Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Liberty
It’s been four days since the fireworks. Since the terrace. Since he pressed me against that railing and told me I belonged to him while the sky exploded overhead.
Four days of drowning.
I can't face Gracie.
Can't look her in the eye knowing what her brother did to me on that terrace—knowing what I let him do, knowing the shameful heat that flooded through me when his body pinned mine to cold stone and his breath ghosted against my ear.
I can't face myself.
Every mirror in the guest house has become an accusation.
I catch my reflection and see a stranger staring back—hollow-eyed, haunted, flushed with a fever I can't break.
A woman who should’ve fought harder.
Should’ve done anything except stand there trembling while he whispered promises against her skin.
A woman whose body still aches where he touched her.
I pace the hardwood floors until my feet are raw, wearing grooves in the gleaming wood.
Sleep comes in ragged bursts—two hours here, three hours there—always ending the same way.
I wake gasping, his name on my lips, my hand already between my thighs.
I've touched myself twice since that night.
Both times, I came imagining his hands instead of my own.
His mouth on my skin. His voice in my ear, low and certain, telling me I was his, telling me to come for him.
The first time, I shattered so hard I had to bite through my lip to keep from screaming his name.
I tasted blood for an hour afterward.
The second time was worse.
The second time, I sobbed through the orgasm, pleasure and shame so tangled I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
I lay there in the dark, tears drying on my cheeks, and hated myself with a fury that made my whole body shake.
This is what he's done to me.
This is what he's reduced me to—a woman who gets wet thinking about her stalker, who trembles at the memory of his touch, who can't close her eyes without feeling his body against hers and wanting more.
I need to get out of here before I lose whatever's left of myself.
The thought crystallizes into desperate action.
I grab my keys and my wallet, the duffel bag I never fully unpacked.
My hands are shaking as I throw clothes inside, not caring what I grab, not caring about anything except escape.
I'll drive to Richmond. Find a motel with peeling wallpaper and a deadbolt on the door.
Figure out my next move from somewhere that doesn't smell like him, somewhere his shadow doesn't fall across every window, somewhere I can breathe without choking on the ghost of his cologne.
I don't care about the jobs or the apartment anymore.
I'll waitress in a truck stop. Sleep in my car. Sell my blood if I have to.
Anything is better than staying here.
Anything is better than becoming the woman who walks up to the main house and begs him to finish what he started.
The rental car sits in the driveway where I left it.
I throw my bag in the back, slide behind the wheel, and turn the key.
Nothing.
My heart stutters. I try again.
The engine makes a grinding sound—metal scraping metal, something broken deep in its guts—and dies.
Again. Nothing.
I sit there, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, chest heaving, and feel the last fragile thread of hope snap.
Of course.
Of fucking course.
I pop the hood with trembling hands, even though I already know what I'll find.
Nothing obvious. No cut wires, no missing parts.
Whatever he did, he did it clean, almost professionally.
The kind of sabotage that looks like bad luck to anyone who isn't paying attention.
I'm paying attention now.
Every closed door. Every rejected application. Every "coincidence" that nudged me closer to him.
I see the whole trap now, laid out before me like a spider's web, and I'm already caught in the center.
The mechanic in town—the only mechanic in town—won't meet my eyes when he delivers the verdict.
Transmission. Expensive fix. Weeks for the parts, but it’ll have to go through the rental company and that’s a whole other headache.
"Weeks." I repeat the word flatly, watching his face for any crack in the performance.
"Sorry, ma'am." He shuffles his feet, studies the oil-stained concrete like it holds the secrets of the universe. "Best I can do."
I wonder how much Elias paid him.
I wonder how long ago he was bought.
Actually, I’m curious to know if every person in this town belongs to Elias Ashford, and I'm the only one who didn't know.
I walk back to the estate because I have no other choice.
It takes an hour.
The summer sun beats down on me like a punishment, and sweat soaks through my shirt, and my feet blister inside my boots until every step feels like walking on glass.
By the time I reach the gates, my rage has condensed into something cold, sharp, and deadly.
He wants to play games?
Fine.
I'll show him what happens when you back a soldier into a corner.
The main house looms against the sky, all white columns and old money elegance.
I don't bother knocking.
