Running from hell isnʼt easy. Especially when thereʼs someone dragging you back down into it.
Belligerent, brash and always in shades of black, Freya is hardly a lady. Hidden away by her father, sheʼs lived a normal life despite being born into the...
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THE AIR BETWEEN US is heavy and tense as we drive back from the church. Torren is quiet, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and I can feel tension radiating through the car. I want to say something, to break the silence, but my throat feels tight, and I can't think straight.
He breaks the silence. "Is it your mother's?"
I frown. "What?"
"The locket," he says, his gaze rushing to my neck. "Is it your mother's?"
I clamp down on my jaw. He hasn't told me anything about Sof, but I'm meant to spill my guts about my mother?
"It's none of your business," I snap.
He's quiet, his jaw tight and his hands tight on the steering wheel, and I can feel the tension rolling off of him in waves. We don't speak a word, not even when we get to the penthouse.
I climb up the stairs, and then shed my dress and heels on his bedroom floor before slipping into his bed, feeling the cool silk of the sheets against my skin.
I'm no longer willing to fight him about where I sleep anymore. I sleep wherever he does.
Torren enters the room a few minutes later and undresses in silence. Then, he slides in under the sheets beside me but keeps a distance, like he knows I don't want to be touched.
And although I want the distance, it hurts. The nightmare last night was one of the worst in my life. In it, he was choking me to death. When I woke up, he was above me, holding me down. Instinctively, I pushed him away from me.
But really, I wanted him close.
How do I explain that my fear hasn't changed? That I'm not afraid of him - I'm afraid of the people I care about being hurt. Being hurt because of me.
That somehow, I care about hurting him.
The wedding is in two days.
He won't back out.
Marriage doesn't mean anything to me but . . . I want a claim on him too. I can't deny it.
The thought of another woman touching him makes me sick.
Makes me want to claw out her heart with my acrylic nails.
The girl from church - Valerie -is so pretty, and she's Italian. She belongs to his world. And when she started talking the things he did with her . . . I've never wanted to kill a girl more.
I hate being jealous.
When I chance a quick glance at Torren in the velvet darkness of the night, his eyes are closed, his breathing steady.
I slip out of the bed quietly, walking downstairs. In my room, I pull on one of my graphic tees. I need to clear my head, and I can't sneak off to the rink like I usually would, so this is the next best option.
