Scorned (From the Inside Out #1) Read Online Free

takes the hit and I roll away from her, taking it out on her by giving the cold shoulder, by making her feel she’s done me wrong. I feel rejected. Excuses, I know, but it’s how I start distancing myself, preparing for what’s coming.
    She rubs my back lovingly and apologizes. The tension eases in my body, but my head holds tight. I slip out from her reach with a groan and pretend to fall asleep.
    That’s the first time I hear her cry because of me, because of the way I’m hurting her. It’s soft and quiet but her pain is apparent. We’ve never gone to bed angry and we didn’t tonight, but somehow in the night, I managed to hurt her and now here we are.
    I hate myself. I hate what I’m becoming and yet it’s like I have to go after it with full intention. I’m going to break her heart… on purpose and that breaks mine.
     
    I pick at the sandwich in front of me but I’m not hungry. I don’t want food. I want coffee, with her, at the coffee shop. The run-in was a fluke, seeing her there—a planned accident, if I told the truth.
    I was shocked as hell to find out she kept the apartment. I took a chance and ventured over to the part of the city that still feels like home, even though it hasn’t been in three years. I wasn’t aware of the date when I woke up this morning. That was just coincidence, but after seeing her two nights earlier, well, who I thought was her, I had to verify with my own eyes.
    When I googled her, it brought me back to the old apartment. I showed up early because she was always a morning person. I am too now, but I used to be more of a night owl. Today, I got there early and waited, like a stalker. Man, I’m fucked up. I waited knowing how fucked up what I was doing really was, but I couldn’t get her off my mind. Now, like then, I can’t sleep, but for very different reasons these days…
     
    I can’t sleep because of the guilt I carry. I watch Juliette instead. There’s just enough light from the bathroom for me to see her face. She has this nightlight that she leaves on in there. She said it made her feel safe at night. I teased her because I didn’t understand and thought nightlights were childish. But now I hope she finds comfort in it. Comfort I can’t seem to give her anymore. Comfort she’s going to need if I keep going in the direction I’m going.
    I carefully slide my head onto her pillow and press my nose down so I can smell her hair and her skin. I love her scent. It’s inviting, drawing me near, and gives me security.
    I’ll miss that.
    I’ll miss her, though I know she won’t believe me in the aftermath .
     
    Biggest mistake I ever made was leaving her. Three years later, I’ve paid a price for that decision. Now I’m paying the debt, chipping away at it little by little as I watch her during an early morning stakeout. She came out of her apartment, and from behind sunglasses I watch, from the safety inside of a small grocer’s window. She doesn’t see me, but I see her. She is nothing less than stunning but she doesn’t look happy, her mouth never deviating from a straight line as she walks down the street.
    I miss the neighborhood, the apartment we shared, that coffee shop, the grocer, her… us together. I lost myself the day I walked out of our apartment the last time. It was the opposite back then. I thought I had found myself. I finally had what I thought I wanted—a shortcut to success. I quickly discovered that success comes with a price and I had to pay up.
    I took a leap of faith, put everything into storage except my best suits—I had two—and knocked on Hillary’s door.
    It started out as harmless flirtations in the office, but it grew into something more on New Year’s. She lit a fire in me that I hadn’t felt… I hadn’t felt since I first met Juliette. She made me feel good, like the world was ours to conquer if I’d just accept some fake destiny she laid out before me.
    Hillary was a predator and I was her prey, weak to temptation.