Fuck that.
I stepped into a scalding hot shower and washed as much of his touch from my body as I could. The water burned. I let it.
My skin turned pink, then red. Still not enough.
I scrubbed until my flesh felt raw, until the soapy loofah left abrasions across my collarbones, my wrists, between my breasts—everywhere he'd touched.
And then I got dressed in a cute yet modest dress, one that felt like me. I even did my hair and makeup the way I liked it.
When I looked into my floor-length thrift store mirror again, I didn't see the femme fatale of last night. I saw the quiet rebel, the girl who was working on building her own path. All except for that damn necklace that was still around my neck.
I ran my fingers over the cold stones, remembering how, when Darius took it off last night, I actually missed the weight. Maybe I really needed to talk to someone about this? Missing the weight of a bomb around your throat had to be a sign of some type of mental breakdown.
I shook my head, not willing to think about that right now, and then grabbed a cute scarf from my dresser and wrapped it around my neck.
It wasn't my favorite look, but it covered the diamonds, and that was all I could ask for. Then I headed downstairs and opened up the record store.
Edith only worked one day a week. The other six, she spent at her assisted living facility. She relied on me to keep the outdated music store running. And I would not let her down.
If Darius had a problem with that, he could talk to me, and I would tell him exactly where to shove it. After all, I was still in the same building.
The building I had worked in day and night for years, and I had never been in any danger until he walked through those doors.
Immediately, I got to work.
Edith had taken in a few used records that needed to be cleaned, tested, cataloged, and shelved. Then there was the dusting, checking the receipts against the till, all of it. After a few hours of quietly working in the shop, rearranging the records, I felt almost grounded. If it weren't for the heavy weight on my chest, I might have nearly felt normal.
This was my comfort zone. I truly loved it, and I was back in it. And with any luck, this was what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. Edith had already talked to her lawyers, and we had everything in place for her to leave it to me.
I didn't care that the store was outdated, that it didn't generate a lot of money, or that, according to my mother, it was beneath me and the private education she had invested in.
None of that mattered to me.
I never wanted a high-stress career, working day in and day out in a high-rise for prestige, toiling away to make other people rich, to pad my bank account at the expense of others.
A high-stakes career was just as appealing as a high-stakes marriage. I had absolutely no interest in either; my skin crawled at even the idea of a life in the spotlight.
I saw what that did to my parents. The pressure, the whispers, the rumors, the people trying to interfere—I didn't want any of it.
All I wanted was a quiet life in my own quiet corner of the world.
This was the life that I wanted, and as soon as this situation with Darius was over, I was taking it.
No more waffling about. No more maybe I should do this, or maybe I should compromise. This was my life, and I was going to do what I wanted to do. My mother had already made it clear that whether I lived or died was of no consequence to her, so how I lived my life shouldn't be of any consequence either.
I was actually feeling good about my decisions, even if I had only made the proclamations to myself. I fell into a groove, working in the store, and I could almost forget about the necklace and the man who put it on me.
The bell above the door chimed.
I turned around to greet the customer. Instead, I was greeted with an all-too-familiar man in skinny jeans and a suit jacket.His overly styled sandy blond hair and designer sunglasses proxies for his lack of personality and charm.
My stomach dropped.
"Peregrine," I said with a forced smile. "How can I help you?"
"I want to know why you think you can make a fool out of me," he demanded.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I said.
