Afterglow

Part 2

### Chapter 1: frigid

You'd think nothing would be worse than finding out your boyfriend cheated on you with your sister.

You'd have thought wrong.

It was returning back home with your tail tucked between your legs after thinking you'd finally escaped their world of toxicity and fake smiles with money dripping between their teeth and insults swimming in champagne gilded breaths.

Stuck stranded outside of the airport whilst consequently freezing my ass off as the sky spit bitter, smog catching snow, I shivered in contempt waiting for the car that my dad had ordered to arrive, just to take me to the one place I absolutely dreaded returning.

When said car finally did arrive, I sought shelter in its warm interior, uncaring if I trudged in muddy snow sludge from the outside.

It was in the sleek black town car that I slipped my headphones in once giving directions to the driver and escaped to my own world of a shuffled playlist that always seemed to drown out the monotony and harshness of the regular world, but I could still hear my words hanging in the air, like a promise and a curse all at once.

"The address is twelve hundred Laymon Lane, Bayfield Academy."

I shivered as the words passed my lips.

Soggy, half-melted snowflakes drifted down the window of the town car in a lazy, lingering path that matched the pace at which I wished to return to the one place that I'd ever called home.

One long year and still those ice capped skyscrapers that stood like gallant knights in the distance brought with them the promise of heartache and still born memories threatening to break through the walls that I had pulled high in my mind the moment I got out.

I blocked out the screeching horns and squealing brakes from the constant traffic around the small car that was chauffeuring me back to my own personal hell, tuning back into my music.

A blessed distraction and salvation all in one, I survived on a diet of scintillating guitar riffs, haunting vocal runs and chilling lyrics that filled the space in my mind where all of my family drama, among other things, should have resided.

After my sister pretty much stole my boyfriend, I gouged myself on a litany of slow and painful ballads that could make even the hardest criminal shed a tear.

When my parents split and I decided to go and live with my father in California, thousands of miles away from the only home I'd ever known, I had tormented my eardrums with raging punk rock that had me drumming my fingers to the beat long after the songs had ceased playing.

Today, though, the music failed to soothe my aching nerves.

Today was the day that I would stroll back through those large marbled doors into the foyer and smell the Chanel perfume wafting off of my mother's fake chest in droves as if she were trying to hide the facade of happiness with it, somehow trying to make everything seem perfect and beautiful when our lives were anything but.

It was easier to face my father after I'd stumbled across their well kept family secret, as he was always too busy doting on my new stepmother Ellen and her growing belly to notice anything suspicious about me and my behavior, but my mother was far more observant.

Before I chose to live with my father she would breathe down my neck at any chance she got.

We were a split apart family, with one daughter so burned she decided to live across the country rather than face the toxicity, and the other so jaded she just so happened to steal the other's first real boyfriend.

I sighed as I realized the problems I was bringing home with me far outshone and eclipsed the ones I had left home with.

The song switched over and a sigh of relief fell from my parted lips, my mind imagining the cloud of fog that I would have produced had the window been opened to allow the chilly new winter air inside.

January was the beginning of the second semester, and senior year was about to come to a quick ending, but of course I couldn't have finished it out in California.

No, I was too much of a troublesome bother, what with my father about to be inviting a new life into the world with his new barely adult wife.

If I wasn't so wrapped up in the other events that had happened in California, the ones my parents had no idea I'd found out about, then getting kicked out might have just hurt my feelings...

The driver slammed on the brakes and my head hit the back of the plush seat causing one of the earbuds to fall out and dangle helplessly against my chest.

I was stuck between two worlds- one a fantasy that I could escape to and wallow in, while the other was harsh, painful and all too real, but one that I would nevertheless have to enter sooner rather than later.

"Come on, it's a green light asshole!"

Back to my fantasy world, it was.

I scrolled aimlessly through the pictures I had taken with my friends in California and remembered our tearful goodbyes.

I had a honey sweet boyfriend back there, Ian, but long distance was far too heavy for a pair of seventeen year olds, especially with the load of baggage we each carried into the relationship even before we added a few thousand miles between us.

The breakup was sweet and amicable, if a bit inconsequential and surface level, as was most of the relationship itself.

It was more of an intense friendship if anything.

The town car lurched forward slowly as the lull of slow traffic kept the rubber tires turning, the fumes from the obscenely loud garbage truck ahead permeating the carefully curated air inside while the roar of its engine obstructed my next song in my head.

I leaned my head against the cool glass, my dark brown locks squishing against the iced window and locked my vision on the pair of light brown almond shaped eyes that stared back at me through the half transparent reflection of the window.

My sister had once commented that she wished she had the same kind of eyes until she'd overheard my ex boyfriend tell her he preferred blue eyes, and then she was permanently on the side of cerulean.

I rolled my eyes at the memory.

It wasn't long before the soft roar of the engine and light rocking of the stop and go traffic lulled me into a restless sleep and before I knew it I opened my eyes and the skyscrapers of New York City were long gone, instead replaced by towering pines dusted with plush white snow and imposing mountains in the distance, their beauty offset by the haunting garish building that the town car was dangerously creeping closer and closer to.

My home.

It hadn't changed in the year and some odd months that I'd vacated the premises, still gray brick and marble columns filled with the soul sucking money that my family had acquired through the generations.

My mother hadn't worked a day in her life, but my father took over the business the second he turned twenty-one, something he never forgot to remind me and my sister of constantly and incessantly.

Accounting wasn't the most exciting job in the world, but when it came to owning the country's largest firm in the financial realm, my father took home the cake in making it sound even more boring than one could have ever imagined.

My mother kept the house and her bank account padded with the divorce settlement a larger sum than a monarch would have needed to run a small country, so pulling up to the small mansion that only housed two people normally seemed excessive.

It was excessive when it was a full family of four in attendance, but the gross waste of space and resources of my childhood home finally hit me stepping out onto the slick, glossy pavement iced over with a thin sheen of frozen rain.

A permanent frown fell upon my face as I took in the dark evergreen pines edging the property, the landscaping impeccable despite the season being the dead of winter when everything was supposed to be, well, dead .

The needles of the pines dusted in fresh powder sparkled in the falling sunlight and I had to shield my eyes just as the double doors of the pseudo mansion opened and down came my mother and sister, her boyfriend of one and a half years in tow for the welcoming party.

Oh, joy.

I hadn't laid eyes on Holden Masterson in one long year, but it wasn't long enough for me to forget the way his golden brown hair shone in the sunlight or how his muscular figure crafted  by his years on the lacrosse team did certain things to my mind that should have been illegal.

His casual designer outfit was hidden by a large black overcoat and his eyes were covered with a pair of glasses that only added to his appeal.

An entire year, though, and somehow that massive betrayal hadn't disappeared, no matter how many miles had separated us.

I averted my attention from the nauseatingly happy couple and flitted my gaze to my mother's natural blonde hair flipping to the side in agitation as she realized that I wasn't making a move to greet them at the steps and that she would actually have to step on the driveway.

Even ten feet away and I could smell my mother's disapproval of my outfit and hairstyle from where I stood.

I'd dressed casually with my legging clad legs plopped into a pair of black fur ankle boots, the large black pea coat the same one she'd bought for me for Christmas the year before.  It had been shipped, as we couldn't do in person holidays.

We got a FaceTime call, and that was it, that was Christmas from my mom.

My driver hauled one of my bags upon his shoulder and began walking towards the house which cued me in on the fact that I hadn't moved since spotting my family.

Great.

One reluctant step after the other took me away from the blessed sanctuary of the enclosed car that was my only escape, my feet stomping reminding me of a death march.

Maybe I could have made a break for it and stolen the car and drove it all the way back to the airport, but I was only seventeen and all of my bank cards would be frozen in a second if I ever tried to run away.

Plus, I didn't have anywhere to run to.

My dad didn't want me, so back to mommy dearest it was, even if I didn't want either of them anymore.

It didn't matter what I wanted.

"Katrina Lane Randolph, you get over here and give your mother a hug!"

