Bella - Doesn't Like Me
Bella
I hated seeing Sarah like this. I’ve been in a similar situation.... confused, lonely, hurting, but her situation? It's far worse.
She was taken from her family, brought here to live with strangers, married to a man who doesn’t want her, and surrounded by people she can’t trust. She’s miserable. That’s the only way to put it.
I tried to make her feel comfortable. I really did. I wanted her to feel at home. Even Mom our mother-in-law—tried. She's always been so warm, so kind. But for some reason, none of it worked. It just... didn’t. Maybe at first, it seemed like it was getting better, but then it all started to unravel again.
I know Sarah doesn’t like me. I guess I wouldn’t like me either in her position.
I remember how I used to feel about Cyrus. That crush was like a disease, like a virus taking over every thought. Every woman felt like a threat. Like a barrier, I had to push through to get to him. And with Sarah… well, given everything that’s happened, I know why she resents me.
She knows Cullen has feelings for me.
It's ironic, isn’t it? After all these years. After I married Cyrus and had his son. After we broke up. Even after Cullen himself came to me once, talking on Cyrus’s behalf, trying to fix things between us… even after all that, it seems like he still feels something for me.
It should be impossible. But it’s not.
At first, I thought maybe he was just confused. But now? I’m not so sure. I don’t think he loves me the way he thinks he does. I think he’s just… lost. Maybe he’s holding onto the past because it’s easier than facing what’s in front of him. Or maybe he just enjoys how his presence riles up Cyrus, how it sets him off whenever he visits. It’s like he’s using our broken past as a weapon.
Maybe Cullen is trying to make up for what he did. For how badly he hurt me. For how much I trusted him, and how that trust was shattered. But no apology can fix that. Not really.
The truth is, whatever Cullen and I had… it’s changed. It evolved into something else, something that can never be what it once was. But he keeps clinging to it. And Sarah feels that. She sees it. And it only makes her hate me more.
That’s why I don’t tell her that Cullen visits every morning before he goes off to whatever it is he does with our fathers. That’s why I don’t tell her he joins us for dinner whenever he can even when he’s there, even when Cyrus isn’t.
Because I know the truth would break her.
I really wanted to be friends with Sarah. I had hoped, maybe foolishly that we could become like sisters. But standing there with her in that bathroom, listening to her talk about her father, I realized we might never be those people for each other. There’s something between us. Maybe just one word, one moment that changed everything. But even if we’ll never be close, I still can’t let her go through this alone.
Even when I was feeling completely isolated, I had people I could trust. I had my parents. She doesn’t have anyone. That’s why I pushed Cyrus to give her that phone. I thought maybe she needed a different kind of support. Maybe it couldn’t just be us women hovering and trying to help. Maybe she needed it from a man too... not Cullen because God knows he’s incapable of offering real comfort. But Cyrus? I thought maybe he could give her a sense of family. A sense of safety.
Cyrus didn’t want to do it. He resisted, but I promised him something...something he couldn’t say no to. So he gave her the phone. We told her it was a gift, a sign she was one of us now. But the truth was… there was a tracker in it.
I know how that sounds. It was for security, or at least, that’s how it was justified. Cyrus said she might contact her family and say something sensitive about our family. But I didn’t think she had anything to share. We never talk business around her, not at dinner, not in the halls. She’s never in the room for that kind of thing...
But then he said something about Cedric's office being here, how she might find a way to get access. Not like I know anything. Still… the tracker stayed.
And through all of it, not a single person reached out to her. No calls. No messages. Not even from her family. Her brothers never checked in. She didn’t try to contact them either. Only her father. She called him twice. And both times, he ended the calls like he couldn’t wait to hang up. He never even called back. Not once.
And that’s what broke me.
Even when my mom was struggling to get pregnant, even when she was distracted and hurting, my dad still showed up. He was there. He made us feel loved. And even if my mother wasn’t perfect, if I was in some strange place with strangers.... people tied to the enemies of my family, she would’ve called. She would’ve made sure I was okay. But Sarah? She didn’t even have a friend here.
The more I tried to get close to her, the more she pulled away. And little by little, she stopped being the same girl I met on her wedding day. She started drinking.
She thought she was slick. She thought we didn’t notice. But I did. I saw the way her eyes glazed over. The unsteady way she walked. I didn’t want to call her out, I didn’t want to give her another reason to hate me. But eventually, it spiralled. She was drinking more than ever, and I didn’t know what to do.
Mom and I talked about it. We thought maybe we could intervene, just the two of us. Because doing it with Cullen, Cyrus, and Cedric? That wouldn’t go well. Not with all those egos in the room.
But Mrs. Cincinnati really wanted to take Sarah to rehab. She was just worried. About the neighbors. About the family's image. About what people would say. So we hesitated.
Cyrus kept telling me it was just a phase. That Sarah would come out of it on her own. But I didn’t believe that. Not anymore. Not after seeing her today.
She looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Pale. Hollow. Broken. And then she started vomiting..... and I just reacted. My body moved before I could even think. I couldn’t let it continue. I couldn’t just stand there anymore.
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