I’d spent a lifetime building walls. Perfect posture. Perfect grades. Perfect lies. My father never had to say the worddisgust—he could speak it in silence. In the pause after the worddifferent. In the way he looked past a man’s smile to judge his handshake, his wife, and his family name.
I couldn’t be this. I couldn’t evenwantthis.
But I did.
God help me, Idid.
My slick hand slid off the rail as I hunched forward, palms braced on my knees like I could hold myself together if I just stayed small enough. Breathe in. Breathe out. But the panic was thick and wet, clinging to my ribs, coiling like smoke in my lungs. It burned going down.
The air felt thin, distant. My throat was tight. My pulse a drumbeat in my ears. My heart clawed at my ribs like it wanted out.
There was no tie around my neck, but I could feel one anyway, a phantom pressure. A noose made of expectations. My shirt stuck to my back, too warm from the bar, too cold from the night, too wrong all over. Everything was wrong.
I wanted to scrub him out of my head.
The smirk. The confidence. That crooked tilt of his chin like he didn’t owe the world a damn thing. The way he looked at me like he wanted to drag me into the dark and peel back everything I’d spent a lifetime stitching together.
It wasn’t just lust. God, I wished it was. Lust would be easier to bury. Lust didn’t make your bones ache with longing.
It was how I felt when his eyes met mine.
Seen.
Like he’d look past my last name and straight into the quiet, cold corners where I kept the real parts of myself locked up. Like he knew what I was, what I wanted—and didn’t judge me for it.
It terrified me. And for a sick, splintered second…it thrilled me.
I stayed like that too long, bent doubled in the parking lot of a bar I should’ve never walked into, trembling like a kid who’d touched fire for the first time and realized how badly he wanted to be burned.
Someone might’ve seen me. I didn’t care.
Eventually, I staggered to the car, my steps uneven, legs shaky. I fumbled the keys like my fingers belonged to someone else, finally jamming them into the ignition.
The engine roared to life, but it felt distant, muffled, like everything else. I rolled the windows down and drove through the dark with the wind lashing my face, desperate to let it strip me clean. To pull the memory of him out of my head like poison. But it didn’t.
He was still there.
Every neon sign ghosted his silhouette. Every stoplight pulsed like the curve of his grin. Every stretch of asphalt bent into the rhythm of his body, dancing to music I couldn’t hear but still felt in my bones.
By the time I reached the gates of the country club, the night had gone unnervingly still. The world around me—manicured hedges, marble statues, the glint of security lights—was pristine, polished, perfect. Controlled.
Like me.
Or the version of me they all believed in.
The gravel whispered beneath my tires. The estate loomed at the end of the drive like a silent accusation: three stories of wealth and legacy tucked against the edge of my father’skingdom. His house was deeper in the woods, fortress-like. But this one was mine. The Astor heir’s own quiet cage.
From the outside, it looked like success. Inside, it was just me. And Winston.
He was waiting at the door, silver tail flicking, meowing like I was late for something more important than duty. His paws padded softly across the marble as I bent to greet him. For a moment, I let myself lean into the warmth of his body against my legs.
“Miss me?” I whispered.
He blinked up at me, slow and ancient, like a monk who’d seen too much and said nothing.
I slipped off my shoes and walked barefoot down the hall, each step echoing like a ghost behind me. Winston stayed close, our shared silence louder than anything my father had ever said.
The house was a showpiece—clean lines, sleek furniture, priceless art. A museum of a life that didn’t fit. The fireplaces hadn’t been lit in months. Most of the rooms still smelled faintly of fresh paint and disuse. I fed Winston, watched him eat, then poured myself a drink I didn’t want but needed.