Her voice came out high pitched and somewhat happy, so I obliged, intentionally keeping my eyes away from Holden and Sloane, my 'sister'.

I really could put air quotes around her name, because we weren't really blood related considering I was adopted.

Apparently, my parents didn't think they could have a baby after they were first married so they went through the adoption process with me but the moment the papers were signed and I was officially a Randolph, Sloane was conceived.

I was the dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned adoptive daughter of the famous finance moguls and Sloane was the perfect blonde haired blue eyed daughter they had originally wanted in the first place.

It wasn't like I was treated like Cinderella, quite the opposite really.

In trying to make up for the fact that I wasn't blood, my parents treated me to almost everything I could have ever wanted growing up, leading to hordes of jealousy problems with Sloane.

They didn't realize the monster they were creating whilst doing it so I couldn't blame them much, but it was like once they split up, all bets were off.

It was like we had to choose sides, and I chose dad's.

I chose wrong, apparently.

I should have chosen neither and moved in with my best friend Vera instead.

My mother's hug was stiff and cold, and I was wrong about the Chanel perfume.

This time it was Dior.

Her golden locks loaded down with copious amounts of hair spray tickled my face and I was desperate to escape her embrace.

Holden somehow caught my eye as I pulled out of the hug and damn if those blue eyes didn't still try to make me feel something other than anger, but  I steeled my resolve and planned to get his image out of my head, no matter what.

I'd hunker down and study all semester, focus on reading and music.  Anything to keep myself from remembering that I was still desperately searching answers to why he did what he did, despite the fact that he was wrapped up in my little sister's arms.

Speaking of my mother's carbon copy, even right down to the exact same type of hairspray to hold their blonde manes down in the frigid winds.

"Sloane."

She blessed me with an oh so warm side hug, only briefly letting go of Holden in order to do so.  She hadn't changed one bit.  We were a cold family, hardly any emotions shown between us, so it wasn't unusual to go such long periods without seeing one another.

I gazed out at the cold grey air and huffed out a puff of breath that satisfactorily curled in a plume of fog and drifted up towards the equally bleak sky, evaporating into nothing and escaping the current reality I was trapped inside of.

I was truly grateful for the world that I was born into, and I had loved my family once upon a time, but it was suffocating having to be surrounded by a sister who hated my guts, an ex that I wasn't over because of the way our relationship had so abruptly ended (via a drunken text that he had cheated on me with said sister), and a mother who was less emotionally available than a Pop Tart.

Don't forget the secret...the weight of an enormous secret that suffocated me just by giving it space in my brain to exist.

"Can we go now, I need to talk about Lacrosse practice with Taylor and Evan and I want to hang out before Lachlan's party tonight."

My body visibly tensed at the sound of Holden's voice, but mainly because of the names that he'd uttered.

I hadn't seen or spoken with my fellow classmates aside from my best friend Vera for the entire year that I was gone, and I almost put the last name that had dropped from Holden's lips out of my mind the entire time I was away, but there was a gnawing nuisance that allowed that name to keep popping up in my memories.

Lachlan Brooks, the only other guy that I'd given a second thought to in my entire time at Bayfield Academy, mainly because his family owned the entire damn campus, but also because of his annoying desire to point out the fact that I was adopted to anyone who had ears, and his incessant teasing about my boy troubles was the cherry on top of the bitter cake that summed up my feelings about the boy.  The teasing didn't start until after Holden cheated one me, so at least I couldn't say he'd bullied me all my life, but six months before I left for California was more than enough ignorance to last a lifetime.

"Oh, a party!  Can Katrina tag along?"

I ground my teeth together.  My mother knew I preferred being called Kate over Katrina, but she always ignored that.

"I'm good mom, I actually want to unpack what I'm keeping here for the weekends and get ready to move in to school since I'm sleeping there Sunday night."

I wanted to add because I wouldn't want to be caught dead at Lachlan Brooks' party seeing as how I hated his guts but I couldn't say that.  My mother worshipped the Brooks' and if she knew how far my resentment ran for that entire family then she probably would have had me disowned.

"Are you sure?  I'm having a friend over, I wouldn't want to disturb you."

