Honey Trap

Chapter Eighteen

I dreamed that I was dying. One moment, I was only me. Just Violetta. Young, naive, with some foolish view on the world that life was inherently good. Then, I was standing on stage in the auditorium of the school that took everything from me, blood soaking my hair down to my feet. I woke when my mothers face turned into a reflection of Nikolai and Alexei, and in a startled moment my head pounded against the glass of Maddox's car as he pulled down the driveway of a street I didn't recognize.

For a short moment, I'd forgotten what he and I did. Then, as I remembered the glimpses of him above me and the foggy glass of the car windshield, I could have sworn I could still feel him inside of me. His touch was all over my skin, remnants of a butterfly wing brushing against your cheek. The sort of feeling you could recall for years to come. Still, the feeling of his warmth didn't erase an emptiness burning inside of me that I hadn't felt in some time.

I was always empty, but the emptiness was different now. I had something I wanted. Something I could touch but never keep. Maddox Aster was serving as a painful reminder of a life I could never have—a life he could someday give to somebody perfectly untainted like Daisy, who I had no reason to hate but unjustly did so. She was everything I could have been but never would be, and she had the one person who made me breathe again and brought color to my lifeless cheeks. I was on fire, and the only person who could put out the flame was the one lighting the match.

I didn't remember much about the drive after Maddox and I had sex. I fell asleep shortly after, but for the minutes I was awake or somewhat aware, he spoke to me like a girlfriend. He didn't mention the sin we'd committed—the dirty act that would surely damn me to hell, yet he spoke to me like he'd known me for years, and loved me throughout all of them.

Maybe "love" was too strong of a word to use, but his sudden kindness towards me was nothing short of wild and unmatched. I'd never had someone speak to me softly, who cracked jokes with me and stared at me with side eyes hoping I would laugh along with them.

"You're awake," Maddox said, turning down the blasting heat. "We're almost there."

He turned down a bright lit street and I watched as the houses transformed from cracked to porcelain-like white with little hint of wear. It looked like nobody had stepped foot into those homes before, and I knew only the wealthiest of wealthy lived in them.

"Thank you for getting me from the station," I said, a hoarseness in my throat from dreaming.

The corners of his mouth twisted upwards. "It's no problem," and then he looked at me with this dazed sort of look. "Really, Isla, it's no problem."

Isla.

Every time I fooled myself into believing that Maddox liked me, I was forced into remembering exactly who I was to him. The person he thought I was didn't exist. She wasn't real. I wanted nothing more than the name Violetta to slip past his perfectly pointed lips. I wanted him to save me—to bring that dead version of myself back to life.

But nothing could bring her back, not even Maddox Aster.

As Maddox turned slowly into the extended driveway of an immaculately large home, I was suddenly grateful that he hadn't driven me back to my apartment. Though he hasn't even seen where I lived, embarrassment pooled inside me at the thought of his reaction.

His home stood three stories tall with large, glass windows surrounding the bottom level of his home. Inside, the street lights in his neighborhood revealed an outline of his living room. Deep blue leather couches, a large fireplace, some sort of mural inside his house that I couldn't make out.