Page 27 of Scorned Beauty

Sloane

Thanksgiving had comeand gone with no word from Dom. Oh, wait. There was. Kind of. Two days after he’d successfully rearranged my insides with his massive cock, I received a call from a furniture company for the delivery of a new mattress.

What was a girl to expect? A booty call that weekend, right? I shaved, I pussy-landscaped, and I endured a hair and hand mask. My hair and hands suffered the most from my job as a cleaner and now as a nursing student. Constant handwashing was a killer on the skin, especially when it was thirty degrees with low humidity.

But it was now the first week of December and still no word from Dom. There was no response to the message I sent informing him of the mattress arrival. Maybe I had come on too strong and was too expectant.

I brought up the message.

Me

Mattress was delivered and signed for. Are you ready to wreck it?

I winced. Maybe that was too forward. I never angsted over my regular hookups. How was it so different with Dom? Maybe because on Thanksgiving when I’d been hanging out with Harriet, she shoved her tablet under my nose to show me an article of Dom escorting a gorgeous brunette to a holiday gala.

“Hey, isn’t this the guy who brought in my groceries last week?”

I glanced nonchalantly at it. “Could be.” It didn’t really bother me then. Our boundaries were clear and he wasn’t just anyone. He had responsibilities, including attending events with women who could never be me. But we agreed to be honest. I decided a month was the max I’d wait to hear from him before I followed up my text to tell him I was moving on. In no way was I giving him an ultimatum. That was never my style. In my opinion, if a man really wanted to be with me, he’d make time. I was giving him the courtesy of that time because he was the head of an organization and also knew the De Luccis were family oriented, most especially around the holidays. In retrospect, we should have set a time limit for how long we would wait with no contact.

Dammit.Inretrospect, I shouldn’t have started anything with Dom. The last thing I needed was to obsess over a single text message. I despised how I put myself in this position.

If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be in this funk, feeling so alone during what was supposed to be a festive time of the year. I was glad Harriet had her mahjong buddies. She was actually having a game tonight. As for Billy, I hadn’t heard or seen a peep out of him since that night Grigori called me.

I didn’t want to flunk this semester. Next semester would be my last. Since my Capstone proposal failed, I was looking for a preceptorship in the ER, which was why I needed to ace these tests. Grueling clinical rotations would start on Monday as part of my final exams. Maybe I should have fun this weekend.

Mind made up, I shot off a text to Bianca and asked if she wanted to go clubbing or to a bar. She became the point of contact for the girls’ night after Sera had given birth. She immediately responded that they were having a family dinner. Bianca even invited me over to the De Lucci mansion to join them.

Hell no.

And it really sucked. Because if I didn’t worry that Dom would be there and think I was stalking him, I would jump at the chance. Bianca and her mom were fantastic cooks.

And as if that weren’t enough of a bummer, I’d also started my period. The cramps were creeping in, but I was determined nothing was going to stop me from enjoying myself tonight. After my shower, I piled up my hair and dragged out my train case with my rarely used makeup. Setting it on top of my tiny bathroom counter, I flipped it open. Four identical photographs spilled out.

I stiffened. I forgot about those. They were in a compartment behind the mirror of the train case. Someone sent them to me. A reminder that I was trash. A reminder that my dad leaving us wasn’t the worst thing that nearly left my mother and me living on the streets.

No. It was my sixteen-year-old self who thought my pretty green eyes and my beautiful face had the right to dream big.

It was that woman with the emerald necklace who taunted me to try it on, saying I’d look like a princess wearing it, only to turn around and accuse me of theft.

Even to this day, I scorned my eyes and their reflection in the mirror because it reminded me of that necklace.

Well, fuck her. She had no control over me anymore. I should have thrown those pictures away, but now and then, I used them to remind myself not to get too complacent. To know my place in society. That I could be successful as long as I was realistic about the limitations of my position.

Tonight, I was going out for me, and I was going full-out glam. It took a while to give myself a blowout. I wore a flowy black dress that hit mid-thigh and pulled on my thigh-high boots which were too pricy to use but once or twice every season. Another reason to put them on.

Ginger appeared behind me.

“Oh, you’re back?” I sassed her. She’d been gone for two days to God knew where, probably bugging another neighbor since the premium cat food Dom bought ran out. “Well, I’m going out. You’re on your own tonight.”

She made a tiny chirping sound. “Oh, is that approval?”

Another tiny meow.

I breathed in a laugh. “You’re pushing me out the door? Was I looking so pathetic and that’s why you abandoned me?”

“Meow.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “I was busy, too. You know he’s the boss of a big organization and he’s probably swamped.”