Chapter 5

I woke up to a voice shouting, sharp and familiar, the kind that always found me even when I tried to hide inside sleep.

My head throbbed, my chest felt tight, and before I fully opened my eyes, my mother’s voice cut through the room like a blade.

At first, I thought it was another dream. Since the accident, sleep had been cruel to me. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw water, felt my lungs burn, felt myself sinking while someone watched and walked away.

But the voice didn’t fade.

It grew louder, sharper, cutting through my head until I could no longer pretend I was still asleep.

“Charlotte, do you even know what you’ve done?”

My eyes opened slowly. The hospital room felt too bright, too quiet apart from my mother’s voice. My head was wrapped in thick bandages, my body heavy and weak, like it no longer belonged to me.

Standing beside my bed were my parents. My mother stood closest, arms folded tightly across her chest, anger sitting comfortably on her face.

My father stood a little behind her, his expression hard, unreadable, but familiar. He always looked like that when he was about to take her side.

I didn’t turn to face them. I rolled slightly to the side, my back to them, pulling the pillow close and holding it tight.

It felt like the only thing I could cling to without breaking. My throat was dry. Speaking felt like too much effort.

“How dare you push Celine into the water?” my mother continued, her voice rising with every word. “Were you trying to kill her? Were you thinking that if she died, you could finally take her place and be with Nathan?”

The words hit me one after the other, heavy and cruel. I stared at the white wall in front of me, my eyes stinging. I wondered, not for the first time, how a mother could look at her own child and see only wickedness.

I didn’t answer.

“Answer me!” she snapped. “Oh, how I wish the staff who saved you from the pool would’ve left you there to die. At least, that’d teach you a lesson.”

Still, I said nothing. I pressed my face deeper into the pillow, breathing slowly, trying to calm the storm in my chest. I had learned long ago that speaking too early only made things worse. In this house, explanations were never wanted. Confessions were already decided.

My mother scoffed. “Let me tell you something, Charlotte. As long as your father and I are alive, that nonsense will never happen. Never.” She stepped closer, and I could feel her presence looming over me. “Just look at yourself. Look at you lying there. You will never measure up to Celine. Never. And you don’t deserve Nathan.”

That was when something inside me finally broke.

I pushed myself up from the bed suddenly, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through my head and down my spine.

The room spun for a moment, but I held on. I turned to face them, my hands shaking, my chest rising and falling unevenly.

“I don’t deserve him?” My voice trembled, but I didn’t stop. “And she does?”

My mother stiffened. For the briefest second, uncertainty flickered across her face.

“If you hadn’t hidden the truth,” I continued, the words spilling out as though they had been waiting for years, “Nathan would never have even looked at her.”

The air in the room changed instantly.

My mother froze. Her eyes widened just a little before she quickly turned to my father. The look they exchanged was quick, silent, and full of things I was never meant to understand. Things they had buried and hoped would stay buried.

“You took what was mine,” I said, my voice breaking now, the pain finally breaking through the anger. “You took it from me and gave it to her. Just like you always do.” I looked from my mother to my father. “Don’t you think that’s shameful? Even a little?”

And then, like a sudden thunder, I felt my cheek struck. Sharp and fierce. The slap came so fast I didn’t see it.

My father’s hand struck my face with a loud, sharp sound.

My head snapped to the side, my ears ringing violently. I fell back against the bed, pain exploding across my cheek. For a moment, I tasted blood. My vision blurred, but I forced myself not to cry.

“You brat,” he said coldly. “Watch your mouth.”

I tried to sit up again, my body weak but my heart burning. My hands gripped the edge of the mattress as I struggled to steady myself.

“We are your parents,” he continued, his voice filled with authority and entitlement. “Your life, everything you have, came from us.”

I opened my mouth to speak. A thousand words rushed to the tip of my tongue. Years of silence, of swallowing my pain, of being treated like an outsider in my own home.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them how unfair they were, how blind, how cruel. I wanted to ask them why loving me always seemed so difficult.

But he didn’t let me.

“If we want to take it back, we will,” my father went on, stepping closer, pointing at me like I was nothing more than a stubborn child. “If we want to give it to your sister, we will. You have no right to complain. No right at all.”

My chest hurt so badly I thought it might split open. I tried to speak again, my lips parting, my voice shaking with everything I had been holding in.

“I’m warning you,” he said sharply, raising his hand once more. “If you dare tell anyone the truth, I’ll—”

The door opened instantly, cutting him short.

All three of us turned.

Nathan stood at the doorway, his hand still resting on the door handle. His eyes moved slowly from my father’s raised hand to my face, swollen and red, then to my mother’s tense expression. Shock was written plainly on his face.

“The truth?” he asked. “What truth?”