Page 161 of Sinful Desires
Not for the spotlight, or the headlines, or the chaos that followed her name.
But for the girl beneath it.
The broken, furious, wild thing clawing to survive.
I was in love with her.
Irrevocably.Completely.
Not with the global icon, but with Scarlett Stella Harper Lazzio.
The woman. The wound. The storm.
And I would burn through every version of her fame just to have the one no one else ever tried to keep.
Last night, when recognition had finally hit, when she’d realized who I was and what I had been, she’d run. Her breath had shattered down the hall, sobs tearing through the walls. She’d shut herself in her bedroom.
I hadn’t fucking slept.
Couldn’t.
I’d lain there, staring at the ceiling, listening to her unravel everything she thought she knew. Every memory she’d thought belonged to her alone, now rotten with the truth of me.
She’d spent hours alone on the beach, letting the ocean gnaw at whatever pieces of me still haunted her.
I had watched from the upstairs window, tracking the shape of her shoulders as the light shifted and the tide crept closer.
When the sun grew sharp enough to burn her, I’d walked down and left everything she needed without a word. An umbrella, sunscreen, a salmon cream-cheese bagel, nearly identical to the one she’d been ordering at least three times aweek from Bagel & Jo for years. Because even across an ocean, I knew she’d miss the comfort of small routines.
And her favorite apple juice she always drank then left half finished on the counter.
She hadn’t looked at me.
Just whispered a thank you so soft it barely made it past her lips, and I turned away before the sound could wreck me.
She needed space. I gave her mine.
But while she sat in the sand, I’d slowly died.
She hadn’t gotten it yet. What it meant to be mine. What it had cost me to stay in her shadow all these years—watching, waiting, needing her to remember me.
An unfamiliar feeling crawled up my throat.
Fear.
I was fuckingterrifiedof losing her.
Petrified she’d walk away now, leaving me in the wreckage she’d once softened.
Over my fucking dead body.
I would tear the world apart to keep her. Break bone. Swallow blood. Strip myself raw until she understood that if I couldn’t be hers, I would rather do the thing I was supposed to do the night I’d met her.
Take my own life.
Because I couldn’t survive her choosing anything but me.
I’d told her I loved her. She hadn’t said it back. And somehow, that silence weighed less than the fear clawing through my chest.
