Page 37 of Love Without Control

Holding my eyelid with the fingers of my other hand, I edged the contact lens toward my cornea. It seemed to triple in size the closer it got, and I let out a whimpered, “Shit,” before pulling my hand back. “Sorry, Jamie.”

A dark presence seemed to invade the space a second before I heard a deep voice ask, “What’s going on?”

“Evie’s just having trouble getting her contacts in,” Jamie explained to Damiano, and my face flushed with embarrassment. Why the hell was this so hard? Millions of people wore contact lenses every day.

“Turn around,” he demanded, and my stupid body did what he asked without my permission. Taking the lens from me, he rinsed it off with the small bottle of solution sitting on the counter before arranging the devilish piece of silicone hydrogel on his index finger. “Open wide, Evie.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

In answer, he placed a large hand on top of my head and tilted my chin up. “Putting this in for you. My brother started wearing contacts when he was sixteen, and he acted like a little pussy.” Then he added with a smirk, “Just like you.”

My eyelids popped open wide in shock and anger, but before I could come up with a snarky retort, he stuck the lens in my eye.

“Aghhhh!” I shrieked, his low laughter providing a background to my distress. “You… you…”

“How does it feel?” he asked, completely unaffected by my irritation. I blinked rapidly about a thousand times, surprised when it felt… normal.

“It’s okay,” I admitted reluctantly.

He pointed at the white case sitting on the counter. “Now do the other one, or I’m going to do it for you.” His smugness pissed me off, and I swiveled around, completely motivated by stubbornness now.

I got the lens on my cornea on the second try.

“Good girl,” he said, stroking a hand over the top of my head before strolling casually back into his bedroom.

His touch and parting words roused an unwelcome feeling in my throat, but I swallowed it down and mumbled, “Asshole,” as I looked over at Jamie. She was covering her mouth with her fist, but I could see the smile hiding behind it.

“They look good. What do you think?” she asked, gesturing to the mirror.

At first glance, I was startled. The blue eyes I’d seen in the mirror for over eighteen years were gone, replaced by brown ones. Tilting my head from side to side, I said, “I don’t hate them. They look very natural. It’s just different.”

“That’s the point,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “Now let’s get Robert to work his magic on your hair.”

“Can we talk about the money?” Robert asked as his hands worked in my hair.

“What money?” I asked, purposely not looking at the strands of my caramel hair falling to the floor.

“Uh, the almost seven million in cash that’s currently sitting in there,” he replied, tilting his head toward the house. We were in the small building behind his house that he used as a makeshift salon.

“Oh, well, I don’t really know much about it besides the fact that asshole Luca was going to buy me with it.”

“Yeah, but since it’s yours now, I was—”

“It’s not mine,” I argued, and Robert’s hand stilled before he set his scissors down and rested his hands on his knees, bringing himself to my eye level.

“Damiano said he was giving it to you.” I stared blankly at him, and his eyebrows pressed together in confusion. “He said he planned to give the cash to you when he dropped you off with your family. He didn’t tell you that?”

My heart rose up into my throat.What the hell?

“No,” I told him, swallowing hard to try and clear my windpipe. “Why?”

“He thought you and your family could use it.” A chagrined smile quirked his mouth up on one side. “Of course, at the time, he didn’t realize who you were and that you probably have more cash than that in your couch cushions.”

“W-why wouldn’t he just give it back to his father when he went back home?”

Robert shook his head, looking slightly amused. “He wasn’t going back, Evie. He was going to take you home and then scram.”

“Scram?”

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