Page 86 of Bought

Fucking asshole bastard.

I stormed upstairs to his bedroom and went over to the dresser. I had no clothes and even though part of me wanted to stomp out of his house entirely naked, I had some common sense. So, I grabbed a T-shirt and some sweatpants, rolling up the bottoms of them, and then I took my purse and my cloak, and I left.

I had nowhere to go except Jay’s so I called an Uber because I’d be damned if I walked there. And then I sat in the back as we drove, tears streaming down my face.

I’d had no choice, but to walk away from him, because what else was there for me? He hadn’t been wrong about a couple of days. It wouldn’t have made things better to stay. It would have only made things worse, and anyway, as I’d faced him and called him out on his bullshit, one thing was clear to me.

I wasn’t going to wait around taking whatever he’d give me, not anymore.

I could have told him that I didn’t want more, that I’d take whatever he offered, whatever that was. But I wasn’t going to.

I’d never fought my father. I took whatever he’d given me and then, when I couldn’t take any more, I’d run out that door. I’d never fought my mother, either, when she’d left me. I’d let her go without even a protest. Even with Donny I hadn’t fought. I’d taken whatever he doled out to me, and I’d told myself I didn’t have a choice.

But I did have a choice. I didn’t have to take whatever I was given. I could want more. I could fight for more and I had. I’d fucking fought. And when I’d walked out, it hadn’t been because I was afraid.

It was because I wasn’t going to take scraps from anyone ever again.

Fuck Tennyson Fox and his cowardice. If he wouldn’t change his mind about me, then he didn’t deserve me.

Are you sure about that?

Well, that was the real question, wasn’t it? If I was honest with myself, deep down I’d always thought that there was something in me that made my father hate me and my mother walk out. Something that made me unlovable and not worth the trouble of caring about. But…. Fox had taught me otherwise. He’d told me I was special, that I was beautiful. That I was brave and smart, strong.

He’d told me that I was worth something.

So why would I settle now? Why wouldn’t I hold out for something better?

I wouldn’t find better than him, I knew that deep in my bones, but if he wouldn’t give me what I wanted then I’d have to find it somewhere else.

The city passed by out the windows of the car and the tears kept on coming. But I wasn’t going to break.

I had my self-respect and I had Santorini and that would have to be enough.

34

Tennyson

I sat in my office trying to concentrate on the meeting I was having with Atlas — we were trying to find a solution to the Hamilton situation — and failing.

There was a familiar pain in my chest, a familiar sense of loss.

I felt the way I had after Juliana had died, which was ludicrous, because Zara hadn’t died. She’d only walked out, and that’s exactly what I’d wanted her to do. There was no reason to feel as if a part of me was missing, none.

Ending our brief affair had been the right thing to do, the only thing to do. She loved me, but I had nothing to give her, nothing at all. Perhaps if I’d been younger, if I hadn’t had Juliana in my past, and Sir George, if I hadn’t had a child so young….

But I had all those things. They were part of me, and I couldn’t excise them. They’d all taken pieces of me and now I had nothing left to give anyone let alone a twenty-three-year-old girl who was just starting out in life.

She needed a man with an unstained, untainted heart, not mine. In pieces and torn over the years, worn down into nothing. A man with a devil inside him, who ruined everything he touched.

Perhaps she’d meet someone in Greece, a good man who would give her the love she deserved…

“You look like you want to murder someone,” Atlas observed.

He was lounging on the couch in my office, opposite me, staring at me with an amused look on his face.

I shook off the murderous rage at the thought of Zara being with another man and dragged the devil back into its cage. “Been there, done that,” I said coolly. “Do you have any other ideas about how to address the Hamilton issue?”

He ignored me, tilting his head as he continued to stare at me “What’s got you so wound up? Is it that little virgin?”