**WATTPAD HQ EDITOR'S PICK Nov/Dec 2021**
BOOK ONE in the STEAMY FORBIDDEN ROMANCE series
Coralie Watson, a British thirty-year-old living in San Francisco, has a tormented past with men. Physical and mental abuse, abandonment issues, incompatibili...
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♫ You love when I fall apart So you can put me together And throw me against the wall ♪ (Rihanna—Love On The Brain)
Another week passed, and Coralie's yearning for Ryan didn't dissipate. If anything, it worsened—it amplified.
She barely slept, barely ate, cried in the shower, fumbled with drink orders at the bar, and drank herself into a stupor on her days off. She avoided calls from her mother, refused to confide in Delilah—who haunted near her bedroom door and scolded her for being such a downer—and sent half-assed replies to Michael, who continued to ask her out on dates.
She liked Michael, but she loved Ryan. It was far from simple lust, or a natural physical craving, or a need to see him naked and taste him. He'd become a part of her, ingrained in her memory, engraved in her heart. His image never left her mind, and though she laughed at herself for sounding like an obsessive, fan-girling teenager, even she worried about herself, her stalker-like behavior worse than it had ever been.
Her tendencies only exacerbated when she realized Ryan had all but disappeared from social media. His page was inactive—he didn't post any silly videos like usual, and he didn't view her stories.
Had Gemma discovered them, and he was now paying a high price for it? Or was he being overly cautious, hoping to protect the burgeoning sexual tension between him and Coralie?
Or is he over me, contrary to what he promised?
One foggy morning, Coralie woke with a groan, her phone's loud ringing piercing the otherwise silent room. Her scalp pounded from the bottle of wine she'd drank to herself the night before, and she'd slept in a position that had rendered her neck stiff, about to snap.
"Who the fuck—"
She pressed the button on her phone and gasped before she realized it was a Facebook call, and she'd enabled her video without checking her appearance first. She had no doubt her hair was an utter disaster, and she likely had mascara smears beneath her eyes, as she hadn't bothered to remove her makeup from the day before.
As the image adjusted, she gasped when she saw who was on the screen. There was only one person who would call her so early in the morning—because she'd told him he could.
Mouth falling open and eyes wide as saucers, she stared at his first blurry, then sharp as ever features when they fizzled to life before her.
"RyRy?"
He chuckled, leaning in closer to better examine her sleepy, far-from-seductive, pillow-lined face. "Hi, gorgeous. Did I wake you?"
She set the phone down, ruffled through her mane, dabbed under her eyes, licked her lips—then retrieved the device, happy to witness that she'd partially fixed herself up.
"Yes, but... it's fine, I was hoping to hear from you soon, anyway. It's been," she pretended to hesitate, though she knew damn well how many hours and minutes and seconds it had been, "three weeks, huh? How are you?"
