me none of them actually gave a damn about me.

Paris has been a hell of an eye-opener and I’d prefer to put the blindfold back on, thank you very much.

Hendrik cut my allowance when I left. Not to nothing, but to an amount that says balance your budget.

You can’t get into the rooms I want to be in here on living-on-a-budget money.

The people in those rooms can smell it.

They’re very polite about it.

In New York they'd have been cruel and at least I'd have known where I stood.

Here they glance at my outfit from last season’s runways and move on to someone else.

And the poor people who study with me don’t want much to do with me either.

Not rich enough for the elite. Not poor enough for the paupers.

It’s horrifying.

I spend so much time alone now.

I don’t like being alone.

I’ve realized I’m not very good company, which is information I would rather not have.

Introspection is my least favorite activity.

I think about Natasha more than I want to. About everything I did to her.

Very, very occasionally I wonder what it would be like to have a sister.

Then I remind myself that she’s awful and boring and she wants nothing to do with me.

The lies I fed Chase to keep him at my side also haunt me.

Some days I wonder what I was thinking. How I’d ever let things go that far.

But worst of all is what I did to Nathanial. That really keeps me up at night.

He’s loved and protected me for as long as I’ve been alive.

Until a few months ago. Now he wants nothing to do with me.

I think about what he had with Gloria, and what I did to that, and why.

I told myself for years it was strategy.

Alone in a clanking apartment it looks more like a girl who wanted things other people had and decided she was allowed to take them.

And making him believe Nat was dead…

No. I’m not going there. I made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.

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