Page 7 of Sinful Desires
“I don’t want this,” I said.
And I couldn’t even lie to myself. I wanted to stop him. I really did.
But wanting was soft. And there was no space for soft in this life.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little white bag like it was nothing. Like it didn’t hold everything I was trying not to feel.
He stepped closer, his hands resting on my shoulders. His eyes met mine in the mirror.
“Your dad’s gonna be there tonight,” he murmured. “And not even everything inside you is enough to face him without shaking. Hell, even I’m scared of Lucius Harper.”
He turned me toward him, his touch slipping away.
“You’re gonna walk out there and show him that you’re the best thing he ever invested in, and the one thing he’ll never fucking own. You’re gonna show him just how much of a superstar you are.”
Something inside me wilted.
Maybe it was the thought of my dad watching with that cold, disappointed look he always wore, waiting for me to fail. Maybe it was knowing that no matter how loudly they screamed my name, none of it would ever be loud enough to drown him out.
Maybe this was the only way to shut it all off.
He crossed the room and poured the bag onto the glass table. The way he did it, like routine, like muscle memory, made my stomach knot.
The card swiped across the surface, then he looked at me with a soft smile.
My voice barely came out. “Show me how, Luke.”
Chapter
Three
“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”
?Salvador Dali
Scarlett
22 years old
Four years ago
My head pounded like a war drum, sweat slick on my skin, my sheets twisted around me like a straitjacket.
“Scarlett,sveglia, dai!”
I groaned and shoved the pillow over my face as though it could smother her voice out of existence. “Go away!”
I wanted to kick off the covers, but there was no way I was letting my mother see me naked.
Suddenly, a flood of sunlight exploded across the room, searing my eyes like divine punishment. She’d yanked the damn blinds open.
I shrieked. “Mom! What the hell?”
“It’s past noon,dolcezza. I don’t care how famous you are, you’re still my daughter. Get up and meet me in that demon-infested, cult-looking red living room of yours.Adesso!” She strutted out, heels pounding like a countdown to my doom.
I groaned once more into the pillow before flinging it aside and dragging myself to the shower like a resentful cryptid.
It’d been exactly one week since the whirlwind had ended. The good news? Everything I was supposed to do was done.
