Rock bottom

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

~ Camilla

I couldn’t feel my legs at first.

The only thing I could feel was the sting of concrete pressed into my knees and the way the cold air felt too hot on my face because I couldn’t stop crying. Not cute, single-tear movie crying. Ugly, swollen-face, hiccupping-into-my-elbow crying. The kind that makes strangers look away because they don’t want to be involved.

Eventually, I pulled myself up off the sidewalk, knees trembling, mascara smudged halfway to my jawline. I looked like heartbreak on two legs.

God.

What was I even doing?

I flagged down the cab like a ghost, slid into the backseat like someone who didn’t belong anywhere anymore, and tried not to completely fall apart in front of the driver. But the moment we pulled away, the tears came again, hot and angry and so humiliating I wanted to melt into the floor of the car.

My thighs were still sticky.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically.

Sticky. Because apparently Stephano Maddens can’t keep his damn ego, o