Chapter 5
Annabelle
My alarm clock beeps, and I groan, reaching out to slam my hand on it to shut it the fuck up. Pressing the button and getting it to quit bitching at me, I pull my hand back and hit something else. My eyes snap open.
Water.
Reaching for it, I sit up slowly and gulp it back, eyeing up the painkillers with suspicion. I don’t remember putting them there.
Was I that organised about my intended hangover before I left for the club?
The club.
“Oh, fuck,” I mutter and look down at myself. The club. The hot guy who rescued me from that idiot who thought I owed him sex for one drink.
The hot guy whose car I got into and brought him into my home to fuck. The hot guy whose dick I came all over more than once.
Closing my eyes in shame, I fumble for the painkillers and swallow them with the last gulp of water and then slowly turn to glance at the other side of the bed.
Empty.
And unslept in.
Relief floods through me.
Thank fuck.
What was I thinking?
Clearly, I wasn’t.
Maybe grieving in a stupor isn’t so bad when the alternative is getting drunk at a club and fucking the nearest hot stranger.
Tattoos. Hard body. Huge cock.
Fuck.
I press my hand between my legs as a hazy recollection of him coming inside me hits me. “Shit.”
I’m not on the pill. Why would I be when I had no intention of going anywhere near a man until an hour before I left to go out yesterday?
I wanted a mindless fuck and didn’t have time to prepare properly.
I’ll have to stop at the chemist in the next town to get the morning-after pill, preferably with a facemask on, so no one recognises me.
“Idiot,” I mutter and stand up. I don’t feel too bad. Definitely not as bad as I thought it would be.
Moving to the en suite, I push the door open and turn on the light. I go straight to the shower to turn it on because the hot water takes ages to reach the upstairs pipes. Then I turn to the mirror to take in the damage and freeze.
The letters look clean. Deliberate. Not drunken scribble. Not some stupid joke I did to myself and forgot. He wrote on me.
ETHAN
My stomach drops.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Heat floods my face so hard it burns. Shame. Anger. Darkness that I do not want to examine too closely because my body remembers him before my mind catches up. His mouth. His hands. His cock. The way he kept saying my name as if it belonged to him.
Apparently, he agreed.
I step right up to the mirror and touch the letters with my fingertips. Ice slides down my spine. He marked me like I belong to him.
“Sick fucker,” I mutter and turn to the shower. I get in and scrub that part away first before I make myself presentable to go to work.
By the time I’m out, dried off and dressed for work in a pair of black cut-off pants to deal with the summer heat and a black tee. My skin is pink from scrubbing, and the letters are gone.
The memory of them is not.
I drag a brush through my damp hair, then set the hair dryer on it, fluffing it up, only to drag the brush through it again and straighten it.
Something feels different today.
I don’t feel like I’m dragging an iceberg around with me in my chest. Was it the sex?
Oh, God. The sex.
I had a one-night stand. A questionable one. A mortifying one.
And it has thawed a bit of the burden I was carrying around.
That alone brings it all back, and my shoulders slump. I was stupid. I invited a stranger into my home after what happened to my mother.
“What were you thinking, you stupid, useless bitch?” I hiss and throw the hairdryer down.
The words bounce off the walls and come back worse.
Useless.
I shut my eyes and press both palms to the dresser until the rush under my skin settles. Breathing in through my nose does nothing. My pulse is still too quick. My face is still hot. My body remembers exactly how good he felt.
“Stupid bitch. He could’ve killed you.” Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad.
Hot tears prick my eyes, and I step back from the dresser, the mirror, unable to look at myself anymore. I stumble out of the bedroom and stop at the top of the stairs.
The scent of coffee and bacon wafts up from the kitchen, and I gulp.
He’s still here.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck.”
My stomach growls, and a wave of nausea washes over me. I can’t hide up here. The adult thing to do is go down there and confront him, tell him to leave. Gripping the bannister hard, I take the stairs slowly, walking like a zombie through the living room that smells of polish and into the kitchen.
The first thing I notice is how clean everything is. The second thing I notice is him.
He turns when he hears me, giving me that slow smile I remember from last night. He crosses over to me and kisses the top of my head. “Morning, Tinks. Sit.”
Tinkerbell. Tinks. That’s not my name. I don’t correct him.
I sit.
He pushes a mug of hot coffee over towards me, and I take a sip. It’s black and bitter just like my soul.
Next, he places a bacon sandwich on white bread in front of me, with a blob of brown sauce oozing out of the side.
“Eat, Annabelle. You are too thin. I’m worried about you.”
