Chapter 10
Violet
Everything in me rebelled at the idea of Ford in my domain.
My home was my safe place and sanctuary.
It was also very personal to me, with my art prints on the walls, the thrift-shop mugs lining the shelf in the kitchen, the paint on the walls that Andrea and I picked out together.
It was a map of little choices I’d made over the years—quiet, comfortable, private things that meant I was okay and that I’d managed to carve a secure life for myself despite my tumultuous childhood.
Having Ford here felt like someone stepping into those choices and rearranging them without asking, and giving him so much insight to me put me on the defensive.
I’d never brought a man home. Hell, I barely brought friends over.
That was the point…this was the one place where I could be vulnerable.
Now, having Ford here—after what happened between us at The Players Club—made my stomach do stupid, traitorous things.
It was like every wall I’d built around myself had a crack, and he knew exactly where to press to remind me how dangerously easy it would be to surrender everything to him again.
His presence was too big for my small space, his male energy and confidence grating on my nerves only because of how much I wanted him.
Every time I looked at him sitting on my couch or moving through my kitchen, I couldn’t shake the memory of his hands on me, his rough voice in my ear, the way I’d let go and give in to his demands and loved every second of it.
I hated that my body recognized him like that, craved him so intensely, while my brain screamed that wanting Ford was the most reckless thing I could do.
Sex was sex. That’s the story I told myself.
But what happened between us at the club wasn’t just sex.
It had been a scene that opened something in me I wasn’t supposed to let anyone see…
the part that wanted to be dominated, to hand over the reins and let someone else decide when and how I stopped fighting.
And I’d liked everything about it too much.
My mother hadn’t taught me how to trust. She’d taught me how to survive by not needing anyone, and she’d left painful scars where stability and security should have been.
Instead of roots, she’d left me with cracks.
Instead of demonstrating how love was supposed to last and flourish, she’d showed me how easily it could crumble and vanish.
So I learned to rely on myself, to build walls high enough that no one could slip past them. Dependence was weakness. Trust was a setup for disappointment. And letting someone in meant risking that history would repeat itself.
So I reiterated my rules to myself like a mantra: Don’t let Ford in. Don’t let him change you. Don’t let wanting him be the thing that unravels you.
The advice was solid, but it was incredibly difficult to abide by those rules when he was living in my house and his presence was everywhere and I couldn’t escape that pull.
So, I set him up in Andrea’s old room and got him situated, then made it my personal mission to do what I did best and provoke him.
If I had to put up with Ford invading my space, then I was damn well going to make sure he felt the discomfort, too.
If I couldn’t ignore how much I still wanted him, then at least I could make a game out of tormenting him.
Over the next few days I accidentally locked him out of the house a few times, turned the thermostat up and down just to annoy him, insisting my house, my rules.
I’d blasted music too loud when he was trying to sleep and used up all the hot water in the shower right before he needed to take one.
I ate the food he’d marked as his and hogged the TV remote so he was forced to watch cheesy rom-coms and trash reality shows, narrating the best parts just to up the brat factor.
Ford took it all patiently, to his credit, but I saw cracks in his restraint.
A tick in his jaw when I turned the heat in the house up again when the temperature outside was over one hundred degrees.
The dangerous glint in his eyes when he was blasted with ice cold water after my very long, hot, satisfying shower.
The slow, heated look he gave me when I bent over in front of him in my little boy short undies just to pick up something I’d accidentally dropped. Ooops.
It should have made me feel triumphant, proof that I was winning and had the upper hand.
Instead, every glimmer I saw of his barely suppressed temper sent a shiver down my spine and left me restless and hot, too aware of how badly I wanted him to stop being so damn tolerant.
The more I pushed, the more I craved the moment he’d finally snap and push back.
Then, without realizing it, my motives shifted.
What had started as petty annoyance over him disrupting my comfort zone turned into something else entirely—a challenge.
I wanted to see if I could make Ford crack, if I could get him to slip, just once, and show me what was simmering under all that impressive control.
So, I started pushing harder. Wearing skimpier clothes around the house, brushing past him in the hallway with a sultry smile, stretching out on the couch in shorts that barely counted as clothing.
Plausible deniability, I told myself, but the truth was I wanted his eyes on me.
And when I caught the burn of his gaze, a shiver slid up my spine, my body already desperate for the punishment he refused to give.
But Ford never caved. Day after day, whether at work or at home, he kept that maddening calm facade, like nothing I did affected him.
Not even when I pranced around half-naked, hogged the hot water, or stole his snacks.
Which meant, in the end, I was the only one left frustrated, lying awake at night, restless and aching.
I knew I was being immature, but the entire situation felt unfair.
A customer yelling at me at work for losing all his money?
I could handle that. A hit-and-run totaling my car?
Annoying, sure, but the person who sideswiped me probably just panicked and had driven off because they didn’t have insurance.
None of it seemed like enough to warrant having a man like Ford camped out in my home, shadowing my every move.
Except every time I tried to convince myself I didn’t need him here, my body betrayed me, reminding me exactly how much I wanted him anyway.
As the week dragged on, my anxiety faded, replaced by the sinking suspicion that I’d over-reacted about the crash in the first place.
Jerry insisted the casino still wanted me protected until they could confirm the customer wasn’t a threat.
He’d apparently stirred up trouble before at a few other casinos, and now he’d disappeared.
I didn’t want to be careless with my own life, but it all felt blown out of proportion.
Maybe, after what had happened to Andrea with her stalker, we were all too jumpy.
Even my brother Christopher was on edge and worried about me, though work kept him too busy to see me much.
He made me promise to text whenever I got to work and again when I arrived back home, no matter how late.
So I did. Even after a brutal double shift that ended at one in the morning.
I dragged myself into the house with Ford trailing behind me, phone in hand, sending my brother a quick text before flickering on the lights.
I was exhausted, but not ready to sleep, the kind of post-shift tired where my body ached, but my nerves still buzzed.
I knew I’d need to unwind before I could shut my eyes and I was actually quite hungry.
I went to the kitchen to scrounge up something to eat right as the doorbell rang, surprising me since it was so late.
However, Ford strolled back to the entryway like he’d been expecting someone, and after looking through the peep hole he re-opened the door to a young kid delivering something edible.
Ford came back to the kitchen carrying bags with the name of my favorite Chinese restaurant. “You ordered food?”
“Yep.” He started unloading cartons onto the table. “The cream cheese wontons and the spring rolls and pork dumplings and the noodles you like,” he said, rattling off my favorite items I’d circled on the take-out menu I kept on the side of my refrigerator with a magnet.
I couldn’t pinpoint why I was so annoyed. I’m sure it was a combination of stress, exhaustion, the sexual tension I was constantly feeling around this man, and the fact that Ford remained so fucking nice and thoughtful despite all my efforts to provoke him.
“You want a gold star or something?” The sarcastic words slipped out, sharper than I’d intended.
Ford looked at me for a moment, heat and something darker flickering in the depths of his eyes before he smoothed it over with that maddening calm.
“No gold star necessary. I’ll settle for you eating something before you crash since all you had was a bag of chips during your break.
Unless you don’t want it, in which case I’ll eat it. ”
His self-control was driving me insane. I scowled and grabbed one of the boxes out of his hand before he could make good on his promise. “Touch my wontons and die, Perish.”
He merely laughed, a low rumble of sound that sent a shiver straight through me, reminding me how sexually deprived I was beginning to feel.
And truly, it was mostly my own fault, considering my bratty antics to get a rise out of him that only left me feeling frustrated, restless, and constantly turned on around him.