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Amber being chosen as the next one to leave was the final nail in my coffin. They’d chosen someone else over me again, and I couldn’t forgive them for it. I was going to find out exactly where the program was, and I was going to join it myself if it was the last thing I ever did. Once I got something into my head, I didn’t stop until I fucking got it.
There was something else on my mind, though. Something I’d worked hard to forget because the events of that night felt like something out of a dream.
But it was there nevertheless. I had met a man. A dangerous, dark man capable of horrible things. He’d proven it when he’d killed someone in front of my very eyes. And not just anyone. The father of my unborn child.
That was the night I decided to keep the baby. I was convinced maybe the kid would help me be a better person. I was young, I had a bright future ahead of me, and a trust fund in my name. I knew I could make it.
But I lost the baby three months later.
A spontaneous miscarriage, they’d told me. It happens sometimes in the first trimester.
Something happened to me when I realized I wouldn’t be a mother. And when the doctor ran some tests and came back with the grave results, he broke a primal part inside me. The part that cared about other people and wanted them to be happy. He ripped out my ability to be compassionate, and I wondered whether I’d ever get it back. Because if my own life was so fucked up, why should I care about anyone else’s?
That was when the jealousy became truly overwhelming, sending me on a wild goose chase to find Harlow.
We’d been told the program she was invited to was exclusive, well-paid and with results that would show over the months she’d spend there. But no one gave us the location.
I’d been to see Harlow’s apartment, but it was rented to someone else, her stuff already gone.
I knew I had to dig deeper, so my next stop was Harlow’s father.
The man lived in a dump.
It wasn’t so much the small house, which was nice enough. It was the inside, the dirty dishes, old books and newspapers and unwashed laundry. I could tell he lived alone. The house needed a woman’s touch badly. He didn’t even want to let me in when I arrived, and his mouth set in a thin line when I mentioned Harlow.
“She was a mummy’s girl,” he grumbled when we finally walked inside and sat down on his grubby sofa. “I never had much to do with her.”
I tried to hide my disgust. Not only with my environment, but also with his attitude when it came to his daughter. She was only eighteen years old, and he was already treating her like she had nothing to do with him. Compared to my own overprotective parents, it came as a big surprise, and I found a new understanding for Harlow deep down, behind my contempt and jealousy.
I’d asked him about the training program she’d left for and quickly came to realize he didn’t know or care a shit. She could have been in fucking space for all he cared, and when I tried to raise his interest, it just didn’t work. He’d written his daughter off a long time ago, or perhaps he hadn’t even bothered to get attached to her in the first place. I felt sorry for my friend. She truly was alone in the world. I knew her mother had died when she was little, and I couldn’t imagine her life, living with this awful human being who was belching in front of me, scratching his balls through a pair of thin pants.
I left feeling disgusted and worn out. I hadn’t come any closer to find out where Harlow had gone, but at least I had another thing occupying my thoughts, another interest I could pursue.
The man I’d met almost a year ago, the one who had piqued my interest.
He’d told me never to speak of what I saw that night. I had kept my promise, but now, with both my friends gone, I felt fucking alone. I needed someone, a friend. So, I decided to do the stupidest thing I could have done. I decided to seek out the man who had killed the father of my child.
As I sat in his office, I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it.
Months of teasing, prying, trying to find out more, and here he was. I’d dragged him out of his shell, forced him to find me.
Now, he was sitting across from me. His suit was expensive, tailored. I could tell. His scent was dark and sweet, and I was enamored with him. He had dark hair, dark eyes and he was cleanly shaved, with stubborn stubble poking through already. He was impossibly handsome. Like someone off a perfume ad. I couldn’t look away.
