Beauties and their Besharams

7. The scent of rain was no longer mine.

Rebelling is a risk in most of its cases, in my case, it was a crazy step that I had been taking all my life. After all, I liked living free, my mother felt it was fine but Dad was always against it. When I first head he was in prison, I was not sure how to react so I agreed to the only proposal that was making sense with actually making any sense. But there was no way I was going to let it roll between my dreams and haunt me forever, so at the last moment, I chose to pivot.

"Sitting alone, young lady?" Pete's annoying voice tortured my ears as he sat beside me. I was still in the cafeteria, Eleanor had already left for her classes though.

"What's up?" I picked up my phone, glueing my eyes to the screen.

He didn't seem pretty happy to my reaction anyway, "you never used to ignore me that bad."

Pete was a part of my past, a very strange part and I was sure, somewhere in his playboy heart, I was a reason he chose to turn to those dense roads of fake love.

I scrolled further down my phone gallery, "Am I acting differently? I don't think so."

His eyes flickered to my hair and then my feet, "yes, you are." He smiled a little before adding, "you seem to be looking out for Director Martin these days."

"Director Martin is my benefactor, " I breathed before looking at him, "didn't you teach me, always be on the same side as your benefactors?"

"You've grown up, young lady." He patted my hair forgetting the kick from this morning.

I pushed his hand away from me, "you've lost all these rights. Stop living your lies."

"It was a mistake, for God sake. I didn't intend on doing that." He huffed leaning down on the table. Strange, he wasn't screaming yet, like he used to always.

"I know, but I took it to heart. You betrayed me, Mr Bennette, you know how much I hate betrayals." I smiled standing up from my place. The World knew how much I hated betrayals, let alone someone who had been through the hell after betraying me.

"Yes, yes. I know Miss. Renaldi, but c'mon. The Martin boy did nothing different. He made you indebted to him." Pete stated. Did he just call Noah a traitor too?

I was done with him, I didn't want to speak to him anymore, so I did what I loved the most. "Hope I never see you again."

I smiled before running away from him. When Dad was pushed into bankruptcy, I went to Pete first. I needed to help my father and Pete was still a friend I wanted to trust back then. But, I guess it was my fault. Pete kept me hanging on to him a lot. I did all he asked me to, helped him learn secrets about me I wouldn't tell anyone. I even told him that I would be his girlfriend if he saved my father. He agreed to it then, but later I found out the whole trap was set up by him. He and his father had planned this all along.

Although Patricia was my friend, I still couldn't believe her family betrayed me. Pete had extracted enough information from me to find out it was impossible for us to save Dad without any miracles. So, it didn't actually matter how hard we tried, in the end, we were going to be on square one.

He had managed to use all our shares to his benefits, I hated him now. I was going to hate him for the rest of my life.

If there's any regret I have related to what happened two years back, was the fact that I chose Pete to help me first, before Noah. If only I had chosen to take Noah's help in the first place, maybe the situation would have been different. Maybe I wouldn't have had made a fool out of myself.

Tired and flooded with emotions and memories from the past, I ran to my escape. Knowing, he hardly considered me a part of his life now. I had a lot of "if" in my life and they were the reason for my sudden abrupt behaviours. It was because of them I was always running and acting on impulse.