Meaning she was going to have a man over.  Great.

"I'll lock myself in my room, it'll be fine," I commented, my voice bored and monotone, my mood quickly turning sour as my blood boiled.  She had no idea that anything was even remotely wrong, or maybe she did and she chose to ignore it, typical of our family.

She didn't know that I'd actually be inviting Vera over and we'd be spending the night in the pool house, specifically the hot tub on the screened in porch, I'd already texted her and told her the plan.  A bottle of vodka and a swim was exactly what I needed to start the shittiest semester of my life off right.

My mother seemed like she was about to push the issue, but seeing the uncomfortable looks on Sloane and Holden's faces, I decided it was best for everyone if I ended this little reunion.

"Well it was lovely to see everyone again but I'm exhausted from the plane ride, and being kicked out for being an ' out of control teenager ' sure can wipe a person out.  Excuse me," I said, a smirk across my face aimed at my mother.

My mother wasn't so used to my bluntness, and she sure as hell didn't know the real reason behind it, but before she could allow my words to shock her in front of a guest she schooled her mostly plastic face and straightened her fur coat, eyes half panicked to watch Holden's reaction.

Sloane rolled her eyes while Holden seemed surprised at my outburst.  I used to be so good at being the quiet, reserved and obedient little girl that did everything asked of her because I was supposed to be so grateful that a wonderful family like the Randolph's had taken me in but I was more than done with acting like I was a part of this family, especially after I'd stumbled across the truth in California.

That sweet little obedient Katrina was no more, and I was happy to show my mother the new and improved Kate that refused to put up with anymore family secrets, there were far too many skeletons in the closet already.

My mother forced a laugh out of her over lined lips and made a comment about how funny I had become in California.  There she goes again, sweeping things under the rug and pretending they didn't exist, just like she did with everything.

It was like emotions didn't exist in my family, and whilst it was something I had grown accustomed to, it still bothered me because I knew it wasn't how other families operated.  I'd witnessed Vera's family act completely different than mine on so many occasions that it made me painfully aware of just how truly screwed up mine was.

I shot Holden one last secret glare and found that he was already staring at me but quickly covered it up with a cough and stretched his arm around Sloane's shoulders, causing my own to sag in defeat and pure exhaustion.

And so they walked away after saying goodbye and I was left with my mother and town car driver.

Was it too late to rethink the car stealing option?

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### Chapter 2: ice

Floral pastels and intricate gold detailing decorated the walls of my old room and everything was exactly as I'd left it.  Well, not exactly,  as the someone had obviously been in to clean up and the hole I'd punched in the closet wall had been remedied.  Tidied up like brand new, like nothing was wrong.

That was the family motto, wasn't it?  As long as you pretended nothing was wrong, then there wouldn't be a problem.  Emotions and communication were forbidden words in this family, and I had learned that from an early age.

I laughed as I remembered the doctor coming for a visit to stitch up my bloodied hand after the wall punching incident.  I had been chided on not suppressing my anger towards my sister after my boyfriend had cheated on me with her.  I was told by my mother that those 'childish urges and emotions' were only going to distract me from my goals, so in order to make good grades and get into an Ivy League school, I had to pretend like I didn't have feelings.  Great philosophy if you ask me.

My mother would constantly ask me what was wrong with me if I was ever in a bad mood at the dinner table, acting as if I didn't have a right to my own feelings.  How could anything be wrong with me when I had a wonderful life with great friends and a ridiculously wealthy family?

She didn't know about the bullying, the uncertainty, the desperation to fit in, the countless insecurities that every single teenaged girl kept burrowed underneath her skin that poked through at the most inopportune times, she didn't know about the burning desire to know something, anything , about where I came from, who I really was deep down inside.

Was my mother beautiful?  Was my father handsome?  What ethnicity was I, really and truly?  I was darker, my skin a light gold in the winter that turned into a toasty caramel in the summer, which was my current skin color because of my time spent in the California sun.

I would study my features for hours in the mirror and stare at people that would pass me by in stores with my parents, pretending I was shopping but really I was comparing myself to them.

