Chapter 41 #2
“Maisy?” Jayne asked, lifting a brow.
Maisy was getting railed by an attractive Black man with dark skin in his late twenties, her ass in the air in Jayne and Archer’s bed.
Her head swiveled. “I’m sorry, Jayne,” she said, her voice shaking with each syllable as the man refused to stop fucking her. “I just wanted to be close to you.”
I was way too mentally fucked to unpack that right now.
“I wanted your energy to be a part of this, a part of me. I understand if you and Archer need to punish me…” She trailed off, eyes hooded.
“No, no, carry on, dear,” Jayne said, as if she also did not have the energy for Maisy right now. “We’ll just change the sheets,” she said under her breath.
Maisy frowned, clearly not having received the reaction she was looking for. Archer stared at the man fucking Maisy with irritation before glaring at me.
“I’m not holding you hostage,” I snapped at him. “Feel free to return to your hedonistic fuck fest at any time.”
At this, Roman smirked, clearly enjoying my anger when it wasn’t directed at him.
I homed in on the window at the front of the room, the corner of the vanity that had been in Lorelei’s picture. I pointed.
“There. My friend Lorelei took a picture right there,” I said, spinning around to face my wary onlookers.
The man fucking Maisy had slowed, throwing me a look over his shoulder, as if I was killing his vibe too.
“And she posted it to PicWave last week. There was a man’s hand around her throat, and in her caption, she said she was ready to merge with The Circle. Then earlier tonight, she was running through the forest in a red dress.”
Everyone blinked at me, silent.
“Tall, blonde hair she wears in loose curls. She looks very thin, like she’s lost a lot of weight. She looks unwell.” I rushed through the description of my ex-best-friend, scanning each face for recognition that never came.
“You saw her earlier?” Wes asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Twice. She ran from me and laughed, like she was in on whatever sick fucking game you all are playing with my head.”
“I’m not—” Wes started, but I didn’t want to hear it.
“Where is she?” My voice tipped over the edge of my growing, crazed hysteria. Sobs were still lodged in my throat, but I swallowed the urge down. I didn’t want to cry in front of Wes. I would save it for the ride home. He didn’t deserve to see how much he’d broken me.
Jayne looked at Archer again, as if for help.
“I’m concerned about you, Nova,” Archer said. “There was no woman in a red dress at the hunt.”
“You had to have seen her,” I said to Roman. He’d been close both times I’d spotted her.
Roman shook his head. “Who is this person, and why do we care about her?”
“Why are you all gaslighting me?” I yelled, trembling as my fists balled at my side. “If Wes was who you wanted all along, why are you still fucking with me?”
Maisy and her lover had stopped having sex, now merely sitting together on the bed as they watched me unravel. As they all watched me unravel.
“Nova, you literally sound crazy,” Maisy snapped. “There’s no one named Lorelei in The Circle. Are you her stalker or something? Like, girl.”
My eyes darted from Maisy to Jayne to Archer to Roman. I almost met Wes’s eyes, but I still couldn’t. My shoulders dropped.
“Why is she even here?” Maisy asked Jayne. “She’s not one of us. She’s—”
“Enough,” Jayne hissed.
“No, she’s right. I’m not,” I said with a shaky breath.
I could’ve kept yelling, demanding to know where they were keeping Lorelei, but I wanted to save the dignity I still had. They were never going to help me.
None of them, not even the man who promised me he would take care of it—that he would find my friend and end all of this.
That he would take care of me.
He just stood there.
“Where’s my bag?” I asked Jayne.
“Across the hall.” She stepped forward, as if to reach for me, but then she thought better of it. “I think if we all sat down together and spoke on the level of the soul, we could figure this out.”
I laughed, and the sound did perhaps come out a little unhinged.
Archer nodded. “Stay, Nova. The weekend has only just started. The drivers are all off duty.”
“I will literally walk back to Brooklyn if I have to,” I snapped.
Roman remained quiet, watching me, calculating as if I was a puzzle to be solved or a chess match he was playing with Wes at my expense.
I left the room, and only one person followed me across the hall. I burst through the door and found my strawberry printed duffel bag immediately.
“I’ll get my phone back and call Marty,” Wes said.
“I’m not getting in a car with you.” I slowly turned toward him.
“Nova, please,” Wes said, desperate. “Let me explain.”
Our eyes finally locked. “You were right,” I spat.
“I’m a huge people pleaser who makes other people’s problems her own and puts everyone else’s needs first. Well, I’m done.
If Lorelei wants to be here, if she can laugh in my face and run from me like I’m the butt of some huge joke, then fine.
I’ll stop trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
I’m done! You all can have her!” I said loudly so the others could hear me.
Before Wes could respond, I continued. “Because at the end of the day, she’s an addict. And addicts are fucking liars. Liars who destroy anyone who dares to get close to them.”
Wes reared back. He closed his mouth. His intense, stormy eyes flashed surprise and then hurt before walling off any show of emotions at all.
“And what about you and Roman?” he asked coldly.
“Me and Roman?” I spat incredulously. “That’s your main concern right now?
You really think so little of me?” My throat burned.
I’d crossed some invisible barrier I’d erected years ago: the walls I’d built around my anger because as a child, anger wasn’t a safe emotion for me to feel.
Now, every drop of buried rage filled my veins.
Wes was right. Lorelei and I weren’t in Tennessee anymore, and I was tired of living life without a backbone.
Look where it had gotten me.
I laughed bitterly. “I’m leaving. By myself.”
“Fine.”
The word felt like a slap, jolting me out of my rage and reminding me of Roman’s words in the dining room.
Every sub falls in love with their first Dom.
My next breath was shaky. Wes’s features were back to that unreadable, icy mask he wore around The Circle, as if nothing had changed.
As if I’d never mattered to him at all.
Poor girl.
“I’m done with The Circle. And I’m done with us.”
Wes didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Before any tears could form in front of him, I turned away and opened the bedroom door.
“I never want to hear from any of you ever again.”