“I fucking hate you guys.”
“Bitch, no you don’t.” Layla sings, grabbing my hand, still giggling. “You’d die without us.”
I sigh, swiping another shot off the bar. “Well, pack your bags, sluts. We’re going back to LA.”
catalina
. . .
God, I need Advil and a fucking lobotomy.
Or, a full-blown life reset. Both sound like good fucking options.
Sunlight spills through the porthole of my father’s private jet, warm and golden like the universe has the nerve to pretend everything’s fine. It kisses my skin and mocks me all at once.
My skull pounds with each pulse, every heartbeat a jackhammer pounding my temples. My mouth tastes like regret and tequila, and my stomach? Empty—except for the poison I willingly dumped into it last night.
Nausea swirls in my gut, but it’s the anxiety that knocks the wind out of me. It curls around my ribs, squeezing like a vice as I remember exactly where I’m going.
I groan as I push myself upright, every limb stiff and sore like I performed manual labor instead of partying for eight hours straight. My fingers scrub at my face, smearing my mascara as I blink up at the monitor overhead. The screen glows soft blue, blurry at first, then sharpens into something that makes my stomach twist tighter.
Thirty minutes until we land in Los Angeles.
Shit.
I swallow, but my throat is dry and tight. He can’t be that mad.
Right?
I mean, I’m his daughter. Hisonlydaughter. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve purposely set a six-digit fire to his bank account.
My gaze drifts out the narrow window, watching as white clouds wrap around the jet like silk. It’s quiet up here, and of course, that’s when she creeps in—the memory I can’t outrun no matter how high I fly.
My mother.
She was my center of gravity. The one steady thing in a world that constantly tried to pull me in every direction at once. She saw every side of me—messy, moody, emotional—and never judged or ran away. She listened when no one else did, believed in me even when I couldn’t look myself in the mirror, and she made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I was worth something beyond the money tied to my last name. She used to tell me I had a future bright enough to blind me, and for a while, I believed her.
Until she was gone.
Cancer took her three years ago, and nothing’s felt steady since. One day, she was in the kitchen making her famous horchata, humming along to her favorite song, and the next, I was standing in that same kitchen, alone, surrounded by a silence that never let up.
I stopped pretending I was okay after that. Slipped into the nightlife like it was a lifeline.
Parties, pills, anything to blur the ache.
I called it living my life, but everyone else called it depression.
But what do I have to fucking complain about, right?
I’m rich, aren’t I?
Except I’m fucking not, my father is.
I’m just the ornament in the glass case, dressed up and trotted out when it suits him. The headlines say privilege, I say it’s fucking prison. I don’t want the money, I want fucking meaning. I want someone who looks at me and doesn’t see an investment or a liability. I want to be loved without having to earn it. I want to make something of my life and call it my own.
My father never had time for love. He filled the house with whores and called it moving on. Women who wore her jewelry and sat at her table like they belonged there.
I scoff, pressing my forehead to the cool glass of the window as the pilot’s voice crackles through the speaker.
