I was done with his games. Done with giving him what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Done hoping he would someday wake up and realize he cared for me, too.
He stood up and stared at me, blinking somberly, like I’d just slapped him in the face. Maybe it felt that way. I doubted a man like Sam was used to hearing the word ‘no.’
“We’re done?” he asked, businesslike. The icy edge to his voice made me shiver.
“Yes,” I said, quickly retying my shoelaces. “Leave me alone. Don’t show up at my clinic anymore and don’t steal kisses from me when we see each other at family functions.”
“Why? Because I don’t love you back?”
He let the word ‘love’ roll out of his mouth like it was profanity. I licked my lips. Dawn was breaking outside beyond the pine trees, and the room began to wash with cool pinks and royal blues, the shadows framing his face making him look even more breathtakingly beautiful than usual.
“No. I can handle it if you don’t love me back. But I won’t accept indifference, humiliation, and unstableness. I am not your plaything. The little teenybopper who stared at you with starry eyes at a carnival. Those days are over. I deserve respect and consideration, and you know what? I changed my mind.” I frowned then began to laugh. A throaty, screechy laugh, not even caring how unhinged I looked anymore. “Yes. I don’t want to have sex with you anymore because you don’t love me back. Is that bad? Immature? Anti-feminist? I expect love. I want it all, so if you don’t intend to give it to me, I suggest you leave me be or I am going to tell my family how you dipped your hand into the honey jar, tasted the forbidden sweetness, then came back for third and fourth helpings.”
“I told you I will never settle down.”
“Then that means you are letting me go.”
He nodded once, sauntering over to the door and throwing it open. A chill rushed into the cabin, biting and claiming every inch of my exposed skin.
“Love is not a price I am willing to pay for pussy, no matter how tight and aristocratic. Goodbye, Aisling.”
He was letting me go.
Maybe I was on a roll because of my own speech, or perhaps the adrenaline still pumped in my blood, but all at once, I gathered my courage, stood up, grabbed my purse, and fled out the door.
He didn’t chase me. I knew he wouldn’t.
Men like Sam never did.
I followed the faint tire signs of the Porsche to find my way out of the woods, clutching my cell phone in a death grip. I slipped several times, and my knees and hands were soaked with melted snow. When I reached the main road, I called an Uber then continued walking. The foolish, desperate hope flaring in my chest that Sam would find me shrank more and more with each step I took.
My toes were numb, my fingers had frostbite, and I could feel myself coming down with something.
I played with the monster under my bed and felt the wrath of its claws on my skin.
This was all on me.
But that didn’t mean I had to put up with it anymore.
It was like my love for him had snuffed out after teetering on the brink of death for a while. A love that started as a sun-shaped blaze when I was seventeen, big and hot and impossible to extinguish, but as time passed, Sam’s actions doused water on it until there was barely anything left.
I slipped into the back of an Uber, thinking about that night at the carnival.
About the text I’d seen scribbled on that bathroom.
Maybe it wasn’t meant for me.
Maybe it was meant for someone with a happy ending.
A few days after Aisling fled the cabin, Troy breezed into my office, tossing a newspaper onto my desk.
“Checkmate.”
I was sitting in front of a pile of Excel spreadsheets, trying to concentrate on the simple task of finding a way to help a client launder a couple of millions. Normally, I could do it with my eyes closed, hands tied, and dick buried deep inside a random. Shuffle the sum from place to place. Blow up expenses. Tamper with bank statements. Making money untraceable was an art form I’d perfected from a young age. It made me a darling in certain corporate circles. Nothing bought your way into a rich man’s heart better than helping him screw the IRS over.
These last few days, however, my head was so deep inside my ass, I was surprised I didn’t drop dead from lack of oxygen. My thoughts were on a loop, getting stuck on the same thing over and over again.
I saved Aisling.
Put my life in danger to keep her from harm’s way.