Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LOLA
The apartment is too quiet without Violet.
I’ve been on the couch for hours. I’ve drunk enough caffeine to kill a horse, and my phone is face up on my thigh, the local news page still open with nothing new to report.
Hunter’s hat is on the dining table. I haven’t moved it. Haven’t touched it since last night. It sits there like a promise neither of us knows how to keep.
I’m reaching for the wine again, the same glass I started hours ago and never finished, when the knock comes.
Three sharp raps against the front door. It makes my hand freeze around the glass.
I set the glass down and stand. My bare feet are silent on the floor as I move toward the door, and I don’t know why my pulse is already climbing. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s late, and I never get visitors. Maybe it’s the fact that nobody knocks on your door at this time of night with good news.
I look through the peephole.
Reese.
His shirt is untucked on one side, the top three buttons open, his hair pushed back like he’s been dragging his hands through it for hours. His jaw is working even though he’s not speaking.
Every instinct I have tells me not to open that door. But, he’s the sort to use a key and just come in here anyway. So opening it may defuse the situation perhaps.
He knocks again. Harder. “Lola. I know you’re in there. Open the door.”
His voice is wrong. He sounds angry.
I take a breath and open the door halfway. “Reese, it’s late. What do you want?”
He pushes past me before I can stop him. Just walks straight in like he has every right to be here. And I suppose in his mind, he does. He owns the building. He owns this apartment. He’s reminded me of that more than once.
I close the door slowly. But I don’t lock it.
He’s standing in the middle of my living room with his back to me, hands on his hips, head dropped forward. He’s breathing hard. I can see his shoulders rising and falling beneath the wrinkled fabric of his shirt.
“Reese, what’s going on?”
He laughs. It’s not a real laugh. That patronising one he does.
Maybe he can tell me what happened to Hunter?
“What’s going on?” He repeats it back to me like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Then he turns around.
His eyes are bloodshot. The composed, slick-suited lawyer I’ve known is gone. What’s standing in front of me is something else entirely, something feral hiding behind expensive cologne.
Scary almost.
“Do you have any idea what you did to me yesterday?”
I fold my arms across my chest. Hold my ground. Nope. He’s just here to be a dick. “What I did to you?”
“In front of my friends, Lola.” He takes a step closer. “In front of people that I do business with. People I’ve known my entire life.” Another step. “You threw my hat on the ground like it was trash.”
“Because you put it on my head without my permission,” I say, keeping my voice level. “I’m not your girlfriend, Reese. I’ve told you that. We are not dating. You embarrassed me. Not the other way around.”
I’m sick of this man.
“You humiliated me.” The words come out through his teeth, each one bitten off and spit out. “Do you know what people are saying? Do you know what it looks like when a man claims a woman in front of the whole town, and she throws it back in his face?”
“That’s not my problem. You shouldn’t have done it. I’m not yours to claim.”
But, I wouldn’t mind Hunter claiming me by putting his hat on my head.
“It is your problem!” he shouts it, and the force of it makes me flinch.
His hand slashes through the air between us.
“You made it my problem when you let me take you out. When you moved into my building. When you smiled at me like you wanted this. You want me, you’re just too fucking pussy to admit it. ”
My eyes go wide. He is insane.
“I never wanted this.” My voice is quieter now. Not out of weakness. Out of the slow, dawning realization that I am in this apartment alone with a man who is not in control of himself. “I was being polite. There’s a difference.”
He stares at me. Something behind his eyes shifts, a wall coming down, something dark sliding into place. “Polite.” He nods slowly. “Is that what you call it?”
“Reese, I think you should leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not until you agree to be mine.”
I shake my head, trying to hide the tremble in my hands. I spot my phone on the couch and quickly look away.
He says it so calmly that it’s worse than the shouting; the volume drop is never a good sign. I’ve learned that the hard way. The dangerous ones don’t get louder. They get quieter.
“You know what really kills me?” He starts pacing. Short, agitated loops in front of the couch.
All I can do is stand frozen on the spot and watch him.
“I could have given you everything. This apartment. A life here. Things women in this town would kill for. I could get any woman I want. You know that? Women want me.”
“But I don’t, Reese,” I say, with certainty.
He stops pacing. His eyes drift across the room like he’s looking for something to focus his rage on.
And they land on the dining table.
I watch it happen in slow motion. His head tilts. His brow creases. He crosses the room in three strides and picks up Hunter’s hat.
My stomach plummets through the floor.
He turns it over in his hands. Runs his thumb along the brim. Studies the inside band and then he laughs. But this time it’s different. This time it’s hollow. It’s evil.
“This is Hunter’s hat.”
It’s not a question.
He looks at me. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. “Why the fuck is Hunter Sterling’s hat in your apartment, Lola?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My brain is scrambling for an explanation that isn’t the truth, but every lie I reach for dissolves before it hits my tongue.
He holds the hat up between us. “You are a fucking whore, Lola. I should have known by the way you flaunt yourself on social media. An attention-seeking whore. And the only good thing about you is your body.”
I suck in a breath as the words slice through me. Hitting way too close to what I believe about myself.
“Oh my God.” He presses his tongue into his cheek, nodding to himself. “I see it now. I see exactly what you are.”
He launches Hunter’s hat against the wall with such force that it knocks the picture right off, smashing to the ground.
“Reese—”
“You came to this town with nothing.” He waves his hand in the air. “Nothing. No money. No family. No connections. And the second you get here, you sink your claws into the richest man in the county.”
I blink at him. He couldn’t be further from the truth. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even guess anything about me right.
