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chapter eight. seventeen candles
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According to the Catholic Church, mortal sin can only be absolved through the sacred act of confession. But it looks like a certain Wasp princess has recently found herself desperately in need of a little unburdening. And who is the man upstairs to discriminate?
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CARTER BAIZEN DID have a thought, that maybe with his offering of giving Victoria a break from her life, it would lead them to having one step closer to each other. Oh, what a stupid thought. He had been a shoulder that Victoria cried on, though no tears were shed, Carter just listened to her disbeliefs and the comprehension of the person she thought she knew. . . her mother. Carter sympathised. How could he not? The girl had been lied to about the person she admired within her life, who she looked up to and now she wished she had never had that kind of thought. Her mother had an affair. Her mother was cruel for breaking her father's heart. Her mother was an adulterer. Suddenly she felt lost, and Carter couldn't help but sympathise the aching heart of his ex-lover. . . the girl he still wanted.
He begun to understand her change. The secret party girl that accompanied him on nights in dark clubs and bars. Victoria's family was slowly falling apart, and she couldn't be that girl he remembered a year ago. Her brooding, her sass that grew deeply worse and her focus so deeply on art alongside the future she hoped to have at Columbia. She was a different girl but he still loved her. When they weren't consuming alcohol, in the middle of sensual nights, he did see the girl who loved art but she was happy. Now? She was a miserable girl who loved art.
The Baizen wanted to see her smile, she deserved a moment of happiness and he wanted to be the one to give it to her.
He strode through his apartment, a cup of a coffee in hand, he knew that Victoria could be grateful to see the warm beverage when her eyes were to flutter open and the strong smell of it would flood her nose. When he had passed her on the way to the kitchen, he caught her on the couch asleep, floods of paper sitting on his wooden coffee table of art she had drawn that soon led her to her slumber. He left her awake, barely capable of keeping his dark blue eyes open and she reassured him she was going to be fine. All she needed was a moment alone.
Carter looked at the artwork made by Victoria's hand. He admired her work and it spoke deep volumes of how she felt. She drew a set of hands holding onto a bleeding heart that was cracked in the middle. The detail was beautiful and he assumed it was how her heart felt. Her mother broke the heart of her father, and seeing her father's heartbroken by the woman he loved was a sight she wished to have never seen. It was, unfortunately, embedded into her memory and incapable of washing away. Her father was her everything. Her family was her everything. None of them could do wrong. . . well, actually, they could.
