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“I love you,” he whispered, before taking my lips, moaning against me as he claimed me as his.
I groaned as I pulled myself off the pillow and threaded my hair out of my face. Looking at the mess of clothes strewn across the floor in the morning sunlight, I urged myself to wake up. I loved how tightly packed my bedroom was with odd furniture and trinkets, but today it felt suffocating.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, forcing myself to clean my face, brush my teeth, and do my hair — all while staring at blank eyes in the mirror.
It was just another dream, but I was falling, worn down by them night after night. Some were nightmares, flashing scenes of my ruined flat and Max betraying me. Others were simple memories of times when I thought I would die from happiness in his arms.
I wanted to crash. I was done with this. It was too much, and it needed to stop.
I looked like hell. I’d had enough time to fix the pale skin and baggy eyes, but my body was worn, and not the satisfying kind of worn that comes from a good workout or rough sex. These sleepless nights and endless dreams were beating me.
As I cleaned my teeth, my still-aching hand gripping the brush, I thought of how Max had fallen into me, all that blood, the panting. Need still pulsed through me.
Anyone with eyes would notice the bruising. He’d hidden it well with Bunny’s help. The media had had a field day with the photos of him, Bunny's shawl wrapped around his throat as her legs wrapped around his hips, his tongue down her throat as he carried her away from the party.
I was jealous. Honestly. There had to be another way to show him he couldn’t get away with fucking with me like this. He’d been too turned on in the glasshouse. Bunny had seen the scratches and bruises, and I was jealous she got to touch them after I left, jealous he held her so comfortably in front of the cameras.
I’d been expecting her to call and scream at me for touching her fiancé. Or to go cry to Mum, or do anything that would help amplify my guilt. Because it wasn’t as strong as my desire for Max, and I hated myself for it.
What do you want, baby? Tell me what you need.
I closed my eyes as another wave of lust hit me, savouring it as it spread through my thighs and into my belly. I spat and rinsed out my mouth, forcing myself to keep going. I needed to keep moving. Today was the day Bunny and Max were coming to sign off their prenup. I needed to be prepared.
So much changed when my life fell apart ten years ago. Before leaving for Cambridge, I’d completed my first year of business at Oxford. I was studying to follow in Dad’s footsteps when Goss tore everything up. Dad had been so proud I’d wanted to take over the company and learn from him, but I came out of my first year with nothing but an empty heart.
One day, after months of lying in bed when I left Oxford, after I swore I’d never see Max again, my sister, Grace snuck into my bed in the dead of night and whispered something to me that changed my entire life.
The second I found out one of Dad’s friends had cornered Grace in his office and attacked her, I lost it. She begged me not to tell anyone, but I couldn’t lie there day after day, trying to switch off feeling and living, when I knew my baby sister had been coping with that secret for an entire year and told no one. I was the first person she’d confessed to, and only because she saw I was living in the same darkness that had plagued her. She’d always been shy, and we’d all been too wrapped up in our own drama to see that Grace shutting herself in her room wasn’t just puberty. She was thirteen when that bastard molested her, and she was so scared of our parents finding out that she’d shut herself away and hidden it from everyone.
The morning after her confession, I forced myself out of bed and I started to run. I made myself remember our conversation, Grace’s scared, innocent voice filled with pain and shame, and I swore I would do something about it.
That was why I transferred to Cambridge Law, why, instead of giving up on life, I swore not to let myself go again. It was why I started kickboxing, why I shaped my entire life around dealing with problems no one else wanted to face.
No matter how hard it was, I made myself go outside every morning, and I ran until my body was as numb as my heart, and then I ran more. Even if I started hyperventilating as the memories beat the shit out of me, I’d stop, throw up, and keep running. I forced myself into a routine. I hardened myself, made an impenetrable barrier I built up day after day, adding an extra layer whenever anything threatened me.
I graduated, got a job, and started facing down defendants in court. That’s when I really saw what I was made of. Because those courtrooms brought out the worst in people, and if you didn’t have strong armour, they would eat you alive.
I built a reputation for ruthlessness. I showed no mercy, no matter what the defendant might say. Unless there was irrefutable proof they were innocent, they were mine for the taking.
I had to be smart about it. No violence, no emotion. Any sign of weakness could be used against me, especially as a woman.
But I’d snapped the moment Max opened his mouth as he reached for me in my office. The tightly reined control I’d honed over the years fell apart as soon as he looked at me.
Since he’d come back, I’d been torturing myself for hours every night, my body hot and my mind racing. I couldn’t sleep, picturing all the things I wanted to do to him. When I finally dropped off, it was to be assailed by dreams of sun-washed bodies and chocolate kisses and gasps under the moonlight. I couldn’t escape. He was getting under my skin, and I hated it.
I hated every single part of him. He needed to go. I’d worked too hard for too long for him to come back into my life and unhinge it. But I still missed it, missed him. The sweetness we shared, how much fun we had, how much I’d loved him. So purely and innocently. I tried to brush it off as stupid memories of my first love, but the dreams were so real and vivid. I woke up in a daze until reality slapped me in the face, and I remembered a decade had passed. Every morning I experienced his betrayal all over again. Every single time.
I moved to the closet to find the best suit for the day, nothing to show him I cared. Then it would be hair, makeup, shoes, bag, fruit, and coffee.
I should run. I should go back out there and run until my lungs exploded, but there was no time. I’d slept in too late. The dreams were harassing me, and running took me back to those dark months when all I had to live on was the determination that I wouldn’t let him drag me down.
No weakness, no cracks, nothing for anyone to get their hooks into.
I straightened my back before I left for work. Just like Mum did. It was her ritual before she stepped out the door every morning, whether she was filming in Santa Fe, interviewing in London, or on a catwalk in Milan. A straight back keeps your head on your shoulders, and no one can weigh you down.
I hardened myself before I walked out the door. I was strength; I was courage; I was resistance.
I had to keep telling myself this, repeating it constantly to build myself up, because something told me that as soon as Max fluttered his pretty green eyes, I’d be lost.
