Chapter 1
On the third month of my secret relationship with Percival Dane, he announced his relationship with anoter girl on his social media.
I blurted out, asking him why.
Percival shot me a careless look, a lazy smile tugging at his lips.
He said, "If you looked normal, like her, with nothing wrong with your face, I could make our relationship public as well."
*****
By the time Percival came out of the bathroom, I'd been staring at my phone for ages, totally spaced out.
It was the post he'd put up on his social media feed an hour ago.
A pretty, delicate girl was in his arms, smiling softly.
Her cat-like eyes really stood out.
The caption read: [I'm officially off the market. This lady's got the final say over me.]
It was obviously him going official.
Percival came over, smelling fresh from his shower. "What are you looking at? You seem pretty absorbed."
Without thinking, I flipped my phone over.
He pressed down on me, clearly annoyed, but when he felt me trembling, his tone softened.
"Was I too rough just now? I'll take it easy this time," Percival said.
With that, he moved in for a kiss.
I pressed my hand against Percival's chest, not pretending anymore.
"I saw your post," I said.
He smirked, totally unbothered. "So what? That doesn't mean anything. We're still together, aren't we?"
"Percival!" I shouted, my voice rising even though I felt strangely weak inside.
"You know I hate homewreckers," I said, my tone sharp.
He brushed my hand aside and leaned in, kissing me at the corner of my mouth.
"It's not you. She's the other woman," Percival said.
I felt sick to my stomach.
I shoved him away. "I can't be in a love triangle.
"Since you went public with her, it's over between us."
Percival's lips tightened into a hard line as he watched me climb off the bed, clumsily pulling on my clothes.
"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice low and cold.
Just those three words, and I was completely wrecked.
My tears hit the floor before I could stop them.
Before I knew it, I blurted out, "Aren't we together? Why..."
I wanted to ask him why he had to make his relationship with her public on my birthday.
If he never liked me, I wondered why he decided to be in a relationship with me.
I wanted to ask him why he humiliated me like this, knowing I hate being the other woman.
Percival casually picked up a cigarette from the nightstand.
As smoke curled around him, he let those cruel words slip out, completely indifferent.
Percival said, "If you had a perfect face like hers, if you looked normal, I could make our relationship public, too."
When I was little, I was in a car accident.
My left eye was destroyed, and I was forced to have it removed.
Since then, I'd had to wear a prosthetic eye.
My dad, Virgil Currey, saw me as nothing but dead weight, so he divorced my mom, Audrey Warrick.
However, that was just an excuse.
He already had a whole new family.
His new family had two kids, both good-looking.
He took all the money and left Audrey with a house that wasn't worth much.
He forgot all about me, his daughter, left suffering with a prosthetic eye that never fit right.
Audrey worked day and night, doing everything she could to make my life a little less miserable.
In the end, luck was finally on our side. Audrey became a successful entrepreneur.
She gave me the best doctors, the best schools, and everything money could buy.
That was how I met Percival.
When I first transferred to that international school, the other students were actually pretty nice to me.
But then someone noticed I never turned to look at them when they spoke to me from my left side.
That was when things started to take a turn for the worse.
My textbooks got scribbled on, and my homework would just disappear for no reason.
After getting chewed out by the teacher, I'd come back to class only to get a bucket of water dumped on my head.
Sometimes, I'd open my desk drawer and find a blood-soaked tampon shoved inside.