Worried about me? I frown at him, but my hands act of their own, reaching for the sandwich. I pick it up and take a bite, nearly groaning in delight. The bacon is crispy to the point of being burned. It’s exactly how I like it.
“Good?” he asks, leaning against the counter and looking at me.
I nod.
“Good girl. Eat it all up.”
He turns and picks up a tea towel and starts drying some dishes he has hand washed. “We need to have a conversation.”
I chew slowly, dreading whatever it is he is about to say.
“You took a risk last night, Annabelle. Going out and getting drunk, where any man could’ve taken advantage of you. It’s not acceptable behaviour. You are lucky I was there.”
Lucky?
I swallow the bite and put the sandwich down, not really knowing what to say. He thinks I took a risk, but not with him? He is the one standing in my kitchen, having cleaned it while I was sleeping.
He turns to face me, his blue eyes intense as they fix on mine. “Do you understand the risks?”
He waits expectantly.
“Yes,” I croak, because not answering him or giving him the wrong answer seems like a terrifying prospect.
“And?”
I blink and lower my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Good girl,” he says. “But that is all water under the bridge. I’m here now.”
My blood chills.
“I have to go to work,” I blurt out.
“I know. At the library. What time do you finish?”
“How—how do you know where I work?” I whisper.
“Your ID badge is in the white ceramic dish in the living room. The one with the blue edges.”
Right.
“I will be there to pick you up when you finish.”
“No, I’ll catch the bus,” I say weakly, but it’s like trying to fight with a mountain. His presence is immovable.
He carefully places down the frying pan and the tea towel. “I said I would pick you up. What time do you finish?”
“Three,” I croak.
“Three o’clock. I will be waiting outside for you. I’ll bring you home and have something waiting for you for dinner.”
My throat is tight. “You don’t need to do that.”
His eyes flash dangerously for a second as he moves closer. “Yes. I do.” He reaches out and grips my chin tightly, forcing me to look up at him. “I’m here now, Annabelle. I will take care of you.”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do. This place was a pigsty; you hadn’t cleaned it for days. You went out last night looking for someone to fuck you. I found you. I fucked you. I cleaned your house while you were asleep.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You didn’t have to. That’s why I’m here, Annabelle. You will never have to ask me to do anything. Do you understand?”
I hold his gaze, and all I feel is… relief.
Not fear, not terror that this has escalated beyond a one-night stand.
Nothing except relief that he cleaned my kitchen, made me breakfast, says he will pick me up from work and make me dinner, and I don’t have to.
I don’t have to face doing it when it takes all of my energy just to keep breathing.
He did it.
He took control, and a sick place in my soul likes it.
“Yes,” I say. “I understand.”
“I have somewhere I need to be this morning, or I would drop you off,” he says briskly, letting me go and stepping back. “Tomorrow, I will take you to work and every day after that.”
“Okay,” I whisper, staring at my bacon sandwich.
“Eat up, Annabelle. It’s getting cold.”
I do as he says because it’s easier than thinking for myself. I don’t have to make decisions. I don’t have to think at all.
I finish every bite while he moves around the kitchen like he belongs in it more than I do. He rinses the mug I drank from as if this is normal. As if men who write their names on women and lecture them over breakfast are an everyday occurrence.
Before I can stand to carry the plate over to the sink, he is there, taking it from me. “It’s handled. Like everything else now, Tinks.”
Motionless, I watch him clean it by hand, dry it off and replace it in the cupboard. “Later, I will clean upstairs,” he says, rolling down his sleeves.
I’m momentarily distracted by his muscular forearms.
“You don’t have to—”
“Shh,” he murmurs, pressing his finger to my lips. “I’m here now, remember?”
He bends down and kisses my lips. “Text me the second you get off the bus outside work.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“It’s in your phone.”
“Ethan…”
“Text me, or I will come looking for you, Annabelle, and there will be consequences.”
I gulp at the implied threat. “Oh-okay.”
He smiles, slow, sexy, filled with darkness I’m not sure I know how to handle.
It doesn’t matter.
As he leaves, closing the front door quietly behind him, I look at the kitchen again. I can smell the bleach, the laundry detergent, the polish.
He landed in my life like a man on a mission to save me, and I’m going to let him because I can’t do life anymore. It’s too hard, too bright, too brittle.
Having him do everything, having him tell me what to do, is easier. For however long it lasts, I’ll let him.
And when he inevitably goes, because he will and I have to think for myself again, that will be the time I will give up.
I run my fingers over the inside of my wrist. Feeling the cold blade there last night before I decided to go out, to get out of my own head, because I was too scared to follow through.
He has given me a stay because maybe surviving is simpler when someone else is doing it for you.