Page 50 of What You left in Me

If there’s a war for her, it won’t be fair and it won’t be fought in the pursuit of the goodness she’s been raised to emulate.

Either way, she will be mine. Only mine.

Chapter 16 – Ariane – The Unknown Man

I have decided the hospital waiting room is designed by someone who hates humans. The chairs are the exact shade of punishment, the vending machine is an optimistic liar, and the TV in the corner plays a soap opera with the volume low enough to be maddening. A toddler keeps smacking their juice box like it owes them money.

I’m on my third paper cup of water because I won’t let myself get another cup of the liquid tar that the cafeteria calls coffee. That sludge wouldn’t pass FDA approval, I just know it.

“Ms. Vale?” a volunteer in a mauve vest chirps at me like we’re old friends. “Your mother’s labs are in. Doctor Ames will be right out.”

Eleanor is not my “mother” today; she is Her Majesty of Elevated Blood Pressure, ruling from the gurney behind Door Three with a thin bracelet and a lethal attitude. She had a dizzy spell before breakfast, went pale in a way that scared even me, and now here we are.

The initial tests looked fine. More tests are happening because hospitals collect tests like grandmothers collect antique spoons.

Julian is sitting next to me, perfect posture, perfect suit, perfectly bored. He checks his watch, vintage, inherited, probably wound by angels, for the millionth time, and then checks me like he’s calculating which expression will make this photo-op look best if there happened to be cameras. There aren’t, which I think disappoints him.

“How are you holding up?” he asks.

“I’m great,” I say wryly. “I love fluorescent lighting. It brings out my best undertones: late-night existential crisis.”

He huffs a laugh, unfazed by my sour mood. “You could go home?” he suggests, always willing to fall on a sword for me. “I can wait for the doctor.”

“No,” I say. “If I leave, she’ll tell everyone I abandoned her at death’s door. Then live to repeat the story for twenty years out of spite.”

Another almost-laugh.

He reaches for my hand and I let him take it, even though the guilt is eating me alive. His palm is smooth and dry and impersonal. Like a conference handshake you don’t remember an hour later. I don’t pull away. I don’t lean in. I breathe, count to five, and try to locate the particular flavor of self-loathing that’s been sitting under my ribs since last night.

Finn’s mouth. His hands. His face. His dick. His perfect dick. That’s the problem. Well, one of them. Kiss number two was last night, and my body is still writing sonnets about it while my conscience tries to light them on fire. But it wasn’t only a kiss. It was so much more that that… I can see it in flashes. His mouth sucking my nipples. My hands holding onto the railing for dear life because I didn’t want to make a sound. My hands around his dick. His dick throbbing inside me. The sound he made when I made him come, the feeling of him flooding me with his seed.

It was stupid and selfish and so good it broke all the careful locks I’d built. The only reassurance I have is that I tried to stop him. I wasn’t planning on having sex with him, but he took me my force.

Right?

It’s not like you protested though… you were dripping for him, your pussy ready to be filled.

Fuck. This has to stop.

It won’t,my traitorous brain whispers, and I tell it to shut up because I am a grown woman with a fiancé who buys me tasteful jewelry and says the right things at the right times. Cheating is not my thing. It can’t be. Especially not with my stepbrother. What the actual hell is wrong with me?

I don’t even notice I’ve zoned out until I’m tuning in to find Julian in the middle of his sentence: “—be back by Thursday, sweetheart. Maybe Wednesday if the board behaves.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry I can’t stay longer. The flight’s at nine.”

“Tonight?” I make my surprise sound small, a polite bump in the road.

“Tonight,” he says, and leans in, lips graze my temple like a stamp of propriety. “I’ll miss you.”

I arrange my face into the correct reply and hope it holds. “I’ll miss you too.” The words taste like poison in my mouth. “It’s just a few days.”

“A few days,” he agrees. “And I’ll call. Every night.”

I nod, which is safe.

I don’t say: please don’t. Stop being such a picture perfect partner.

I don’t say: every night is the problem.

I don’t say: I let a man do things to me you’d be horrified to even think of. The worst part is I’m barely sorry and also very sorry and okay I might be broken.