Chapter 42
NOVA
Iused the bathroom downstairs as Wes called his driver.
The moment I realized the past thirty minutes had occurred while I was wearing cutesy lamb ears, I yanked the headband off with a roll of my eyes.
I stared at myself in the mirror. My skin was already blotchy and slightly puffy, my tense shoulders bracing for a complete meltdown as soon as I was alone with poor Marty on the way back to the city.
It was pathetic how easy it had been for Wes to break my heart. I knew who dominant men were. I knew not to trust people like him.
He’d felt so different. Different than anyone I’d ever met.
But he wasn’t. He was the same as all the rest. He’d lied to me about who he was, and he’d clearly lied to me about his connection to The Circle. He made me look like a complete idiot, clueless about it all.
I angrily swiped a tear from my cheek. Fuck Wes, and fuck Lorelei too. Neither of them loved me, and I never wanted to give any piece of myself to people like them ever again.
I nodded to myself, watching as my lips dug into a deep frown and my eyes became sharp and fiery.
When I slipped back out into the hall, more voices floated through the enormous home.
“Tie her to the chair,” I heard someone say. “She’ll eat what we feed her.”
I slowly walked back toward the foyer. As I moved through the dimly lit estate, I saw bound and gagged prey carried in by hunters.
I saw a woman crawling on the floor as men trailed after her.
The sugar baby twink was kissing an old banker’s leather shoes.
I heard whips cracking through the air and flesh slapping against flesh—everyone in this place indulging in what could never be mine.
“Please! Help me!” a woman screamed from far away, likely from the woods, where the hunt was still in full swing.
“Nova.”
I halted.
Roman stood in front of me, eclipsing my view of the foyer beyond him. “Stay. Feast with us. There’s no need for anyone to leave.”
I laughed humorously, incredulously. “You’re all insane.” I straightened, lifting my chin as my nostrils flared. “No.”
Roman’s gaze narrowed to a sharpened point. “You will be mine, Nova.”
I gaped. Before I could speak, he covered my mouth with his hand and dragged me back into a hall. He pressed me up against the nearest wall as I fought him.
His lips were inches from my ear, his breath tickling me.
“You’re going to get everything you’ve ever wanted.
Your dream publisher is going to launch your career, making you an instant household name.
You won’t have to have roommates or roaches in the walls or ramen for dinner ever again.
You won’t even have to take the disgusting, abhorrent subway.
The only struggle you will experience as my sub will be the ordeals I design for you—the pain and control you have longed for your entire life.
I have been studying you, Nova. Not because of my unworthy brother, but because I want you.
I have wanted you from the start. And I get everything I want. ”
“Let me go,” I yelled into his palm, the words muffled against his skin.
“And I’m the only one who can give you everything you want.”
He released my mouth and smirked down at me. “Let me show you how easy life can be. Let me show you how good it feels to be owned by someone with real power.”
Heat traveled up and down my spine. How many women had this worked on? How dare he posit himself as the only solution to the problems his family had a large part in creating?
“Listen to me very carefully, Roman,” I hissed. “You will never own me. I would sooner die.”
As soon as the words left my lips, Roman’s smirk evaporated. He took a step back. A vein in his forehead pulsed, as if he were holding himself back, straining against the darkness swimming in his brown eyes.
“None of this impresses me. None of it. Enjoy your hedonistic buffet and billionaire conspiracy roleplay. All I see are a bunch of losers playing dress-up.”
A chill crawled down my spine at the look on Roman’s face. It was inhuman, no light in his eyes, no emotions written into his features. Just a cold, deadly, precise glare.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but I was too angry to focus on my body’s glaring warning signals. I retreated instead, only turning to get one final piece in.
“And another thing. I love the disgusting, abhorrent subway!”
When I made it to the front porch, the world was dark and quiet. Distant voices and screams permeated from the woods or the home, but everything was muted, like a slowly fading dream.
Wes sat on the front steps, his back to me. In the foyer, Jayne had tried one more time to convince me to stay before giving up.
Whatever their plans had been for us, we’d clearly derailed them. And that was the only thing that brought me smug, spiteful comfort as my world crashed down around me.
Who was I if I had no one to save?
Or, rather, if I had no one to save but myself?
Wes turned his head as I approached. I didn’t sit with him like I had after our first party. I didn’t ask him how he was getting home—if he was going home.
I had nothing to say.
A black car slowly approached, gravel crunching under tires.
“I’m sorry,” Wes said, turning away to watch the car approach.
The car pulled into the driveway, stopping in front of us.
I heaved my duffel bag over my shoulder and passed Wes on the steps. “For what?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
“All of it, Nova. I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you needed. I shouldn’t have—”
I whipped around. “Correct. You shouldn’t have. But I should’ve known better.”
Wes didn’t respond. I watched him wrestle with my words for two short seconds before I turned away for the last time.
