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Shaking my head, I force my stupid insecurities down, close the cupboard and finish up what I’m doing.
I don’t know why, but I kinda thought that Theo would have slipped out of bed when I finally crashed only a few hours ago to come and clean up the mess in the living room, but as I flick the lights on, I discover that it still looks like something out of a crime scene.
Bloody handprints are smeared on the window, there are stains, which I can only assume are also blood, on the leather sofa, and when I step closer, I see droplets on the wooden floor.
Christ, no wonder my body aches like a little bitch. It literally looks like he mauled me out here.
Needing something to keep me busy while he’s gone, I rummage through the kitchen until I find some cleaning products. All of them are full, and it leaves me wondering who actually cleans this place. I can’t imagine Theo pulling on his Marigolds and donning a feather duster, although the thought makes me giggle as I gather up my findings and head back to the living room.
I remove the evidence of what happened the night before from the window before setting to work on the sofa with some anti-bac spray. I clean the floor the best I can in the absence of a mop, and I’m just about to take everything back to the kitchen when one of Theo’s shirt buttons catches my eye.
Looking around, I spot more of them where they finally stopped after I ripped them clean from the fabric.
Getting on my hands and knees, I begin crawling around and gathering them all up.
I shouldn’t care. I should leave them to make his left eye twitch in annoyance when he gets home. But some weird part of me doesn’t actually want to piss him off for once.
As I reach for the one I can see poking out from under the coffee table on the rug, my hand hits something.
Grabbing it, I pull out a folder.
Thinking nothing of it, I place it right side up on the coffee table and grab the button—only when I stand, something about it catches my eye and it makes my heart jump into my throat.
On the front of the grey folder, in perfect penmanship, is my name.
Emmie Cora Ramsey.
“What the hell?” I mutter to myself. Placing the buttons in my palm on the coffee table, I perch my arse on the edge of the sofa, and with a trembling hand, I flip the folder open.
For the longest time, I just stare at the words before me, confused, refusing to understand what they mean.
But when reality does finally slam into me, my stomach turns over and I have to run toward the bathroom to save puking on the floor I just cleaned.
I heave long after my stomach is empty. It’s almost as if I can remove the memory of reading those words from my body if I vomit enough.
My entire body trembles with exhaustion from dry heaving, and my skin is covered in a sheen of sweat.
I barely feel the impact as I fall onto my arse and pull my legs up in front of me, hugging them to my chest.
I brought the folder with me in my panic, and I stare down at it like its mere presence offends me.
It does.
Or at least, what it hides inside does.
“It can’t be true,” I tell myself. It’s a joke. It has to be. A stupid prank that one of the guys pulled for Christmas to wind Theo up.
But as I open the folder once more, I’m reminded by just how official the document before me looks.
And when I find a familiar signature at the bottom, I realise that this is very much real, and that my stupid concerns about this all being too good to be true earlier weren’t stupid at all.
“Fuck,” I hiss, mortified that I believed for even a second that this could have been something real. That he really wanted me.
All this time, he was just playing me.
Making me trust him, getting all my secrets out of me, listening to me cry about losing Mum and how conflicted I am over it all.
Anger like I’ve never felt before surges through me and I jump to my feet. With the folder clutched to my chest, I pace through the flat, trying to figure out what my next move is going to be.
