WICKED PARADISE | JENLISA

SEVEN

JENNIE
***

IT WAS HER.

It has to be…

I sat dazed on the beach, looking out to sea, clutching a diamond that had been gifted for the use of my body. A diamond that Lisa had bought me…or a guest? Was this a secret admittance to how she felt, or a stone weeping in lust from another?

Unlike blindfolds and other methods to hide true identity, Lisa’s Euphoria successfully hid everything: eye colour, voice, height, scent, and features.

All I had were instincts and guesses.

And those faltered in the face of Lisa’s protestation.

Why did I think I knew better than a well-rehearsed, perfectly delivered hallucination? How did I think I would recognise Lisa behind the smoke and mirrors and scientific tricks she used?

I wanted to remain confident in my accusation. To cling to the hope that she hadn’t been able to rent me because that meant her lies would eventually lose.

But I honestly didn’t know anymore.

The diamond rested heavily in my hand as I stared at a perfect vista, watching as the sun set on another painful day, glowing with so many things I never thought I would do.

I now paid the price of those decisions.

Everything I’d done, every action I’d taken, every mistake I’d chased, and hope I’d embraced, I did because of one thing.

Her.

I’d cheated on Taehyung.

I’d turned my back on my old existence for the mere whisper of a new one.

I’d stolen a drug and used it against the very woman who created it.

I willingly, happily gave my body to be used by her.

I screwed up everything, but I would do it all over again because Lisa had admitted something. Something that confused the hell out of me as well as corrupted me.

“I asked for them to find you. I sent an intimate description of someone who isn’t real. But then they found you. You. Were. Real. You were real enough for them to deliver you to me, and I fucking bought you, even knowing it was the biggest mistake of my fucking life.”

What did she mean by that? That any girl who looked like me would’ve made her feel this way? That what we felt wasn’t special…just misplaced by her lusting after a figment of her imagination?

I didn’t know if I found that stupidly romantic or hopelessly sad. Why was she so determined to lie to herself?

I wasn’t crazy.

When I’d dragged her from the bottom of the waterfall and she’d slipped inside me in the shallows, there had been love in her eyes.

I know there was.

Love and awe and the total disbelief that we’d found each other.

But if she could feel that—if she could admit in that moment that this, us, was unique…then why did she shout and kick me from her room? Why did she throw a shirt in my direction, march me out his door, and leave me to find my way back through the meandering pathways to my villa.

Why hadn’t she visited?

I sighed, pulling my knees up and resting my chin on them. It’d been twelve hours since I’d woken to Lisa’s fury. In the beginning, I thought she raged at herself. The way she looked at the wounds she’d given me spoke of crippling self-loathing. But then that temper had switched. She’d swallowed back the softness that’d bloomed between us and denied everything, every look, every touch, every connection…including the fact that it was her in Euphoria that first time.