Too Late To Want Me Back

ADRIENNE

The first time my supposed ‘fiancé’, Eddie Quinn touched me in all of the three years we were together, it felt like punishment.

That realization hit me long before his hands ever did.

The night ended like every other night. The water rushed over me, hot and unforgiving, and for a few minutes, I let myself pretend it could wash away more than just the day.

Three years of this. Three years of standing beneath a spray that never quite got warm enough, in a penthouse that never felt like home, waiting for a man who never looked at me twice.

The bathroom filled with steam, soft white clouds wrapping around my silhouette and blurring the world beyond the glass into nothing. Here, I could almost forget. Forget that I was Adrienne Hanson, the invisible fiancée.

I turned off the water and reached for a towel just as –

“Click.”

The sound of the door unlocking reached my ears, followed immediately by the door swinging open.

My heart stopped.

I spun around, clutching the towel to my chest as the steam slowly retreated, revealing the figure standing in the doorway.

Eddie?

I was sure my confusion was written all over my face. Why was he here? Eddie Quinn, my fiancé of three years, stood in the bathroom doorway like he owned it – which he technically did.

He owned everything. The penthouse. The company. Almost the entire city. Everything except me – and even that had been a transaction, a merger of families, a business arrangement signed and sealed before I ever had the chance to say no.

But I said yes anyway.

I’d said yes because, for one glittering night at a charity gala, he had danced with me, smiled at me, and made me believe in fairy tales.

That felt like a lifetime ago.

Now his handsome face was cold, his eyes like frozen lakes fixed on me with an unreadable expression. Not desire. Maybe anger. So much anger that it made my skin prickle.

I tightened my grip on the towel and took a small step backward, sighing when my back hit the wash basin.

“Eddie? What are you –”

He stepped inside and closed the door.

I bit down hard on my bottom lip as my heart raced. My eyes darted around the room, searching for somewhere to hide from whatever this was. I found nothing.

“Eddie, I’m not dressed. I –”

He crossed the distance between us in three strides and grabbed my wrist.

Before I could process what was happening, he spun me around and slammed me against the marble countertop. The edge bit painfully into my lower back, and I gasped as he yanked the towel away.

“Eddie, stop –”

His hand clamped over my mouth. In the mirror, I could see both of us – him fully dressed, me naked and pinned beneath him. The image was so stark, so wrong, that for a moment I thought I had to be dreaming.

“You want my attention so badly?” His voice was low and cruel, nothing like the man who had once danced with me. “Here it is.”

“What are you doing?” I managed against his palm, my words muffled and shaky.

He removed his hand but didn’t let go of me. His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“What I should have done a long time ago. You’re my fiancée, aren’t you? It’s time you started acting like it.”

My blood ran cold.

“Not like this. Please, Eddie, not like this.”

“Please?” He laughed, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. “Now you remember how to beg? After three years of playing the wounded fiancée and running to my grandfather every time I didn’t give you enough attention?”

I hadn’t run to anyone.

I had smiled through every slight, every insult, every receipt for jewelry I never received. I had nodded politely whenever Lydia Warren’s name came up in conversation and pretended not to notice the way Eddie’s voice softened during late-night phone calls.

His grandfather. Old Mr. Quinn.

That was the only reason Eddie was here, I realized. His grandfather had probably said something at dinner, reminding him that the engagement was a public relations asset, that we needed to appear more united at events.

And this was Eddie’s solution.

Not kindness. Not an effort to become a better man or treat me the way he should have.

This.

“Let me go,” I said through gritted teeth, struggling to suppress my anger.

He didn’t.

Instead, his grip tightened until pain shot up my arm. I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to cry out. He wanted tears? He’d waited three years to get them. He could wait longer.

“After tonight,” he murmured, leaning close to my ear, “you’ll stop complaining. You’ll remember your place.”

I stopped struggling as soon as the words touched my ears.

The fight simply drained out of me like water slipping from a cracked glass. What was the point? Three years of loving this man. Three years of hoping. Three years of shrinking myself to fit into whatever tiny spaces he allowed me.

And this was the moment he finally touched me.

Not with tenderness. Not even with desire.

But with punishment.

My stillness seemed to catch him off guard. For a fraction of a second, something flickered in those cold eyes. Confusion, maybe. Or the ghost of whatever humanity he had buried so deep I had stopped believing it existed.

Then it disappeared.

He took what he wanted then. Used me how he pleased to his satisfaction. When it was over, I lay curled on the cold floor, my body aching violently against the marble beneath me. I tried not to look at the blood staining the tiles between my thighs.

Eddie stepped into the shower without sparing me a glance. I heard the water run and listened in silence as he washed himself clean.

Minutes later, he emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist and walked right past me.

I was invisible again.

It took me a long time to stand. My muscles protested with every movement, and something deep inside me throbbed painfully with each heartbeat. Still, I forced myself upright. Forced myself beneath the shower. Forced myself to scrub at my skin until it turned pink and raw.

I was standing in front of the mirror, examining the bruises blooming across my body, when I realized Eddie hadn’t left.

He sat at the edge of the bed, fully dressed now. His long legs were crossed, his posture relaxed. But there was nothing relaxed about the way his eyes followed me as I stepped out of the bathroom.

I stopped in the doorway, clutching the towel tightly against my chest.

“Is there something else you need?” I asked coldly.

His gaze swept over every bruise already darkening my skin, every mark he had left behind. If he felt anything at all – regret, guilt, satisfaction – his expression revealed none of it.

“Lydia is returning tomorrow,” he said flatly. “You’ll need to stay somewhere else for the next few days. I’ll have my assistant arrange a hotel.”

The air left my lungs.

Lydia Warren.

His mistress was returning tomorrow.

My heart clenched painfully. Of course I knew her. How could I not? She had been the center of Eddie’s world long before I entered his life.

He rarely spoke about her in front of me, but she was always there – a shadow hanging over our relationship, one I could never escape.

Whenever Eddie traveled overseas for business, the tabloids were flooded with photographs of the two of them together. Romantic dinners. Luxury vacations. Smiles he had never once given me.

He flaunted Lydia every chance he got while hiding me like something shameful. Compared to her, I was an inconvenience – an obligation he had never wanted.

And he never cared to let me forget it.