My Caleb.
The monster I could live with.
Who will protect me from the literal darkness I swim in.
Sometimes I catch myself waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Old habit. Hard to kill.
I'll be standing in some gilded ballroom in Monaco, or Singapore, or wherever Caleb's latest charity gala happens to be, wearing a dress that blows my mind when I walk by a mirror, and my brain will whisper:You don't belong here. They're going to figure it out. Someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and tell you there's been a mistake.
But nobody ever does.
Caleb watches me across the room during these events. I always know exactly where he is. Some primal GPS in my nervous system that never stops tracking him. He'll be talking to a hedge fund manager, or a tech billionaire, or whoever needs schmoozing, but his eyes find mine every few minutes.
Checking.
Claiming.
Mine.
I used to think that kind of possessiveness would feel suffocating.
Turns out it feels like oxygen.
My laptop comes everywhere now.
Caleb bought me a custom case—hand-stitched Italian leather with my initials embossed in gold. Ridiculous. Obscene. I love it.
I wrote three chapters of my new novel on a private jet somewhere over the Atlantic. Another two in a hotel suite overlooking the Eiffel Tower while Caleb was in meetings. Half a scene in the back of a limousine in Dubai because inspiration struck and I've learned to stop fighting it.
The words come easier now.
Not because my life is easier—it's actually more complicated than ever, filled with schedules, and obligations, and the exhausting performance of being Caleb MacLeay's partner inpublic—but because I'm not drowning anymore. I'm not writing to survive. I'm writing because Iwantto.
Because I finally have something worth saying.
I publishedmy first novel on Christmas Day.
One year exactlyfrom when Caleb drugged me and left me in my cleaned apartment with an SD card full of footage that should have destroyed me.
Poetic, right?
The book was calledThe Watcher—the same novel I'd been writing for him in those seven weeks after Christmas, back when I thought I was done with him forever. I changed the names. Added some plot. Cleaned up the prose. But it was us. Our story. Every dark, twisted, blood-soaked moment of it.
Caleb read the final draft before I uploaded it. I watched his face the whole time, terrified he'd be angry about me exposing our dynamic, even fictionalized.
He finished the last page, closed my laptop, and fucked me against the wall of his office until I couldn't remember my own name.
Then he told me to publish it.
So I did.
The one-star reviews came fast.
"Disgusting."
"This author needs therapy, not a publishing deal."
