I pull myself together and go home. It isn’t lost on me that Greyson didn’t delete the video—so now he has another thing to hang over my head. My lips are swollen and chapped, and my throat hurts. My eyes sting.
I don’t know how to feel. My emotions are all over the place, and it takes the whole walk home to wrangle some control over myself. I sniffle and swipe the back of my hand under my nose, collecting snot and tears.
Ugh.
When did I become this person?
My phone vibrates.
MOM
Got a call from Mia Germain. She wants to talk to you.
Then her contact information below it. A phone number sits glaringly in the gray text bubble. Ignoring the fact that my mom is texting me—something strange all in itself—my heart does a funny skip at what she said.
Mia Germain is the director of the Crown Point Ballet, the company I danced with up until my injury. I had left rather suddenly, of course, after my broken leg led to ongoing nerve pain complications.
I had to give up my spot as the lead for Swan Lake .
I had just been home for the weekend, visiting my mother, when Greyson hit me. Stupid twist of fate and bad fucking timing.
I contemplate reaching out to Mia now, but it’s approaching midnight on a Friday. I’m not sure why my mother is awake, unless she’s just getting in from a night out herself. I sigh and unlock my apartment door. It’s silent and dark, an indication that Willow isn’t home yet. And who knows if she’ll be home tonight with the way Knox was looking at her.
Besides, I don’t want to get my hopes up that Mia would have some solution to my impossible problem. Something that would give me back the months that I wasted eating real food for the first time in my life, putting on more than just muscle. I’m what most people would consider healthy, but in the ballet world? I’m far away from the size I maintained.
That hurts to admit. That I didn’t develop a healthier relationship with food until I started going to therapy—not just physical but talk. And a nutritionist was added to my team, coming to chat with me while I worked on flexibility and strength training with the physical therapist.
There are limits to how far we can push the human body.
I let out a sigh and drop my phone on the nightstand, then strip out of my clothes. I toss them in the hamper and pull on an oversized shirt. In the dark, I go into my bathroom and flick the light on. I don’t want to see my reflection, but I force myself to look. To take in the black and blue streaks down my cheeks and mouth. My bloodshot, stinging eyes. My lips are swollen. My hair, even, is a mess. First Steele gripping it, using me the way he wanted, and then Greyson.
A shudder works its way up my spine, and my stomach churns. I’m going to puke.
I lunge for the toilet and barely make it in time. I fall to my knees and vomit, sour bile burning my throat and mouth. When my stomach finally stops rolling and my throat stops convulsing, I sit back on my heels.
I let two guys fuck my mouth, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself for giving in to Greyson like that. The more he pushes, the more I want to stab his eyes out—but in that, I caved.
He’s learning how to manipulate me.
I turn on the shower, the skin-crawling feeling kicking up.
It seems to be coming in waves, like flashbacks of what just happened in the locker room.
And his words.
The expression on his face.
He was a man possessed…
And I have a feeling it’s my fault. Somehow, I intrigue him. I caught the attention of whatever demons lurk under Greyson’s skin.
I step under the cool water and tip my head back. I can’t do hot. Not when I’m burning from the inside out. I brush my teeth and rinse out my mouth until I have no evidence of my physical reaction to my horror. I spit and dunk my face under the stream. And then I scrub. My face, the makeup coming off on my washcloth, my neck, my chest. Every inch of my skin, leaving it pink and tingling.
Finally, I feel a little bit more human. I dry off and slip back into the shirt, then go into my room.
I stop dead.
Someone stands in the middle of my room.
Tall. Black outfit. Hood. Mask.
Good guys don’t wear masks.
I open my mouth to scream, and the guy rushes past me. He’s around the corner and down the hall before I can so much as let out a peep, and my fucking instinct is to chase after him. I make it two steps before I realize what a dumb idea that is, and I skid to a stop.
But I do make sure he’s gone, and then I lock the door. I contemplate sliding a chair under it for good measure, but I don’t want to lock Willow out. My heart pounds, and I press my palm to my chest.
I turn on every light in the apartment and check the windows. Even in Willow’s room. Everything is locked. He must’ve come in behind me… I shiver and go back to my room. I should call Willow. Tell her to be on guard in case she comes home drunk and unaware.
Our safe neighborhood is deteriorating.
Back in my room, I hit the switch for the overhead light and scour my space. It feels colder, but maybe that’s just my imagination. I check my window, and it’s cracked.
A more violent shiver racks through me.
He came through my window.
I slam it closed and lock it, then look at the space again. It still seems untouched, but I can’t be certain. Not at a glance. My desk has always been a mess. It’s just part of my chaotic organization—papers everywhere, a splayed textbook, the chair pulled out and half-covered in almost dirty clothes.
Part of me, the part that reads thrillers and romantic suspense novels, suspects it could be Greyson trying to mess with me further. Drive me into a tailspin or closer to insanity. It would benefit him—probably for no other reason than to feel satisfaction.
