Even unconscious, some part of him was incapable of letting go.
I stared at his hands for a long time. I’d always liked his hands. They were one of the first things I noticed about him. Fine-boned and dexterous. Able to play the piano at any jazz bar with the ease of a professional entertainer, capable of throwing a dart with precision or twirling a poker chip like a magician with a disappearing coin. They packed a serious punch, too, when he put his weight behind them — something I’d learned through painful personal experience.
Believe you me, there was nothing attractive about the holes they smashed in the drywall; nothing elegant about the way they wrapped themselves around your neck and squeezed. And squeezed. Andsqueezed, until the world went black at the edges and you realized, with startling irony, that those beautiful hands could very well wind up the instrument of a particularly ugly end.
Never again, Imogen.
He’ll never touch you again.
After tonight, you’ll be free.
And he’ll be nothing but a bad memory.
I tore my eyes away when I realized they’d drifted up to glare at his slack-mouthed, snoring face. I didn’t want to look at his face. I studied his hands again instead, wondering how far I’d have to run to finally be beyond their reach. Across the state? Across the country? Across the world? Nowhere felt far enough.
Still, I had to try.
He’d given me the perfect window of opportunity — one I’d spent weeks waiting impatiently for, biding my time with teeth-grinding determination — and I was not about to waste it. Nights like tonight, after he’d been out on the town, those cunning hands of his were all thumbs, their innate polish rubbed away by an evening of shuffling losing cards and slugging down top-shelf scotch. And, more than likely, shoving fifty-dollar bills into the cleavage of the best exotic dancers Atlantic City had to offer — and there was alotto offer, here in A.C. — if he and his pals decided to swing by the gentlemen’s club they favored once their luck at the casino tables turned sour.
It always turned sour.
He didn’t think I knew about the clubs. Or maybe he simply didn’t care if I knew. Probably the latter, given that half the time he came home reeking of unfamiliar perfume with lipstick stains on his collar. (Talk about a freaking cliché.) As for me, I’d stopped caring where he spent his nights — or his mornings, or his afternoons, or any minute in between — so long ago, I could hardly remember a time before our relationship looked like this. I could hardly remember those evenings in the very beginning when I’d waited up for him to get home, pacing by the door like a little kid, the epitome of excitement.
How far we’d fallen. How low we’d sunken. To this new depth — me, lying in the dark like a petrified corpse, afraid a single hitch of my breathing might alert him to my consciousness. And him, a stranger in the body of the man I used to love.
Love.
Did I ever love him? Truly? Or did I just love the beautiful lies he fed me?
I wasn’t sure. All I knew was, last autumn I fell head-over-heels for the man he allowed me to believe he was, those first few weeks. He was careful — so very careful — to hide the monster under his skin. To disguise his true nature with sweet smiles and suave words and promises about how he was going to take me away, far away, from everyone else in my life who wanted a piece of me.
And he did.
He just failed to mention that, in return, he wanted the biggest piece of all.
Unfortunately, by the time I figured that out, it was too late. He’d waited until I got close — moved my meager belongings out of my rent-by-the-week motel room and into his penthouse, let down all my careful defensive perimeters…
Then, he’d sunk his claws in.
Deep.
That’s when the dashing facade dropped away, so fast it gave me whiplash. Those chivalrous layers peeled back to reveal the cruelest intentions. The raging beast beneath the smooth-talking gentleman. The insatiable user beneath the generous wine-and-diner. The controlling con-artist in the shape of my fairytale prince.
Honestly, I should’ve known better.
A prince?
For me?
Fat chance of that. My life was no fairytale. No one in this world was going to save me, except maybe myself. You’d think I would’ve learned that lesson by now, considering the amount of times I’d been jerked around, ripped off, and screwed over in my twenty-five years on earth.
Alas…
Adrian wasn’t going to make all my dreams come true, like he promised he would. He wasn’t going to protect me from my past. He wasn’t going to be the shield that kept the harsh world at a tolerable distance.
No.
Instead, he wanted to thrust me back into the very spotlight I’d fled. Back into the public eye. Back into the life I’d spent years running from.All hail the long-awaited return of Imogen Warner, Orlando’s own Child Clairvoyant!She of early-2000s daytime television fame. (Assuming you could call local programming on a limited broadcast network in the suburban wasteland of Florida “fame.”)