POV Audrey
Dr. Elaine Mayer's office smells like lavender and expensive neutrality. I've been coming here for years now, ever since Oliver started asking questions about his father that I couldn't answer without choking.
Today, with Shane Reed's orchids wilting on my desk and my grandfather's merger revelation burning through my thoughts, I'd called for an emergency session.
"You mentioned feeling trapped," Dr. Mayer says, her pen hovering over the leather notebook she never actually writes in. "Let's explore what that word means to you. When did you first learn to feel trapped, Audrey?"
The question lands somewhere I wasn't expecting.
"Hilmond Academy," I hear myself say. "I was seventeen, and I'd turned invisibility into a survival strategy because my acne face made me a target. I wore the same designer labels as everyone else, but on me Prada looked like desperation rather than privilege."
"You've mentioned the bullying before, but we've never discussed specifics. Who made you feel that way?"
"Jennifer Whitmore and her pack of glossy-lipped predators. Their cruelty was never direct enough for teachers to intervene, always delivered with plausible deniability."
I smooth my skirt, a gesture Dr. Mayer has probably catalogued in her mental files.
"She'd ask if my dermatologist gave refunds. Offer referrals as favors. The implication was always clear: I was a charity case requiring her benevolence, and my existence in her social sphere was an act of tolerance on her part."
"How did you cope?"
"I mapped the school's blind spots. Timed my movements between classes. Choose seats where shadows fell across my faceβ¦"
The memory tastes like old shame Iβm trying to forget.
"I've become pretty good at that, actually. By senior year, teachers sometimes even marked me absent when I was sitting right there."
Dr. Mayer leans forward slightly. "But something changed that strategy. Somethingβor someoneβmade invisibility feel insufficient."
Shane Reed's name rises in my throat like a confession.
"There was a boy. The kind of boy who moved through hallways like he owned them, because his family had donated for half the buildings. Golden, untouchable, surrounded by satellites who orbited him like he was the sun."
I laugh, but it comes out bitter.
"I memorized his schedule within a month. Knew which locker was his, which coffee he ordered, which books he checked out for English. I read Men's Health magazines because I'd seen one in his backpack, just to understand his world better."
"First love," Dr. Mayer observes.
"First obsession, perhaps. First lesson in wanting something so far beyond my reach that even dreaming felt like trespassing."
"Was there a moment when the strategy failed?"
I close my eyes, and the old library materializes behind my lids. Mahogany shelves, green-shaded lamps, the afternoon light that turned his hair copper-gold.
I was struggling with calculus homework when he appeared. Needed the textbook I had. Our interaction lasted maybe five minutes, but God, those five minutes he sat down across from me and we talked.
Like really talked.
About Mr. Peterson's impossible tests, about trick questions from footnotes nobody read. He laughed at something I said, and I felt like a real person in his presence for the first time in my life.
"We were together in the library when his friends arrived. They started immediately teasing him about his new study partner. Making those stupid kissing sounds, asking if he needed prescription cream for wherever I'd touched the book."
My hands have curled into fists without my permission.
"Then Jennifer appeared with her pack. She asked if tutoring me counted as community service for college applications. Said helping 'the unfortunate' was very noble of him."
"And Shane? What did he do?"
The question I've been avoiding for a decade. "Nothing."
Recognizing this still hurts, even though I am now a grown-up and successful woman.
Not one word of defense. No suggestion they stop. Just uncomfortable silence and averted eyes while his then girlfriend's friends dissected me like a specimen.
At last he mumbled something about needing to go, grabbed the textbook, and left with his crowd. Jennifer's arm linked through his while she loudly discussed the importance of maintaining social standards.
Bitch.
Dr. Mayer went quiet for a moment. "And you think his silence was a choice?"
"His silence was a verdict.β
I remember sitting in that library for an hour afterward, waiting for the feeling to return to my hands. Then I understood something fundamental: visibility was violence.
The moment someone like me stepped into the light, the world would remind me exactly where I belonged.
βI became a ghost in designer clothing, haunting the edges of a world that had made it clear I didn't belong in its center. And I told myself that was enough. That safety was better than wanting," I added.
"Did something change?" Dr. Mayer asked gently.
"Yes, near the end of the senior year. The acne finally cleared like a curse lifting but by then I'd forgotten how to be visible. Forgotten how to want things without shame."
I meet her eyes, knowing what comes next.
"There was a masquerade prom. Masks mandatory. And I thought⦠For one night, I thought I could be someone else. Someone bold enough to take what she'd craved for years."
"You approached him by yourself?"
"He was drunk and alone, so I helped him, and he finally looked at me like I was worth seeing. Like the mask made me someone who deserved his attention."
The tears I've held back for a decade are pressing against my throat now.
"I let him believe I was someone else. Someone worthy affection, loveβ¦"
I wipe my eyes with the tissue she offers. But I canβt continue and tell her that that night, unknowingly, he gave me the greatest gift of my life. Oliver. My son.
The only person who's ever loved me without conditions or escape clauses.
Or that now my grandfather has arranged for me to marry him. Shane Reed.
The boy who broke me with his silence is about to become my husband. And he still doesn't know that Iβm the same woman who took something from him in the dark.
Dr. Mayer sets down her pen. "You need to ask yourself about what do you want, Audrey. Not what your grandfather wants, not what the company needs. What do you want?"
I stare at the lavender walls, searching for an answer that doesn't exist.
"I want Oliver to have a father who chooses him. I want to stop being invisible. I wantβ¦" My voice breaks. "I want a man that I love to see me. The real me. And I'm terrified that if he does, he'll finally have a reason to leave me for good."
But also, I can't let Shane break Oliver's heart if he's not welcome.
Which is most likely what would happen.