Sometimes I just looked like a white girl who spent too much time in the tanning bed, but my dark hair and dark eyes gave away that I might have been of Mediterranean descent, and it was simply the not knowing that drove me absolutely insane.

I had begged countless times over and over again to do the genealogy DNA tests but every single time my parents refused, until the tests became so commonplace that someone could purchase them at their neighborhood Target, without a parent's consent.

So I did it.

And nothing else was ever going to be the same because of those actions.

My mother's knocking at my door stirred anger deep and primal within my chest so intense that it almost shocked me.  Swallowing the hatred I felt towards the woman I called my mother, I unclenched my fists and called for her to come in.

I had hardly had a chance to organize my things for the next day as my school things had already been sent over and I was still waiting for my final pieces of luggage to arrive.

Bayfield Academy was a boarding school, but that was far too simple a sentence to sum up the prestigious learning facility that Holden's best friend's family owned.  I would be living at the boarding school Sunday night through Friday afternoon every week, spending the weekend with my lovely family just a few miles down the road and then starting the whole process all over again until the cursed semester was over.

"Hey hon, Vera is here," my mother said, her outfit completely changed into something resembling what I would have worn to a cocktail party, her hemline almost nonexistent.

"Great, thanks."

My voice was ice towards her as her blue eyes widened in surprise at my tone towards her.  She didn't ask what was wrong, though.  That would imply that something was, in fact, wrong , and that couldn't happen, not in her household.

Pushing past my mother in the narrow hallway leading to my room, my stomach clenched by itself at the rampant emotions that threatened to boil over in that tension filled moment, but once I was breathing my own air and her scent wasn't suffocating me I could finally reign in those tumultuous feelings.

I plastered on an easy grin as Vera Jameson strolled in through my mother's front door, the hinges creaking as the object was nearly two hundred years old, refurbished in order to match the modern feel of the 'house', but it was still ancient.

"Aah!"

"Aah!"

Our matching squeals bounced off the echoing walls and I bounded down the steps to greet her, watching my step so I didn't slide on the marble floors below me, something that I'd done far too many times as a child.

"You're really home, I can't believe it!"

"I know, I'm surprised you weren't here with the welcoming committee when I made it."

Our bodies slammed into each other as I finally reached her and the hug would have been well worth a trip and fall on slippery flooring just in order to get to her faster.

I had missed my best friend, way more than I let on.

Her feminine perfume tickled my nostrils and I pulled back from her in order to inspect her, noticing a very out of character nose piercing sticking out, the silver a stark contrast against her dark ebony skin.

Her black hair was smoothed down and curled down her back and I realized the difference in her style even though it had only been a year since we'd seen each other in person, not counting the infinite FaceTime calls, but this was a recent change.

Where before she'd allowed her natural curls to bounce around her shoulders and frame her face, I could tell that her hair had been tucked away and the wig against her scalp seemed painful to wear.

"What did you do to your hair?!"

"My parents thought my natural hair made me seem 'unprofessional' so they're making me wear it like this for a while, especially for my college interviews.  When did you get so dark?  We're almost the same color now!"

"Sunshine, baby!  So they wanted your hair to be more 'professional', which is a totally disgusting thing to say by the way, but didn't care about a nose piercing?"

"Rebellion."  It was all she had to say, shrugging her shoulders in explanation as she did so.  Maybe I'd get one next.

We laughed and joked about the slight differences in our appearances and everything flowed and felt exactly how it used to, the atmosphere comfortable and gentle.

And then there was a knock at the door and that carefully curated happiness was wiped clean.

"Mother, there's someone for you at the door.  Come on Vera, I just have go grab my bikini, did you bring yours?  I have some extras..."

She lifted up her bag in her hand with a sheepish and somewhat guilty smile and I knew that it was because of the contraband alcohol she'd schlepped in with her.

We laughed together as she helped me pick out my favorite bikini, a very cheeky black bottom that I wouldn't normally wear but since it was just Vera I wasn't too worried, and a matching strapless black top with some silver beading that pushed my slightly above average chest up.  It was normally a bathing suit I would have worn alone and only for sun bathing purposes so I didn't end up with strange tan lines, but since it was just going to be the two of us I didn't mind.

