actress

And when she could say it, the attendance was incomplete, missing one or two important individuals that needed to know too. Excuses. She found herself hovering over and spinning in that cycle of thoughts the longer she wallowed in them. It didn't seem so bad now after a week or so of stalling, to use Claudia as a cash cow or an investor for the time being. She could be blackmailed, she could be used.

Why toss her into jail now when they could just exploit the bitch? And Crazy Grandmother was begging for her to make a decision but why make the decision now? She could just ignore the woman for a whole decade.

She paused. Or at least until she could fuck up Claudia's life when her soulmates' company was far away from the storm. Fuck it up only when the tour had ended and things were smoothened out and safe. She could wait until guilt fled her soul and she could rip the granny's head off for even suggesting that she could give up her child.

Amber didn't give a fuck. That was the mantra she repeated. Amber didn't give a fuck about her assailant.

It worked in the past when her head drifted, when her mind had once been preoccupied with problems with her soulmates. It worked when there had been bigger evils and bigger issues. But now she struggled when she went to bed, the memory of Claudia thriving and living as if everything was okay burned her alive. The nightmares that thrived in her darkest nights were now something to be considered as a mirror of reality.

Claudia was now real.

Those words paralysed her. Her body was dead to the world as her sense of awareness woke with a start. She was pinned to the bed unable to breathe as Claudia loomed over her, lips pulled into a smile that stretched so far across her cheeks it consumed her. Her lips were the colour of blood, her eyes shards of green. She leered, then laughed, cackling rumbles that exposed the bloody lilacs in her mouth. The flowers that fell over Amber, burying her, killing her. Amber'd woken more than once to that sleep paralysis dream, tear-streaked and fearful, begging for her soulmates to hug her.

The power to ruin her poisoned Amber.

She lay awake in bed, the images and fantasies of killing Claudia, so much more realistic. The considerations could be made. She would go to the Grandmother, she would tell her to fabricate a case of bullying to suicide. She would have that news posted online. Claudia would go to jail for being a horrible bully. Or she could tell the Grandmother to hire an assassin, make murder seem like an accident. Or she could—

Could she really do that? Amber had swallowed, surprised at her own innate evil, surprised at her own wicked schemes. She'd sat with that damned business card, a text typed out, questions asked on the ways the Grandmother could kill Claudia. God, how could she fucking think of killing someone just like that? She'd been disgusted at her actions, destroyed by her own mind.

The ability to choose to do so was far more painful than the resigned acceptance that everything had been the work of the universe.

She'd once believed that Claudia was like a tornado, a tsunami or an earthquake. A natural occurrence that could wreck lives but could not be controlled, thus no anger had formed in the depths of her overworked heart. But now…things were different.

And Amber felt so damn ugly inside she could almost die.

She pressed on determined to be a selfless lover, determined to figure out her thoughts before she chose to dump them upon her older, protective lovers. They would shoulder all her burdens if they could, they would fret, they would worry. They would drop everything for her. And Amber did not want that. Not when, inside, she was the ugliest person in the world. And so a single day dragged into another, and another, until weeks had passed.

But her soulmates sensed her distress easily, the memories and pain did come in bouts of remembrance. She stubbed her toe, cursed at life and in came the evil. She had a shitty day, lacking in productivity and suddenly the thoughts came when she tried to sleep. A bad nightmare and she would wake up panting hard. Her soulmates would find her huddled at her computer at the break of dawn, furiously penning down her thoughts to dispel all that anger.

Journalling. Meditating. Praying. Surviving. Appreciating. Gratefulness could save her, she believed.

No matter what she did the emotions dragged her down, arrived in waves, no matter how resilient she tried to be. And Amber knew the seven could smell the distress on her no matter how hard she tried. A touch of lemon, a hint of spice to the apple pie when the wave was just a tad stronger. Deodorant did the trick, too much and Ezra's lips curled at the endless mint.

He squinted pointedly, brow raised, rude jerk of his nose.

Why? His eyes asked. He caught on sooner than she expected. He loved to watch her, said it made him full to see her eat, made him happy to see her happy. And her body language could never escape his eyes unscathed. Another reason why he always seemed to know when she needed a good fuck. And when she wanted his hands as far away from her ass as she could have them.

She was a shitty actress with her family.