I never realized how hard it was to lie to myself until I found myself in the shower, scrubbing my skin pink with the special, never use except in the case of emergency body wash and telling myself I was doing it for myself.

I was, of course. In a sense. The bottle had cost me two weeks pay, but the smell it left behind and the silky texture when I patted myself down with a towel made it worth every penny.

But I knew it wasn’t only for me.

“What are you doing?” I asked the flushed, stupid girl in the foggy mirror.

She had excitement in her eyes. She wasn’t even pretending to conceal it. It twinkled like damn stars and I wanted to slap her.

“You’re being an idiot,” I told her. “This isn’t going to work. He’s marrying your sister. He’s going to walk her down the aisle and have babies, and ... be with her, and you...” I glowered at her as she stared back with heartbreak tracing silver steaks down her cheeks. “You’re going to die alone.”

What was I thinking?

I wasn’t this person.

I had a plan.

I was getting out.

I was going to be free.

Getting involved with Cordelia’s fiancé was asking for pain I knew I couldn’t handle.

She would destroy me.

She would end me.

Was he worth it?

A knock on my front door interrupted before I could answer my own question. It vibrated down the hall and filled the bathroom where I was still only dressed in a towel.

I cast my reflection another glance, sharing with it our combined resignation.

I would tell him.

I would explain why he needed to stay away.

Then I would crawl into bed and cry for the part of me I was about to let die.

He was dressed casual, black trousers and a soft, dark gray sweater beneath his coat. His hair wasn’t perfectly tamed as I was used to, but comfortably swept back from his cleanly shaven face.

Marcella would have been horrified.

Cordelia would have been appalled.

I loved it.

God, he was perfect.

“I seem to be overdressed.”

I followed his lingering, trailing gaze along the length of my towel wrapped body, and winced.

“You didn’t give me a time.” I stepped back, allowing him to cross the threshold into my apartment. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be arriving.”

His aura filled the space first, drumming and pulsating with an aggressive tempo of power and raw masculine heat. It roared as it claimed my tiny world with his presence.

“Please.” I motioned him to the sitting area. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“You should keep it on,” he called just as I reached the opening leading into the corridor. He waited until I’d glanced back before grinning. “You can convince me to do just about anything dressed like that.”

I wanted to laugh, and almost did.

“Anything?”

His eyes darkened to hot embers in a pit. “More if you take it off.”

Amusement fled with the violent wrench of my senses, the brutal pang in my clit, the vicious crack of my heart. With only a few murmured words, he had dulled all my necessary rationality and replaced them with all the things I knew I couldn’t walk away from.

I wanted him.

I had never denied that to myself.

I longed for him.

Ached for him.

I loved him like I had never loved anyone in my life.

I had been in love with him for seven years and no one had ever replaced that part of me he held.

I would have given anything to have him.

“You’re marrying my sister.”

The words abandoned me, slipping into the world uncharted and unsupervised. They dropped into the room thick with the tension he’d created and hung suspended between us.

“Am I?”

I paused at the question, not understanding it.

“It’s been ... Walter and David have been talking about it for years.”

“I’m not Walter, or David,” he reminded me quietly.

“But you have to,” I blurted. “Everyone is expecting it. Cordelia is—”

“Going to have to get over it,” he cut me off. “This isn’t the middle ages. No one is telling me who I should marry, except me, and I’ve already decided.”

There was a hum between my ears, a rush of ocean that kept swallowing my reasoning. Every crash slammed into my back, propelling me a little deeper into his madness.

“Decided what?”

I couldn’t be certain I actually voiced the question, or if it was nothing more than a numb movement of my lips.

“Who I want to be with.”

He never actually said a name, but I knew, and I had never hurt so much in my life. The confession twined itself around my torso with barbed tips. It squeezed until the world was a botchy ink spill of bleeding colors.

“Please don’t say that.”

A tear slipped.

It left a trail down my cheek to stop at my jaw.

“I haven’t said anything.”

But he had. His implication alone was the rope around my neck.

“But would it be so wrong if I did?” he pressed on.

I needed to sit.

The room had begun to spin.

“You have to marry her,” I rasped, staggering to the sofa and sinking into it. “You have to.”

“Why?”

Because they’ll kill me if you don’t.

Because David will carry out his promise and ruin me.

Because Cordelia will do to me what she’d done to my tires.

Because I have a plan to escape and I’ve done things to ensure it happens that you would find revolting.

I closed my eyes and hung my head.

He wouldn’t understand.

He didn’t understand.

He thought I was being difficult and I had no way to explain.

“Is it because of my age?”

Lost in my own turmoil, I stilled at his soft question. My chin lifted and I squinted at his beautiful profile in the shadows of my dingy apartment. His thousand dollar coat seemed so out of place in a room where all the contents combine didn’t add up to that much.

He didn’t belong in my world, and not because of his age. That wasn’t even a factor.

But it was an scapegoat.

“Yes.” I nearly choked on the serrated lie. “You’re better suited for Cordelia.”

Each vile word dripped from my lips tasting like poison. The acidic tang burned my tongue. I wanted to retch.

“I see.”

No! I wanted to scream. You don’t see. You don’t see anything! You don’t understand.

But I sat mute and numb as David took yet another thing from me, one more strip of my soul. Only it felt bigger than a strip. It came away in a sheet, a tattered, bloody chunk where my heart had been. The excruciating agony carved into my chest with the ferocity that made me grasp and double over.

“I won’t bother you then.”

He set something on the shelf. I didn’t need to look to know it was my card. The snap of plastic made me flinch.

“Take care, Gabby.”

I didn’t move as he turned to leave.

I ignored the clear picture playing on my head of me running after him and throwing my arms around his neck, and begging him not to leave me.

You’re all I have. The only person who has ever cared about me. The only person who has ever acknowledged my existence. I’m nothing if you leave. I’ll be a ghost.

But all of that remained in my head, a collection of new regrets to file away later.

I died inside with the click of the door shutting softly behind him. I sat in my shrouded apartment, my skin soft and freshly bathed, my hair a damp knot dripping down my back. I listened to the hum of the refrigerator and the splintering crackle of my heart breaking into a million pieces.

I was really and truly alone.