𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 || a dark romance ✔️

chapter one

— CAMILLA —

You know, sometimes I think my existence is just a joke. I can imagine God laughing at me, throwing in so much shit just to see how much I can take.

Throw in parents who don't love you, a sprinkle of nobody liking you, and, oh, don't forget, waiting at a wedding altar for a groom who will never arrive.

Perfect.

I mean, I've never exactly been well-liked, but I didn't expect him, my best friend, my fiancé, to abandon me like this. Not in front of everyone.

But maybe I should've. Maybe this was
always supposed to happen.

Maybe, I'm just... loveless.

They had me walk up to the altar early because Adam was late. Ironic, being paraded around for a groom who doesn't even want to see me.

He could've at least told me he was going to ghost me on our wedding day.

Then again, if I were stuck with me, I'd probably gouge my heart out with a blunt, rusty knife too.

So why the hell are my eyes stinging? Why is my nose itching and my chest caving in like I'm owed something... like I ever had a chance of being loved?

I don't deserve to be upset. He's got someone else. She's a poor orphan girl raised by her sweet, old grandparents.

He's the rich businessman's son, expected to inherit the empire.

A forbidden love. A tragic romance. A match made in heaven... while I get to play the humiliated fiancé in their fairytale.

Honestly, I feel targeted.

God, if you're listening: go to hell.
But I think that's impossible...

Adam and I were just friends, thrown into this engagement for the sake of business. I was always going to be the one left behind. I was never going to be the heroine.

Maybe this is my villain origin story.

Should I become a villain?

I didn't even love Adam. Not really. Okay—maybe a little. And maybe I do hate the girl he chose. Not just because she stole him, but because she took the only person I could ever talk to.

Adam. That's his name. The golden boy. He was always so kind to me, in a way no one else ever was.

Everyone else just saw me as an inconvenience. A ticking time bomb to be married off as quickly as possible.

I wasn't a good child, either. Always running off to the old cemetery with the huge tree on the hill, just past the chipped golden gates. I memorized the names on each tombstones—forgotten souls that made more sense to me than living people ever did.

Adam used to go there with me. Except he was allowed. He asked his parents. They always said yes. I just snuck out like the problematic little girl I was.

My young mother and distant father didn't know what to do with me. Some say I drove my mother to alcoholism. I hate when they say that. Am I really that awful?

My mother had me at fifteen. My father was eighteen. It was out of wedlock (obviously), which somehow scandalized people less than the fact that a minor was with an adult. Apparently, being three years apart made it all fine.

He should've gone to jail. But in my mother's small town, people just called it "God's will." Everything happens for a reason, they said.

Until I was born—with black hair and eyes too dark, too strange. My parents were blond. So was their entire family. Except for my aunt Lydia.