I didn’t look at him again, not even when the car started moving, and Wes remained seated on the porch steps, alone.
On the way back, I cried softly for an hour and a half. I cried until I felt numb, the past few hours hanging in my mind like some strange dream.
It all felt like some strange dream. I could’ve been convinced I’d hallucinated the entire past three months—if Hudson and Delilah hadn’t met Wes in the flesh, perhaps.
I’m coming home. Without Lorelei. Without Wes. It’s all over.
Hudson
Fuck. Okay. I’ll meet you there. I’ll get ice cream and pizza on the way back.
My friends were the only source of light I had to hold on to right now, my only anchor in these turbulent waves of shame and heartbreak.
It had all been for nothing. All of it. Lorelei clearly hated me, and Wes was one of them.
He’d kept me in the dark when it would’ve been easy to tell me the truth—if he’d actually cared and valued me enough to be honest. No, the trouble was, he was incapable of honesty.
Incapable of caring for me the way I cared about him.
The signs had been there from the start.
Yes, I’d fucked up too, but not telling him about Roman’s unwanted advances was nowhere near the same as what he’d done to me.
All I’d ever been was a foolish pawn in a rivalry between two heirs to a social media empire.
I had a feeling that was all Jayne and Archer had ever been too.
When the sparkling cityscape came into view, a part of me was still dazzled, as I always was by the great expanse of its shine. It was unconscious, the city’s magnetic pull.
My friends weren’t the only source of light. The city was here too—eternal and infinite and powerful, a web of intertwining fates constantly shifting, growing, becoming hopelessly tangled.
My heart physically ached in my chest, knowing that when Wes and I looked at the city, we saw the same thing.
We looked at the field of light and buildings reaching up toward the sky with earnestness, untarnished by years of frustration and grief and disappointment, refusing to capitulate to the slow creep of disillusionment.
When we saw the city, we remained hopeful.
Or at least, I thought we had.
I didn’t know anything for certain about Wes anymore. Maybe I hadn’t ever known him at all.
I finally told Hudson everything. I told him about Roman Graves and the other billionaires in attendance. I explained what had happened with Lorelei and what I’d found out about Wes.
My sinuses ached from crying so hard. I wasn’t only mourning Wes—I was also mourning the friend I’d grown up with, the woman who might as well have been my sister.
And I was mourning something I couldn’t quite put into words.
I was mourning the woman I’d been becoming.
I had just started to taste a certain freedom before it dried up like sand against my tongue.
“I don’t know what to say,” Hudson said when I finished. His brows were drawn in deep concern. The pizza and ice cream he’d procured remained untouched on the coffee table beside us as we both rested against the couch’s arms, facing each other.
“You can start with an updated I told you so if you want,” I said.
Hudson shook his head. “I wouldn’t gain any satisfaction from that right now.”
“Well, it’s all done. I’ll get over it,” I said with a determined nod that wasn’t quite felt in my body. “I already blocked The Circle’s PicWave account and all their phone numbers.”
“Even Wes’s?” Hudson asked.
I shook my head. “No, not his. Not yet.”
Hudson didn’t criticize. He just nodded in understanding. “I’m so sorry, Nova.” He paused. “You’ve never been in love before, have you?”
I shook my head and stared at my lap. I didn’t say whether I’d been in love with Wes. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Fuck him for ruining that for you,” Hudson said angrily. “I’m still struggling to come to terms with the whole Max Graves of it all, but I have to voice this. You didn’t, like, piss Roman off too badly tonight, did you? Or anyone else with the ability to make you disappear?”
I thought of Roman’s eerie, demonic look when I’d told him I would never be his. Or, rather, when I said I’d sooner die than be his.
“Um… no…” I said, unconvincingly.
Hudson’s eyes widened.
“Well, I was distraught!” I defended. “I stood up for myself for pretty much the first time in my entire life.”
“And I applaud that. But I am also very concerned. They know where we live. Hell, they probably know more about us than we do.” He glanced at my phone between us like it was a detonator.
I finally reached for a slice of pizza, needing carbs to help numb what hadn’t been numbed from two hours of crying.
I shook my head. “Roman will get over it too. None of what happened these past months was about me anyway. This is between Roman and Wes. I could’ve been anyone at all, and it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Hudson was deep in thought, as if something was bothering him. “I think you should get some rest, Nova.” He opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if deciding better of saying anything more.
The pizza might as well have been cardboard to me. I couldn’t taste anything, as if heartbreak had robbed me of my ability to feel anything but crushing heaviness against my ribs.
I nodded and placed the slice of pizza with one bite missing back down in the box. My ass still stung from my first and last spanking session.
I couldn’t believe I had any tears left inside my body, but I felt more pooling in my bloodshot eyes.
Hudson’s face fell.
“You’re right,” I said. “Thank you for the pizza and coming back home early for me.”
“Always.”