His words replayed over and over, hitting deeper each time.
Why are you here?
I can’t think with you everywhere.
My breath stuttered out of me.
I stepped into the heat, but the shower didn’t help, because underneath the humiliation, the shame, the glitter smeared across my hands… was the truth I hated most:
I’d wanted him to look at me the way I’ve always looked at him.
And he couldn’t even stand to be around me.
Nothing was helping. Nothing slowed my thoughts or steadied my breathing or eased the raw burn in my chest.
Why did you follow me here?
The tone of his voice—his beautiful, smooth voice—turned cold and resentful. Turned on me.
He didn’t want me.
I pulled on sweats with clumsy hands, shut off the lights, and crawled into bed, yanking the covers over my head as if that could silence everything. Like darkness could drown the noise.
My heart wouldn’t settle on a single emotion. It ricocheted between heartbreak and rage so fast it made my head spin. Myeyes stung, and I blinked hard, refusing to let that happen. I was not crying over him. Not again.
Why did I have to provoke him?
Did I just fuck this up? For good?
No.
No, I wasn’t letting this take me apart. If he didn’t want me like this?—
He did.
I knew he did. I saw it in the way he looked at me tonight, like he was starving. But I didn’t know how to reach out for the thing I actually wanted from him. Not sex. Not the power play. Not the games.
Henry’s voice crept in:Ask for what you want.
What if what I want sends him running? What if he rejects me again?
An hour passed. Maybe more. An hour of lying there, trapped between longing and self-loathing, between wanting him and resenting him, between hating myself for caring and hating him for making me feel like this. An hour of wanting sleep and knowing I wasn’t going to get it.
And then the buzzing started.
I pushed the covers down and checked my phone.
A call from the doorman? At this hour?
“Hello?”
“Mr. Bennett, Sebastian Langley is here for you, asking if he can come up.”
My stomach dropped. First relief—he came, he fucking came—then indignation rising fast.
“Let him up,” I said, already pushing out of bed.
I walked to the front door, every step fueled by everything he’d said to me tonight, but paused with my hand braced against the frame, forcing a slow breath into my lungs.