I grunt and sweep everything off my desk. The books crash to the floor. My computer bounces once, the charging cable snagging. The papers are slower to float to the carpet, and they go farther. They scatter.
I go to my dresser and touch everything on it. Taking mental inventory. Baubles, trinkets, a sticky note from Willow. A lamp for when I’m feeling like the world is too bright to deal with the overhead light.
My fingers land on a little glass globe, and it reminds me of my mother. And the text she sent out of the blue.
She always left pieces of herself behind for others to find.
A scarf, an earring, a belt. Her engagement ring, once. A trail of personal breadcrumbs that always led back to her.
As a child, I would go around behind her and keep track. I’d harbor them to return to her. Like I was trying to keep her together. She would take the item after a moment of silence, staring at it like she’d never seen it before.
“Easy come, easy go,” she’d say, smiling. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
Then she’d set it down, and I’d find something else the next day.
Lipstick. A hair clip. Her phone.
I should’ve realized that easy come, easy go was a motto imprinted on her heart. She accepted things into and out of her life with the sort of grace I never understood. Friends. Men. They took up space in our apartment and in our lives until one day she’d lose them.
It was only a matter of time before she shook me loose, too.
When I became the one who felt untethered from her in a way I never had before, I began to collect the things she left. I kept them close, stored them in a box or on my nightstand. I didn’t give them back. I willed her to come in and recognize the pieces of herself that I’d saved. I wanted her to see herself in me.
The globe is one of those things. The paint has worn off, so much so that flecks of blue ocean come off on the pad of my finger. I spin it and watch chips of paint flutter down, collecting on the top of the dresser.
For the first time, I start to resent her. I want to call her and tell her that there was someone in my room, that I’m afraid to stay here. But my call would undoubtedly go to voicemail. When she doesn’t need me to rely on her, she isn’t there.
My leg was the exception.
My career would’ve been the exception.
But all good things come to an end.
The anger bubbles up out of nowhere again, and I pick up the glass globe. It fits in the palm of my hand, just big enough that it’s hard to wrap my fingers all the way around it. The stand is glass, all the pieces are delicate and ornate.
Where did she get it?
Why did she leave it behind?
I chuck it at my wall, and it doesn’t explode into shards like I expect—like I hope. All it does is separate from the stand with a tiny crack, and the world rolls under my bed.
I take a deep breath and go back to the window. There are scrape marks in the paint on the sill. Evidence that someone gouged into the wood in order to unlock it. Whoever did it could come back, and that makes me act.
I call Willow.
She answers on the third ring. The noises behind her almost drown out her voice, but she yells at me to hold on, and then the voices fade.
“Hey, where are you?”
I dig my nails into my palm. “Um, home.”
I explain the situation quickly. That I got home and took a shower, and when I came out there was someone in my room. They came in through my window. That I don’t think she should come home tonight—either that, or she should come home immediately and save me from going absolutely insane.
“Oh my god,” she gasps. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I lie.
“Oh, wait—”
“Violet?”
I grimace at the new voice. Knox, I think. I’ve never spoken to him on the phone, and it gives his voice a different quality. Willow’s in the background. Saying something to him.
“Someone broke in?”
“Yeah. I just—”
“Who the fuck would do that?” He pauses. “I’ll take care of it.”
It? What it?
Is Willow the it?
“Thanks,” I say, instead of asking the questions I want to ask. “Can I talk to Willow again?”
He grunts, and then her voice is in my ear.
“He looks mad,” she whispers, breaking off to giggle. “You good?”
“Yeah. Is… um, is Greyson there?”
If rolling eyes had a sound, that’s what would be coming through the phone right now. I can practically feel her judgment—and her curiosity. I told her what I could, but beyond admitting that he was the one who hit me and broke my leg, there’s not much I could say without incriminating her.
I still want her to be able to look him in the eye. Because if she can’t, then I’m fucked. He’s smart. He’d be able to tell why my best friend is suddenly icing him out… and then other people might pick up on it, too.
She doesn’t have a good poker face. Not enough to save either of us.
“He got here about an hour ago,” she says. “I mean, we’re at his house. So.”
My eyebrow lifts. “Oh?”
“Yep. The whole team is here celebrating their win. I thought they were going to go to Haven, but apparently that’s out for now… Change of scenery, Knox said.”
I sigh.
“Oh.” Her voice pitches lower. “Knox is talking to Greyson.”
“Stop it.”
“Well, I don’t know what he’s saying.” She breaks into more giggles—of the nervous variety. “You don’t think he’s going to send Greyson to get you, do you? That would be…”
“Terrible,” I finish. “I hope not.”
But I don’t have to worry. An hour later, it isn’t Greyson who comes to get me—it’s Steele.
