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“Declan you son of a bitch,” she calls after me as I run down the stairs, “you can’t just leave me here. Goddammit!”
Her voice fades as I fling open the back door, and make my way towards the dark line of trees behind the house, rain and wind whipping against my face. By tomorrow, the police will know exactly what I’ve done to Timothy, and they will also know without a doubt that I was the man that left his sperm inside and all over Mia Rogers. One thing is for sure–I won’t be able to stay away from that woman. I’d probably have to whip myself like a self-chastising monk just to give myself some respite from thinking about her. I’d never tell her, but there’s only one thing she can do to keep me away from her–accuse me of rape. Tell the police that I took her against her will. God knows she’s got the perfect conditions to do it. The police will find her naked and tied up and used. If she reports, then I will spend the rest of my life feeling like a piece of shit and trying to make amends.
If not, I’ll take that as an invitation to make myself an integral part of her life–the backbone of it.
The next day, it turns out Mia Rogers chose not to report me. Despite the humiliation she went through being escorted after the storm out of the frat house wrapped in nothing but a blanket, still full of my cum and scrunching her eyes shut against the lights, she chose to say it was all with her consent. Whether she did it out of some sick kind of attachment to me or out of fear, it doesn’t matter. She just made the decision to stay mine. But that bastard Timothy makes it hard for me to get close to her again, because he went to the police with everything that happened.
Now I have a target on my back. It’s not like I didn’t expect it. I knew what the risks were from the start. I knew what I was getting myself into, and I did it all for Mia Rogers. So imagine the pain that rips through me when I finally emerge into the public eye again months later, my problems solved, and I find that she’s gone.
Without a trace.
I ransack the entire campus, have people research her entire background, find out where she could have gone. Nothing. She left nothing behind that could point her way. Not even a note to her friends–she didn’t have many to begin with. She even went no contact with her parents–a pair of self-involved narcissists anyway.
For days I rage through the frat house, destroying everything in my way. Maybe I went too far with exposing her to the police. With tattooing her name on Timothy’s dick. With everything. But there’s no turning back now, no shedding the monster that I have become. I run my fingers over my knives, itching to use them, to throw them at the dummy across the room, the one bearing the fucker’s face. I should have tattooed her name across his forehead, like I intended to. I should have carved it into his skin with a scalpel. But they say people meet twice in life. And next time he and I meet, it will end in tragedy.
As for her, I’m going to find her again, even if it takes a lifetime.
***
PRESENT DAY
Declan
“What a tedious fuckerof a party,” the woman on my arm says with a bored air, waving her hand, a white silky glove riding up her forearm and ending right above her thin elbow.
“Aren’t they all,” I reply flatly before I take a sip of my scotch.
It’s not how most people would describe a party at the Vaughn Corp Tower during the New York Fashion Week. I’m pretty sure the Victoria’s Secret model I’m here with doesn’treallysee it that way either. I’ve heard others say the exact same thing in an attempt to be special. To sound interesting. To be the woman on my arm at the next event too, even though I’ve never brought the same one twice. It’s become sort of a flex among them, who gets the most eligible bachelor in New York to put a ring on it.
No one will, and not only because I’m too much of a prick with too many corpses in the closet, but because I’ve been hung up on the same woman for seven years. I’ve never come to terms with the possibility of never seeing her again, and I don’t plan to.
“Why don’t we go for a drink somewhere we can be alone?” the model says in a seductive voice, running her finger discreetly up my Armani-clad arm. “Take me out for a cozy drink, or maybe invite me to your place?” she pushes when I don’t reply. I just dip my lips into my drink again, looking away from her.
Ignoring her further attempts to get my attention, I scan the room, wondering how long it’s been since the glamor of New York parties last stimulated me. Has the breathtaking New York skyline ever seemed like a world of wonder to me as it does to so many people? Have the city lights and the glittering crystal, red carpet and flashing smiles ever meant anything to me? I don’t remember, but what I do know now is that it’s all pointless fakery. Every flawless, smiling face hides an addiction. Every beautiful woman has some filthy secret buried in her past–not that I’m judging. Not with the amount of corpses in my own closet. But at least I’m not faking who I am. Everyone here knows I’m a filthy rich bastard that has used half the Fashion Week models in the most perverted ways, and they’re still fighting like dogs for a bit of my attention. For a chance to prove themselves as The One. It has put a permanent look of scorn on my face, which should tell anyone with a little bit of wit to stay away. Not these people though. They have something to prove, to themselves and to the world, and they’ll stop at nothing to prove it. Of course, none of them has ever shown the slightest interest in my past, in the terrible thing that happened too long ago for anyone else to remember but me, in the reasons I became this prick. All that matters is my money, my status, my looks. Everyone wants to impress, to be seen.
My eyes sweep over the room until they stop abruptly. I blink a few times, just to make sure that my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. For a moment, I think I see her, the one that got away. Then I’m not so sure anymore. Then I know it’s her, and it feels like my heart beats again for the first time in years.
She’s very different from the metalhead girl that I met seven years ago, but it’s definitely her. The porcelain-white, heart-shaped face, the silky black hair and those unmistakable ice-cold, cat-like eyes. Her body seems just as toned under the red knee-length dress she’s wearing, a pair of silver stilettos on her feet. Mia Rogers has definitely turned into a woman with style. So unlike the models I bring to these events. So much better. There’s a grace and no-nonsense aura about her that makes all the men stare, even if from under their eyebrows. In environments like this, you’re only worth as much as the beauty interventions of the woman next to you. Having someone naturally beautiful as a partner mostly means you can’t afford to pay for surgeries and enhancements. But deep down, they all want a woman like that.
One that, when she sets her eyes on you, you know it’s because sheseesyou, not your wallet or your suit.
The model by my side chatters louder, desperate to get my attention back as I stare in Mia’s direction. I wonder if she even kept her real name, or if she went as far as changing it to make sure I’d never find her.
As I get closer to her, she clinks her glass to one of the other guests’. She’s standing among a group of people, men and women, which is really divine intervention. Had it been only men, I would have probably lost it. It would have cost me the public image I have built so far, but to hell with it. This is Mia Rogers turning her head to me, and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for for seven years.
The smile freezes on her face, then it slowly disappears. The glass of wine starts trembling in her hand. My mouth pulls into a grin.
“Well hello, little spy.”
