"This is what she had become."
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Cleopatra Banks' last week in the small town of New Chelsea is nothing like she would have imagined it, but nothing could have prepared her for the stinging betrayal she's faced with and suddenly the prospect of...
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Time was slowing down.
She stopped feeling for a brief moment. She said nothing as Nigel walked her to his car after removing her from the Benson household. She kept quiet as he keyed the ignition and started up the car. She was silent when he began driving.
She seemed to be stuck in some nightmarish haze. Surely none of what was happening around her was real, it couldn't be.
There were too many question marks. She needed answers to everything and nothing, she wanted someone to say something to her fast before she lost her marbles completely.
The phone she had shoved into her back pocket began to vibrate all of a sudden but she only realized it a while later. It was as though someone had poured ice cold water over her and had roused her from sleep.
She looked around to find Nigel driving away with his split and bloodied knuckles over the steering wheel as he drove forward. He seemed to be stuck in a world of his own, fully concentrating on the road ahead and not bothering to even look at her.
It was all real.
Nigel had beaten up Maxwell after he confessed his love to her. Her heart started to crack at the edges as she remembered that look in his eyes when he whispered the word "sorry" to her. She had never seen anyone look so broken before.
What could he have been apologizing for?
Her phone began to vibrate again and this time around she managed to remove it from her back pocket. Her hands trembled as she looked at the lit up screen that was now cracked thanks to her fall earlier on.
Nigel had pushed her aside.
She was surprised to see that there was no caller ID, instead a stream of messages kept coming through and they were all from someone she hadn't expected at all.
Lacey.
She bit on her bottom lip as curiosity began to course through her. Her fingers hovered over the broken screen before she started sliding them over the cracks to get to her inbox. Alexis did mention something about Lacey having something important to discuss, maybe this was it. She welcomed the distraction.
She started to get irritated and rolled her eyes at the manner Lacey texted in. She was one of those ten texts per minute type of people. Why couldn't she just send one giant paragraph emphasizing the main point?
Her irritation disappeared as she read through the texts.
That feeling was shortly replaced by surprise, then confusion, followed by a slow simmering rage and finally an explosive volcanic anger.
She slowly turned to Nigel with a terrible scowl marring her face once she was done reading through all of the texts. The phone vibrated one last time and she somehow managed to peel her eyes away from the boy next to her and focused on the new message.
