Hope

Chapter Twenty One

The next morning I woke up screaming Danny's name, but he didn't come. During the night, I had remembered more from the night of the attack, most important being who I was. I think it just took me being relaxed and knowing that someone would always have my back in order to remember those things best left forgotten.

I flew out of bed, stumbling about the house calling for him, but all I found was a note on the fridge. My little Rose, I got called into work. One of the guys is out sick and they needed someone to fill in. I didn't want to leave you because I wanted to be with the first whole day of us being an engaged couple, but I get time and a half for coming in on short notice, so I figured that would help us pay for our honeymoon. Don't be too mad, but I have to stay at work for the next couple days. I love you, babe. Don't work too hard. – Danny

Panic bubbled in my throat that I tried unsuccessfully to shove back down. The fact that I remembered my identity, which Danny had thought would be a good thing, was freaking me out. My name was Isabelle Margaret Bellefleur, from a long line of Bellefleur's all the way from the deep south. My family came over on the Mayflower and fought in the Civil War, on the wrong side of the conflict. The Montgomery's were old family friends, so my parents thought that I should marry into the family. We wouldn't have to worry about being kissing cousins either, our families had never intermarried. I would have been the first Bellefleur to marry a Montgomery.

Maybe that is why I wanted to marry Trip so bad, my parents wanted it to happen. I had always wanted to please my parents growing up, but when I reached my teenage years that petered off. Or at least, I thought it had petered off because they kept shuffling me from boarding school to boarding school. My subconscious must have continued trying to please them, to get them to acknowledge that I was more than just a bane to their existence. I had told my friend Gabriella that I wanted to marry Trip because of the money and the lifestyle that he could bring me, and I think that was part of it, part of the reason that I wanted it so bad.

When I went to Trip's party that night, I went there expecting to get him to fall madly in love, or at least lust with me. The dress that Gabriella had picked out for me was slutty at best, leaving nothing to the imagination. I'm not shocked that he had sex with me that night, although if he hadn't drugged me, I probably would have had sex with him anyways. However, because he drugged me, I did things in public that normally would have only been a secret fantasy of mine. The kind of fantasy that I had begun living out with Danny.

But even if it was a fantasy of mine, being actually raped is not. There are a lot of things you can do that if you plan it correctly can be extremely sexy and fun, but if someone just takes advantage of you knowing that you have those fantasies, what could be an awesome time turns into a nightmare. Having your own body betray you into feeling something that you shouldn't be is a terrifying experience.

After an extremely rough trip down memory lane, I found myself lying on the kitchen floor huddled in a the fetal position. My entire body was shaking as sobs wracked my body. The truth about who I was did not sit well with me, and I knew that if Danny found out who I really was and the type of family I came from, he would not want to stay with me.

I pushed up on the floor and wiped the tears off my face, giving myself a few minutes to regain composure. When I did, I stood up, stretched and took a deep breath. I was going to need to come up with a plan to figure out what I needed to do. Leaving Danny wasn't something that I wanted to do, but it was something I was prepared to do in order to protect Danny from the truth of who I was. Not that I was a bad person, or a serial killer or something like that, but the fact that I was a rich, snobby, entitled bitch was not something I ever wanted Danny to find out.

The bedroom looked so empty as I started packing all the clothes and other miscellaneous items I had collected since I moved in with Danny into a duffel bag I found in his closet. I moved towards the dresser and opened the bottom drawer, pushed Danny's winter sweaters out of the way and grabbed a small tin from underneath. I opened up the tin and counted how much money I had managed to save, it was quite a bit for someone like 'Rose,' but for someone like me it was barely what I would have spent on clothes in one trip to Saks. Throwing on some clothes, I grabbed the duffel bag and tin and went into the kitchen. This was one of the hardest things that I ever had to do, but I had to do it.