Vera had been in my life since we were in diapers, and while she was bisexual, we had come to the conclusion a long time ago that she was most definitely not interested in me and I wholeheartedly agreed, and while we wouldn't ever change in front of each other for respect for the other, wearing skimpy things around each other didn't make either of us uneasy or feel weird.

I emerged from my modernized ensuite bathroom wearing my bikini and crochet cover up while simultaneously pulling my almost waist length dark brown hair into a high ponytail and grabbed the waterproof speaker and prepared to make a quick dash through the freezing cold weather to make it to the pool house that was located right around the side of the massive house.

"Ready?"

"Damn, girl!  Yeah, just not ready to hear about everything I'm missing right now at Lachlan's."

My eyes widened in surprise at her words.

"What?"

"Since when do you go to parties at Lachlan Brooks' house?  He used to torture the both of us...?"

Guilt filled her expression and I fake gasped.

"Tell me you didn't go there with him!"

"Not him..."

I had to think for a minute.

"No.  His sister?  Vera, he is literally such an asshole..." I groaned out in irritation at her, but I couldn't really blame her.

Blythe Brooks was Lachlan's younger sister by about a year, and was one of the only openly lesbian girls at Bayfield.  It was slim pickings for Vera.

"I know, but she's amazing!"

She gossiped with me as we made a break for the pool house, leaving out the back door and ignoring the obnoxiously loud music coming from the den and just what that meant for what my mother and her 'friend' were doing, my hands trembling as I carried Vera's huge bag and waited while she keyed in the code to open the doors to the toasty warm pool house.  She even knew the code to the main house, but I didn't let my mother know that.

The hot tub was bubbling underneath its cover and I sighed in contentment as I flipped the multicolored lights on, leaving everything else dark and sank down into the frothing water, Vera already coming around the other side with a plastic cup filled to the brim with sweet pineapple juice and vodka.

"Cheers."

"Wait.  What are we cheers-ing to?"

"Um, well-"

"Wait.  Your homecoming!  Duh!"

We laughed and clinked plastic together as I turned the volume up on the portable speaker and laid it on the ledge, laying back and relaxing my shoulders as I bobbed my head in time to the music blaring beside us.

I had needed this.  I had spent so long being filled with angst and anger and stewing with the information inside of me that I had yet to divulge.  I wasn't going to tell Vera, though.  This was too big, too damaging and too vile to ever be spoken aloud except to the people who had enabled it to happen, and I was playing the long game.

I also didn't know how she might react if she knew the truth, about the extent of the reprehensible acts my parents committed and the aftermath of what those acts created, the burning truth that singed everything it touched, including me.  Especially me.

I focused on taking shots, allowing the scorching liquid to eviscerate every intrusive thought that infiltrated my mind, escaping from the usually locked down box in the back of my mind.  I drank to forget what a total mistake I really and truly was, just like I did in California.  Drink, party, blast my music as loud as it would go, read until five in the morning, anything to keep my mind off of the truth.

So that night I drank.

We drank and laughed and talked for what felt like hours, my body growing numb and tingly, and I had to pull myself out of the scalding water every so often so that my body didn't overheat.  The alcohol was making my rational brain a little foggy and one of our favorite songs came on and we started screaming it at the top of our lungs.

"Ouch, my ears.  Who is that singing, is it Vera?  I know it's not-"

The new voice added to the mix wasn't female, and it was a voice that I distinctly remembered as the one that incessantly teased me the six months leading up to my departure to California.

Lachlan Brooks was somehow standing in front of us as we sang at the top of our lungs, a case of expensive beer in one hand with his other draped around a gorgeous blonde I recognized as my sister's best friend and Vera's step sister Jenna, wearing a fur coat over her red bikini which was somehow even skimpier than my own, his face a mix of surprise and shock.

The surprise and alcohol combined made me act uncharacteristically rude towards them, but I couldn't help it.  It was Lachlan, after all.

"The fuck are you doing here?"

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