“It was cowardly. If he wanted to get fucked by a man, he should’ve grown a spine—ended things with me and chased his urges like an adult. It would’ve hurt, but I would’ve gotten over it and moved the fuck on.”
I sit back, calm now. Icy. “But he needed a buffer. A cover story. Facing who he is was scarier than drugging the woman he called his girlfriend.”
It’s not sorrow curled in my chest. It’s accelerant. And I’m done pretending I won’t light the match.
“Jon David’s perfect little family would shit a gold brick if they knew he liked cock. But that’s his crisis, not mine. Two men can fuck each other senseless for all I care. What I won’t be is the girl prop in someone’s heterosexual charade. That’s a ride I never agreed to.”
Brielle leans in, nudging my shoulder. “You deserve to be the headline. Not the fine print.”
“Damn right,” Eden says.
Whatever future I built around him has collapsed. “What’s fucked is, I really believed we were going to get married. I thought he was going to propose on my birthday.”
That hits harder than I expected. A slap to the ego.
Makes me feel fucking stupid.
“Fuck him,” I say flatly.
“And the bastard he deep-throated.” Brielle fires back without missing a beat.
“Jon David Bellamy is dead to me.”
Marissa sets her glass down a little too hard. “But he’s not going to get away with this, right? Drugging you? You can press charges.”
“You have to,” Eden urges. “He could’ve killed you.”
“Legally? It’s a shitshow. His word against mine. No witnesses, no smoking gun. Just a drug screen and a timeline no one wants to believe.” I glance at them. “And juries? They don’t show up for women who black out.”
Because the system doesn’t protect women.
Men built it to protect men. And he knows it.
“I’d have to explain why I was there. What we agreed to do. What kind of sex we were planning before everything turned sideways. It’d be invasive. Humiliating. And I’d be the one under the microscope. My career? Burned. My credibility? Gone. I wouldn’t survive that scandal. Not in this world.”
Eden’s jaw clenches. “So he drugs you, commits an actual crime, and just walks? That’s bullshit.”
“I’m not saying I won’t make him pay, but pressing charges isn’t the move. He knows how to game the system.”
Brielle groans. “There has to be another way.”
“I want him to answer for what he did. For thinking he had that kind of power over me.” My gaze drops to the table, hard. “But I can’t destroy him without setting fire to myself. My name. My reputation. My career. All of it would be collateral damage.”
Eden leans in, eyes lit with something dangerous. “Fuck him. You need someone who would burn the world down for you.”
A slow, dark burn coils in my chest—hungry, hollow, begging to be fed. “I don’t want soft hands and careful love. I want a man who sees every fucked-up piece of me and still wants it. Craves it. I want to be someone’s obsession. Possession. A man who doesn’t just touch me. He takes me—mind, body, and soul. No questions. No hesitation.”
I lean in. “If a man like that is out there… he can have me. All of me. Let him wreck me. I want to be undone.”
Brielle lifts her glass with a smirk. “The next man you date better come armed. Because loving you? That’s war.”
Marissa’s eyes narrow. “There’s a man out there who’ll crawl through hell for a taste of you.”
Eden smiles, all teeth. “And he’ll gladly burn for you.”
I raise my glass. “To the man who can take every piece of me and survive it.”
The right man won’t flinch.