The door is unlocked—of course it is, he's been expecting me, probably watching me walk up the drive, savoring every furious step.
The foyer is cool and dim, marble floors echoing under my boots.
I know where his study is.
I spent enough time in this house as a teenager, trailing after Gracie, pretending I didn't feel his eyes tracking me through every room.
Pretending I didn't feel the heat of his gaze pooling low in my belly.
Pretending I didn't like it.
I find him behind his desk, reading something on his laptop like this is any other afternoon, like he hasn't spent the past week systematically destroying every option I have.
He looks up when I enter, and his expression doesn't change.
No surprise. No concern.
That infuriating, devastating patience—like he has all the time in the world.
Like he knows exactly how this ends.
"Liberty." He closes the laptop and gives me his full attention, those pale blue eyes sweeping over me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. "I was wondering when you'd come."
"My car won't start." I stop in the center of the room, hands curling into fists at my sides.
"That's unfortunate." He leans back in his chair, the picture of casual ease.
"The transmission is shot. Mechanic says it'll take weeks to fix."
"These things happen." His mouth curves—barely, infuriatingly—and I want to claw that smile off his face with my bare hands.
Instead, I close the door behind me and lock it.
His eyebrow rises a fraction. The first crack in the composure.
Good.
"You did this." I keep my voice steady, even though my hands are shaking, even though my heart is slamming against my ribs so hard I can feel it in my throat. "You sabotaged my car. You paid off the mechanic. You've cut off every exit, and you're sitting there looking at me like—"
"Like what?" He tilts his head, studying me like I'm something fascinating. Something he can't wait to take apart.
"Like you've already won." I take a step toward him, then another.
He stands. Comes around the desk. Moves toward me with that slow, deliberate grace that makes my pulse race with warning and something darker—something I refuse to name.
"Haven't I?" He stops three feet away, and I can smell him now.
That woodsy cologne, that undertone of heat that's purely him, and my body responds before my brain can catch up.
Heat blooms in my chest. Spreads through my stomach. Settles between my thighs with a throb I can't ignore no matter how hard I try.
I clench my jaw and hate every treacherous inch of my own skin.
"No." I hold my ground, even though every instinct is screaming at me to run. "You haven't won anything. You've trapped me. That's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?" Another step closer.
"You could’ve stayed away." His voice drops, soft and intimate, wrapping around me like silk. "You could’ve built a life anywhere in the world. But you came back."
"I came back for Gracie. For my family."
"You came back because you were tired of running from this." His hand lifts, and his fingertips graze my cheek so lightly it's barely a touch. I flinch like he's burned me. "From us."
"There is no us."
"Your body says otherwise." He takes another step, and now he's close enough that his heat bleeds into mine.
"Your pulse is racing. Your skin is flushed.
Your nipples are hard through your shirt.
" His eyes drop, then rise slowly back to mine.
"And if I reached between your thighs right now, I'd find you dripping wet for me. "
"You're disgusting."
"I'm honest." His gaze bores into mine, stripping away every defense I have. "Something you seem incapable of being. At least with yourself."
He reaches for me.
I slap his hand away hard enough to sting.
He reaches again.
I shove at his chest with both hands, putting every ounce of soldier strength behind it.
He doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. Absorbs the blow like I'm nothing, like my fury means nothing, and something inside me—something that's been wound tight as a tripwire for eight years—finally snaps.
I hit him.
Closed fist, right in the center of his chest. He grunts but doesn't step back.
I hit him again. And again. Pounding against him with everything I have, eight years of fear and fury and shame pouring out of me with every blow.
Every night I lay awake wanting him.
Every time I touched myself and imagined his hands. Every shameful fantasy I've ever had about this man who has no right to occupy a single second of my thoughts.
He lets me.
He stands there and takes it, absorbing every strike, watching me with those pale eyes like he can see straight through to the broken, wanting thing underneath.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
He catches my wrists.
One second I'm swinging, the next I'm pinned, my arms trapped against his chest, his fingers like iron around my wrists.
His heart pounds against my knuckles—fast, hard, not as calm as he pretends.
"Feel better?" His voice is rough. Scraped raw. His chest heaves against mine.
"Let go of me."
"No."