“And what? You just wanted the new girl in town to show off to satisfy your male ego? You don’t know me. Get the fuck out,” I spit back.
“Don’t I? Little gold-digging whore from New York thinks she can come here and play the Sterlings for their money. What? Was I not rich enough for you? You dirty little bitch.”
The word hits me like a slap. My fists clench at my sides. “Call me that again,” I say, and my voice is shaking, but it’s not from fear anymore. “I dare you.”
“Bitch,” he says it slowly. Savoring every letter. “A cheap, desperate, scheming little whore who opened her legs for a payday. That’s what you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. And trust me, Hunter won’t be interested in you either.”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment.”
“Your apartment?” He laughs again. “This is my apartment. Everything you’re standing on is mine. The roof over your head? Mine. The lock on that door? Mine.” He leans in close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath. “You are mine, Lola. Not Hunter’s. You don’t get a choice in this.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.” I hold his stare even as my hands tremble. “And I never will.”
His nostrils flare.
“I’m calling the cops,” I say, reaching for my phone on the couch.
He laughs.
“Call them. Who do you think they’re going to believe? The lawyer who’s lived here his whole life? Or the gold-digging slut from New York who’s been here five minutes?”
My hand closes around the phone.
His hand closes around my wrist.
The pain is immediate, and a sound tears out of me that I don’t recognize as my own voice. He wrenches me forward, off balance, and my hip slams into the edge of the coffee table. The wine bottle topples and shatters on the tile.
He tosses me to the ground, and I cry out as my hand lands on the broken glass.
That pain ignites inside me. Something old and furious and built from every time a man thought he could break me and couldn’t.
“Say it. Say you’re mine,” he hisses, leaning over me.
I take a deep breath, ignoring the pain coursing through my body. I swing my elbow straight into his dick with every ounce of rage I have behind it. The impact sends pain shooting up my arm, but his head snaps sideways, and his grip on my wrist loosens for a fraction of a second.
A fraction is all I need.
I rip my arm free, snatch my keys off the counter, and run.
I don’t grab shoes. Don’t grab a jacket. Don’t grab anything except my keys because there is no version of this where I stay in this apartment one second longer.
I wrench open the front door, and I’m in the hallway, bare feet slapping against cold concrete, the stairwell door banging open ahead of me.
Blood drips from my hand as I run, and I fight back the tears.
“LOLA!”
His voice ricochets off the walls behind me. I don’t look back. I take the stairs two at a time, and my hip screams with every step, pain blooming across the bone where the table caught me, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.
I hear his footsteps above me. He’s coming.
I burst through the ground-floor exit, and the night air hits me. The parking lot is half-lit, the overhead light flickering in that useless way it always does. My car is thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten.
My hands are shaking so hard that it takes me three tries to hit the unlock button. I yank the door open, throw myself inside, and slam the lock down.
He comes through the exit door.
He’s walking. Not running. Walking toward the car with his arms out at his sides, palms up, and I can hear my heart beating in my ears.
So to anyone who might see this moment. I look like the crazy one.
“Lola, come on. Let’s talk about this, honey.” His voice has shifted. Smooth again. Like he didn’t just call me every name he could think of and attack me in my own home.
I jam the key in the ignition. Turn it. The engine catches, and I throw it into reverse.
He steps behind the car.
He actually steps behind the car, hands on the trunk, leaning his weight into it, probably thinking he can hold a moving vehicle in place with his body.
“You’re not leaving,” he shouts. “This isn’t over!”
I look in the rearview mirror. See his face. His bloodshot eyes. That smile that isn’t a smile.
I floor it.
He throws himself sideways. I see him hit the ground in the mirror, on his hands and knees like a dog—a part of me hopes it hurts.
A part of me hopes it hurts the way my wrist hurts, the way my hip and hand hurt.
The way my chest hurts from the adrenaline flooding my veins so fast, I can taste metal.
I don’t stop.
I pull out of the lot and onto the road, and I drive.
I drive with no shoes, no jacket, blood on my hands. My wrist is swelling, throbbing in time with my heartbeat. Tears are streaming down my face so fast I can barely see the road, and I keep swiping at them with the back of my hand, smearing blood and mascara across my cheeks.
I don’t know where I’m going.
That’s a lie. I know exactly where I’m going.
I have nowhere else. Not even a phone.
Violet is out with Luke. I don’t know a single other person in this town. I have no family within a thousand miles, no friends outside of a woman who begged me not to do exactly what I’m about to do.
I drive for twenty minutes with nothing but the sound of my own ragged breathing and the hum of the engine.
I let the tears burn from my eyes. The fear. All of it. Until I feel like I can’t breathe.
And then I see the gate.
Sterling Ranch.
The letters on the iron arch are backlit by a single light. Beyond it, the driveway stretches into darkness, flanked by fence posts and fields that I can’t see the end of.
I pull through the gate. The gravel crunches under my tires. The house comes into view. The porch light is on, a warm glow behind the downstairs windows, the birthday banner still hanging above the front door.
I park next to a row of trucks and kill the engine.
And then I sit there.
My whole body is trembling so hard that the seat is vibrating.
I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know how to explain why I’m here, at his ranch, in the middle of the night, after he told me to forget he exists.
But I’m here.
Because I have nowhere else to go.
And he is the only person in this town who has ever made me feel safe. And I need help. Even if it is from his best friend.
I peel my hands off the wheel, open the car door, and step barefoot onto the cold gravel.
The porch light flickers, and I walk toward the door.
I hope I’m right about Hunter Sterling.