Chapter 3

Miguel's POV

I expected a long speech from my dad the moment he came to pick me up from the airport. He hasn't said a word, just leads me to where his car is parked and instructs his driver to start driving. 

To Evergreen.

My home for the next six months or less if I fucked up and landed myself in prison for good. 

I don't remember much of what happened that night in October, just that I'd assaulted one of my supposed friends for the garbage that had come out of his mouth and walked out of the party, getting into my car and driving off.  It's not like I kept track of what happened when I attended all the banging parties in Los Angeles. 

My life since I was fifteen had been a blur of parties, drugs and sex and probably irresponsibility in the eyes of everyone because I'd dropped out of high school. I didn't take drugs, but nobody would've guessed that I didn't or why, until that fateful day in October when my mother, award winning actress and model, Faye Smith had publicly gone into rehabilitation for drug addiction after having a breakdown on the set of a shoot. 

I hated them. My parents. 

If they knew, they didn't care. 

Didn't care that they'd had a kid to think of when they shook the entire house with their screams. Didn't care when their kid wasn't doing well at school, just paid the nanny to homeschool him till he was able to go back into the real world. 

Maybe my dad had done what was best for him when he finally decided to get a divorce from my toxic manipulative attention-seeking anorexic drug using mother, but he'd left me behind. Walked out of my life when I was ten and left her in full custody of me, only bothering to see me when he wanted. And then he'd left Los Angeles all together when I was fifteen, our only mode of communication via Skype and texts. I'd stopped responding to his calls when I was sixteen. I'd stopped speaking to him altogether, but at least for what it was worth, he'd tried compared to my mother. 

And yet, in my fucking twisted up way, I  loved her because she had kept me. Paraded me on her arm like a new shiny toy when she needed me, but she'd kept me. The same can't be said for the man sitting beside me. 

I'd been given six months to try to become a decent person. Not that I really knew or cared what that meant. 

As if reminding me of what awaited me, the driver drives past the front gate and I stare at the mansion that will be become my house for the next six months. Not home. Never home. Home was with the only person who'd loved and taken care of me when even my parents hadn't. Home was now buried.  

The sun was setting already. 

The only thing I remembered about that engagement party was a pair of ocean blue eyes watching me as I fucked someone else into oblivion. It reminded me of the ocean I saw every morning when I looked out of my condo back home. 

Amelia Hart. 

Reddish brown hair in a chignon, big blue widening and constricting as she watched me all night. Even when she'd stumbled into the music room, a trap I'd set for my father or his beloved fiancee, her gaze had been the same. Piercing, acute, inquisitive. 

I'd stalked her social media for months after that. She didn't have much online presence but she had a friend who didn't mind posting pictures of her frequently. Bianca Miles. In all of the pictures, which weren't many, her hair was up–Ponytail, chignon, messy bun–  and her smile was cautious, not as carefree and expressive as her friend's. I imagined what she'd look like through a lens. Through my lens. If she'd crawl all over me like girls did when I asked them to stand in front of my camera. 

I wanted to hate her and her mother. I wanted to hate them for making my father happy when I was not. But everytime my mind went back to that night when her ocean eyes had crashed with mine, I was unsettled. I wanted to know what she thought of me. I wanted to know how I must've looked in her eyes. I wanted her to look her fill and tell me what she saw. I hated that she'd made me think so much with one look. That she'd made me feel small, feel less like the Angel that the media was crazy for and more like the childish Miguel who was lashing out at his happy father for being happy. 

A stepsister and stepmother.

It sounded wrong in my head.  

I walked silently, ignoring the people helping with my luggage as my father showed me around the house and up the stairs to what I assumed was my bedroom. My new prison. 

A nice large bedroom. A couch by the door beside a table and chair. A full length mirror on the table and an accompanying stool. A large flat screen television beside it and a four poster bed facing the large screen. A closet and a well furnished bathroom and a balcony with a view of the forest behind the house. 

My eyes fixed on the walls. Beige. Too bright. 

"Miguel Angel." I turn to see my father watching me, standing by the shut door, his arms crossed, apprehension on his face. He's worried. Not about me though. But of whatever plans he thinks I am concocting against him. 

Best not disappoint him, then. 

I tilt the side of my lip where my lip ring is; thankfully, he had yet to comment on my piercings and I hadn't hesitated to slip them back on when I was done with community service. 

"Si, papa" I say, watching him wince as he usually did when I spoke his native tongue. Our native tongue which he'd started to teach me before everything went to shit. 

He recovers instantly, his face a stoic mask, his stare meant to intimidate. "I have been trying to find the words to speak to you the entire trip here. I will just say this. Six months, Angel. Just six months and you'll be able to do whatever you want with your life. You're eighteen, an adult but barely legal enough to drink alcohol." I wince at the jab. "But you did and this is how I can save you from jail. Please, do not make trouble. Do not upset anybody." 

"You mean, your new family?" 

His gaze sharpens to slits. "Miguel Angel, please. I know you hate me." Oh, thank God. "But they have done nothing wrong.  And even if you hate me, I do not want you to go to prison."

I fold my arms, mirroring his expression. 

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Finish high school here. So that if in the end, you do decide to go to the university–"

"You and I know university isn't in the cards for people like me, you said so yourself, remember?" 

This time, he flinches like I slapped him. "Angel, it was a harsh thing to say about a ten year old, when will you forgive me?"

When you are as unhappy as I am. 

I don't respond for a few minutes, looking around the room. "My accounts were frozen. I don't have a dime." 

"You will, after six months." 

"So, how am I supposed to survive?"

"We believe that the life you led was because of that money. I told your mother you were too young to be introduced to her world but–" He sucks in a breath. "If you need money for anything, let me know." 

I scoff and throw myself on the bed. So that's how it was going to be. I'd be penniless in a strange town, going to high school and begging my father for money. Me. Someone who'd had access to money since he was ten. 

"What about internet, surely you'd let me have that." 

He nods and I almost smile. Almost, until he adds "You'll need it for whatever assignments you may have at school." 

"I hate school. I thought you knew that. Mum did." It was a childish attempt to try to guilt trip him but the both of us knew why I hated school and also that my mother had paid off whoever so I could find it easier. 

"I will inform the school authorities of your–" he struggles to find the words "–peculiarities. Plus you'll have your stepsister to assist you, as you'll be in the same class."

My ears snap up at that. Of course. Amelia Hart the last time I'd seen her was sixteen years old, a junior. She'd be in senior year now. More than anything, I didn't want her knowing about my peculiarities. I didn't understand why, when we'd barely spoken to each other. Call it self preservation. 

"You won't tell her about it." My poker face is intact. 

He raises his eyebrows "So how do you expect to–"

"Pay the teachers extra if you have to. I will try to get things done my own way."

I thought about how Amelia would react to seeing me again. I knew a good girl when I saw one and Amelia Hart was probably in a class of her own. 

I don't bother to hide the mischievous smile on my lips. 

If he sees it, he doesn't acknowledge it. Instead he throws open the door. "Dinner will be ready in a bit. I will send someone to get you when it is time." I open my mouth to object. "We eat dinners together in this house." Another reminder of his fucking picture perfect family. 

"I wasn't going to object." I lie smoothly. "I just wanted to let you know that I'll need a couple of things."

"What things?"

"Let's start with paint for the room." .

"What color would you like to change it to?"

I think back to the last time I ever willingly touched paint. To my camera abandoned somewhere in my luggage. 

"Maroon."