I lower my shoulders. Adjust my expression. Keep my lips loose. Keep my eyes empty.
The stairs creak. A warning in every echo of his footsteps. Then he’s there—leaning in the doorway, shirt half-buttoned, his jaw taut with sleep. His eyes look at me with more heaviness than usual. He knows what he did last night. He knows he broke something in me that I can’t get back.
“You’re up early.” His voice is thick. Rough. Suspicious.
I turn to face him. I always turn to face him.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say softly. “My head’s hurting.”
He crosses the room slowly—like a tide rising whether you want it or not. I brace.
He lifts his hand, touching the side of my head—right where the bruise lives under the skin. His thumb moves in slow circles across my scalp. Too soft. Too warm. Too wrong.
“I don’t like hurting you, Summer,” he says, voice low and almost soft.
But I know it’s a lie. I can see it in his eyes—the flicker of satisfaction he tries to bury, the way he watches me fight to hide the pain he’s inflicted. Still, this is the first time anything resembling remorse has slipped past his lips—the first crack in the mask he’s so carefully worn.
He presses a kiss to the crown of my head. Not for comfort. The words don’t register as regret. They sound like a reminder. A message.
“You made me do it.”
And still—beneath the fear, the loathing, the resentment—I want.
My body is still wet from the memory of how badly I wanted him last night. How he made me burn for him. I want to hate him and only hate him, but my heartbeat still kicks when he touches me—the pulse radiates through my core and gathers at the apex of my thighs. I don’t know what scares me more: what he did last night or how much I wanted him to do more.
I need to remember who I was before this house, before his hands, before he made me want things I didn’t know I could hate myself for wanting.
He tosses back the rest of his coffee, leaving his breakfast barely touched.
“I’m in the office all day,” he says, voice clipped, casual—like he’s just another man with a desk job and a quiet life. “Paperwork’s crawling up my ass. If you need anything, call me.”
As he moves past, his fingers drag slowly across my shoulder before the door clicks shut behind him.
It’s 7:30 a.m. The same as every morning. But he feels different. Softer. Stranger. Like he’s trying on a mask he hasn’t worn before. Like he’s rehearsing being a doting gentleman, and I’m the little wife he’s leaving at home.
I drain the last of my coffee and slip into his leather chair—the one I’ve never dared to touch. It creaks under me, holding his shape, his scent. His throne. For a moment, it feels like defiance. For a moment, I feel like I have claws.
I think about the night he came for me—how calm he’d been as he walked into my family home to take me away. How steady. How unshakeable. He’s overstepped a hundred lines since then, crossed boundaries until I didn’t know where mine ended and his began. But last night—he didn’t go further. He didn’t take the last thing.
Why?
I press my palms to my thighs, fingers digging into the bruises he left, grounding myself. I need help. I need someone to talk to. But Mama and Papa won’t listen. I think, deep down, they already know what Jacob is—and how deep his obsession with me goes. They also know he’s safer than Jackson’s men.
I’ve thought about trying to run again, but the reality is, I have nowhere to go. I understand that now.
At least not until Blackwood opens. I’m stuck here. Six more months. Six months of performing. Six months of surviving. I just have to stay sane long enough to leave.
Tears prick my eyes, sending a burning sensation to the back of my nose. I am so totally lost—totally confused—that I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
Get a fucking grip, Summer.
I set the empty mug down and head upstairs. In the mirror, the old bruises on my wrists have shifted to a sickly yellow—fading but still ugly. I turn to check my thighs. The sight makes me flinch—the bruise he caused at Dogwood is the shape of his large hand, finger marks deep purple. My fingers brush over them and a flash of memory sparks—the dance with Benny.
I dig through the wardrobe until I find a pair of black joggers and a gray tee. I scrape my hair into a messy bun, as if changing the way I look will change what I am.
I lean over the basin, brushing the coffee and the morning out of my mouth. When I straighten up, the mirror is still there, still holding the stranger who looks like me. I try to imagine what I would tell another woman standing where I am. What advice I’d give. The only answer that comes is blank:
