Page 16 of Playing with Fyre

Too strong.

Too tempting.

They give her peace, but she sleeps like the fucking dead when she’s taken them. Dangerous. She never even knew I came to visit her. Even when her eyes flickered open and she saw me standing by her bed, there was no recognition in her eyes.

Even when I slid my hands under the covers, she didn’t—couldn’t—resist. I didn’t dare penetrate her back then—but she’d moan when I touched her tits and when I stroked her pussy through her underwear. Those sounds were the only thing that kept me going. They helped me endure the torture of seeing her in my class and not being able to touch her. Not being allowed to kiss her.

But it all became too much. When she crossed that line and kissed me the other day, the dam broke. There was no stopping the tsunami of my passion for her.

Love.

For the first time in my life, I understood.

Even now, staring down at her comatose body, her pale, puke-streaked face…I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.

“I love you, Charlotte,” I murmur, wiping a strand of hair from her face. “I love you more than you’ll ever know. And I need you in my life. Now, forever.” A fond smile curls up the corners of my mouth. “You don’t have to be scared anymore. I’ll take care of you.”

Now.

Forever.

Chapter Eleven

Charlotte

Professor Fyre looks so handsome today. He’s wearing a tan blazer that brings out his olive skin and dark hair, and every time he smiles, he flashes his perfect teeth at me.

Okay, not just at me.

A pang of jealousy hits me at the thought I’m sharing Fyre’s adoration with Fredericka or Graham.

But I’m a big girl.

I can handle it.

There’s a lot of shit I can handle these days. Maybe my suicide attempt reset my brain or something.

That phantom pain is gone, the one where my womb used to be. That more than anything convinces me that I had a life-changing moment.

My mouth shifts to the side as Fyre beams at Fredericka’s project. He crouches beside her chair just like he did with me a few weeks ago, nodding enthusiastically as she explains the deep meaning in her play-dough creation.

The dreams have stopped.

I’m wondering if they were caused by those pills I took every night. I’d lost the bottle sometime between downing half its contents and waking up freshly scrubbed in my bed a day later, but one morning they turned up on the kitchen counter.

I think I have a guardian angel.

What else could explain how clean my apartment was when I woke up from my Zoloft-induced coma? I remember getting sick multiple times—on my bed, on the floor—as I crawled toward the bathroom.

I thought it was over, then. I was in agony. Miserable. It had to be the end.

But it wasn’t.

I lost consciousness and woke up to a new world. I thought it might have been Mrs. Crawford from next door. That she might have snapped out of her feline obsession long enough to notice I wasn’t doing well. Maybe she was the one who found me, who cleaned me up, who tidied my house.

But that doesn’t explain the fresh peonies I wake up to every morning. Someone leaves them in a vase on the kitchen table right next to a takeaway coffee and a fresh pastry. My fridge was cleaned out. Healthy ready-made meals fill the small freezer. Fresh fruit and vegetables on the shelves.

I was groggy and totally out of it that first day, and the next, and the next. But now it’s like a switch has been turned on. Color suffuses what used to be a drab, gray world. And my house constantly smells like peonies.

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