Page 54 of Meet Me in the Dark: The Complete Series

Chapter 12

Two days. That's how long Law lets me ignore him. How long he lets me reject his calls and not respond to his texts. How long he waits until he's at my door. Fitting that he's here on a Saturday.

"Sophie, open the door right now," he repeats.

"Fuck off, liar!" I shout back.

He'd knocked politely at first, asking me to let him in, so we could talk. When I'd refused, he'd said he wasn't going to leave until I'd spoken to him. It only took five minutes to get to where we are now, with him pounding on the door, demanding I open it. My answer is still the same.

"If you don't open this door right now, I swear to you, I'll break it down."

"Just go home. Or better yet, go to the hospital, asshole. You know, the one you own."

I hear a curse through the door before he starts beating on it so hard, the pictures on the walls begin to shake.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I scream.

He just continues pounding on the door, to the point that I begin to wonder if the wood will splinter, if he'll actually break it down. I march toward the door and rip it open. His fist in mid-air, his chest heaving, eyes having the fucking nerve to be glaring at me.

"Get the fuck away from here!" I yell in his face.

He pushes past me, grips the door and shoves it closed before crowding me. I will not back down. But God damn it, I curse my body for getting turned on by the intensity in his eyes, by how close he is to me, by his scent enveloping me as he takes another step closer.

"You will fucking hear what I have to say," he begins. "You think you fucking know everything, but you don't."

"I know enough to never want to see you again."

"You think I could have just excused your sister's bills, her surgery. I fucking did." I open my mouth, and his hand goes to my throat.

Fuck the heat that rushes to my pussy at his controlling touch.

"Every single penny you gave to the hospital, I took out of my own account and put it into one that's waiting for you."

I swallow against his hand. "Liar."

He brings his face closer to mine. "Every. Single. Penny."

"Then why?" I croak. "Why do all of this?"

"Because I watched you, for days, for weeks on the God damn cameras. Crying in the fucking hallways, arguing with doctors. I watched this strong woman who refused to be told no, who refused to give up, and I became entranced with her. Shit, obsessed with her. But she wouldn't notice me. Not when I tried to speak to her. Not when I sat a few tables away from her in the cafeteria and tried to get her attention. I even came to your shitty fucking job and got waited on by you, and still nothing. And I couldn't fucking figure out why I couldn't get you out of my mind. Why all I could think about were your curves, about having your body under me. About hearing what your moans and gasps sounded like. What your hands would feel like on me. What it would feel like to be inside of you."

He begins walking me backwards now, and my feet follow, even as I tell them not to, they go with him while he continues talking.

"So, yeah, when I'd had enough of only being with you in my imagination, and I saw you going to that elevator that I'd seen you walking into so many times, I told the fucking security guyto make that fucking elevator stall for ten minutes. Because honestly-"

I scoff. "The fuck do you know about honesty?"

"Honestly," he repeats, hand tightening on my throat and back thudding against the wall, "I thought if I could get you alone, say all the right things and just get you to meet me once, then I could fuck you out of my system. Get inside your body to get you out of my fucking mind. Or, at the very least, figure out what it was about you that made it so hard to forget about you. But then, I spoke to you, finally, and I knew in that moment that once wouldn't be enough."

"You did all that to fuck me?"

"At first, yes. I offered you the money, always knowing I would just give it back. But I wanted you in a situation where you couldn't say no. Where you'd for sure show up to the hotel."

"Do you hear how crazy you sound?"

"It didn't seem so crazy at the time. And it doesn't now. Not after everything we've shared."

"We haven't shared anything," I grit out.

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