Page 31 of Isolation

“I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s not urgent. If it’s not financially feasible—”

“Raven,” I assure her, “it’s really not a problem.”

“Thank you.”

“I have one more question.”

“Sure,” she sighs.

“Do you hate me?”

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Raven

“Do you hate me?” Milo asks point-blank.

Honest. Direct. Unexpected.

We have barely come to an agreement when Milo throws another atom bomb at me. My whole body reacts to that question.

“Hate?” I contemplate the word as it rolls off my tongue.

Milo is holding his breath as he waits.The Sinclairs never understood that I don’t love the way they do.

I might have used the word hate, but I have never applied it. When I love, I love unconditionally. I realized that at an early age in life.

Although I am not a people pleaser, Iama Sinclair pleaser. I love all of them unconditionally. I have always done everything in my power to make them happy.

That's how things got so out of control with Milo, even though I knew what was happening between us was wrong. Still, I tried to suppress it.

After Mia told me how Reid felt about me, I couldn’t suppress it anymore, nor could I cross that threshold with Milo again.Milo was the one person Reid couldn’t bear to see me with. It would have gutted him.

However, my decision didn’t stand. Milo started coercing me into sex.

In the beginning, I thought Milo made a terrible mistake. I thought maybe it was a misunderstanding.

Driven by jealousy, I thought he accidentally went too far. I was in shock, refusing to believe it was gettingthatout of control.

The shock value lies in the fact that Milo can have anyone he wants. It's hard to believe that a man like him needs force to bed a woman.

He is beyond good looking, intelligent, charming. Now, he is even rich and successful. From what I have heard, women still swoon over him. Milo looks like a freaking male model. He can now make grown women cry, not just pesky teenagers.

So, the thought remains, why me?

Why did he fixate on me?

Milo used to sit me down and give me lectures on various topics; one of them was sexual conduct.

When a woman says stop, a man has to stop.Milo taught me that. He emphasized there is no gray area with consent and told me if boys at school ever got handsy, to knee them in the balls.

This is why it was so difficult to believe it when I was watching him morphe. It was like Lex Luther’s transition from good to evil, and I was the guide leading him to explore the darkest side of himself.

That part is the most disheartening to accept.

My new reality settled in when Milo kept at it because I reacted positively. He couldn’t understand that it was filling me with self-hatred for reacting positively to unwanted advances.