She rode with her father, the day of the party, out to the opulent mansion in the Hamptons that Desmond had rented not only for the party but for the entire weekend. Shy couldn't imagine going through the night playing the happy fiancé let alone the entire weekend after what happened in the kitchen the day before.
She glanced over at her father who had a stupid smile on his face since Shy and Desmond arrived back from Greece together and announced their engagement. Much to her dismay, no one had asked her how or why she came to that decision so quickly. Especially since everyone knew she had been seeing someone at school at the time. Well, not really. She often said she was seeing someone so people wouldn't question her motives for not coming home in the middle of the night.
The truth was she often rented hotel rooms in the city and stayed over night or a few nights so she could have time to herself. Whenever she was home, she would get barraged with questions either by her mother about men; or by her father about school. He wanted her to take business not liberal arts. Her mother wanted her to marry before graduation.
Well, her mother got her wish. It was a shame that she couldn't be there to see it.
Shy's mind wandered back to when she found out her mother was sick and that it was already too late to do anything. It was a bad arrhythmia, the doctor had said. Her mother had a hole in her heart that only grew with age. It caused her heart to beat irregularly in her chest and eventually the malfunction caused her to have a heart attack. Shy wondered how they never pin-pointed it before. When she came home from Greece with Desmond her mother was the only one who didn't solely celebrate when they announced their plans.
She died of a broken heart, Shy thought.
That was almost five months ago and Shy regretted her night interludes at the hotel. She should have been home spending time with her mother instead of lying about an affair that didn't exist.
Her eyes must have become heavy because her father reached his hand over what seemed like a vast stretch of leather between them to touch her knee. She was prompted to look at him.
"Not getting cold feet already are you, Shy?" Her father questioned without losing his smile.
Shy strained to smile and shake her head. He left his hand on her knee reassuringly as she resumed staring out of her window.
She wanted to scream. She could feel it burn inside of her chest, yearning to be freed from her lips. She wanted to tell her father about yesterday and let him call the whole thing off. Of course, that would mean that Desmond would take the rest of the company and they wouldn't be partners and her father would lose everything. She couldn't let that happen, but she still wondered if her father would even call it off. Would he even risk losing his baby just to save his daughter from eternal misery?
Her jaw clenched, knowing the answer in her heart. He wouldn't. And she had sold her soul to the devil. Shy looked through the front windshield over the driver's shoulder and saw Desmond's Rolls Royce in front of them and his head in the backseat. She swallowed down her rage and looked to her side where a little girl was mounted atop a horse and her father was leading the animal with a smile on both their faces and realized that she would never feel that again after this weekend.