Page 13 of Worship

Shivers tumble down my spine, and I can’t look at him in the eye, not even as he says, “Follow me.”

Taking a deep breath, I reluctantly get up and follow him. We go into another room—a private office with the same color scheme as outside. Fire burns logs in the fireplace; the flames angry and bright, casting an orange glow against the walls. “Take a seat.” I eye the only seat I can take opposite his desk.

My heart jumps to my throat when the door closes behind me. Milton moves around me. He unbuttons his jacket and takes a seat behind the desk once he’s in view. As his body leans back in his chair, moody eyes watch me like never before. Not when he was in the club. Not even yesterday when he came to my room.

“I insist you sit unless you want me to force you. It’s up to you.” Knowing he’d do just that, I move over to the chair and sit on the edge. A few moments of silence pass until finally, he says, “I was just finishing reading through your recent report.” He opens my file that’s on the desk in front of him and shuffles through the papers. “Shall I read it to you?”

“I don’t care.”

Standing with the folder in hand, he moves around the table slowly. “Heidi refuses to talk about what happened.” Eyes pin me with a curious stare. “And what is it that happened?”

“This is getting boring, Milton,” I say with clenched teeth. It’s in my file. Why is he making me say it?

“Tell me.”

I squeeze the leather seat with my fingers. “I took tablets for a headache.”

“How many?”

My nails puncture through, hating that he’s doing this. “Until the pain went away. Do you want an exact number?”

Hiding his smile, his gaze drops back to the file. “Heidi deflects from issues that are discussed, tending to blame everyone but herself. Attention limited. Little to no regard for anyone else’s feelings and is considerably detached from her own. Lies continuously about bad things that have happened to her.” He pauses, glancing at me over the pages. “Now, that’s something I can agree with.”

My heart almost fails right then, and I’m rendered speechless.He knows what you did to him.But he doesn’t know why he—

“She has no ambitions, dreams, or goals outside of the facility. Refuses to participate in the activities provided. Long bouts of depression. Bad social skills and a lurid sense of the world around her—”

He slaps the file closed, and just as I think he’s about to address what’s in it, he turns his back to me and throws the entire thing into the fire.

The pages catch and burn, and I swallow hard. “Is that supposed to make me feel something?”

“Does it?” Turning back to face me, his eyes lower to my body, something that makes me uncomfortable because I know what I must look like—a terrible mess.

“How are you here?” I whisper, emotion welling in my throat.

Moving forward, he’s stops right in front of me. “Stand up.”

“What will you do if I don’t?” I challenge, and there it is, the slightest flash of something in his eyes that look so fucking black in the firelight, showing me just a hint of the person I knew.

His chest rises and falls in a silent sigh. “Something you won’t like.”

“Go ahead. You don’t scare me,” I snarl. “Nothing you do will be any different to what I’ve already been through.”

Grabbing my arm, he roughly pulls me off the chair and out of the office. Pushing open a different door, we’re suddenly outside and in a private parking lot. He marches me in the direction of a sleek black car. Rain spits at me, and my body shivers from the cold.

“No!” I dig my heels into the ground and pull against him. It only makes him tighten his grip. “You’re not taking me back. I’ll fucking kill myself before you do!”

He slams me up against the side of the car, hard enough to make my spine cry in protest. Water seeps through my clothes and chills my skin. “I’mtakingyou to dinner.”

“Do you think I’m buying that?”

“Actually, I am.” I shiver when his eyes rake down my body once again. It’s not sexual. He doesn’t desire me. If anything, he looks disgusted, which bothers me more than I like. “If you don’t get in the car, Iwillput you in myself, and we really don’t want that now, do we?”

Not wanting him to touch me, I open the door and get in. Once I’ve settled over the leather seat, he backs up and slams my door in my face. My teeth chatter as he gets in next to me, and while my instincts scream to run, my legs are like lead and won’t move, knowing what this man is capable of.

He fires up the engine, but before pulling away, he locks gazes with me. Since I arrived at Stonehill, people haven’t looked at me in the eye. It wasn’t long until I realized it was because they don’twantto see me.

Milton sees me, staring at me with eyes I once couldn’t get out of my head.Still can’t. He thinks he has me all figured out, but I’ll have to show him that he doesn’t. “Are you going to behave?” he asks.

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