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Chapter 62: The Calculated Spark
Last Updated:
2025-06-27 06:38:49
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Winning Her Back Chapter 74: “I don’t hate you….”
The silence that followed was total. Oppressive. I closed my eyes hard, praying I would remember, praying the tile floor would swallow me whole. What a drunken, silly demand.Then, a sound. A low, almost imperceptible sigh. Not an exasperated one this time. Something deeper. Tiredness.His voice, as he spoke, was horrorously close. He hadn't moved, but his presence was instant, overwhelming. It wasn't the frostbite fury of the entry. It was lower, coarser, scraped raw. "I don't hate you, Lila."The words hung there in the air, simple, unadorned, utterly disarming. I took a breath. I risked the very slightest incline of my head, just enough to catch sight of him in the reflection off the glass.He wasn't glaring at me. His gaze was on some point on the wall, his jaw still clenched but the fury choked back, replaced by a deep weariness and something else, something uncomfortable and sinister. His knuckles were white where he leaned against the doorframe.At other times, he continued, hi
Winning Her Back Chapter 73: The Aftermath and the Confession
Sunlight. Cold, brutal sunlight, cutting through the gap in the thick curtains right onto my face. I groaned, the sound ripping raw in my throat, and shoved my head under the pillow. All my nerve endings shrieked. My head ached as if it had been a death metal band drum, pounding away with a nauseating beat that competed with the mad heartbeat behind my eyes. My lips were dry, covered in something disgusting. The stale beer and perfume odor that clung to the sheets made my stomach do a scary flip.What had occurred?The question echoed in the hollow, aching space behind my eyes. Flashes of color, pounding bass, Naomi’s laughing face, the dizzying swirl of lights… it was all fragmented, chaotic, like shards of a broken mirror reflecting distorted scenes. The journey home was a black hole. Ethan.Panic, glacial and razor-edged, cut through the hangover haze. The final clear vision struck me: the mansion doorway wrenching open, Ethan standing in the light, his face a grotesque mask of an
Winning Her Back Chapter 72: Temporary amnesia
The drive back to the mansion was filled with a nervous energy. Naomi’s plan buzzed in my head, a counterpoint to the lingering dread. Getting ready this time felt different. I shed the armor. Out came the little black dress, I paired it with sheer tights and strappy heels that made me wobble slightly. My makeup went darker, smokier. I piled my hair up, leaving tendrils loose around my face. I looked different. Daring. Someone who might go clubbing. Someone who wasn’t Lila Blackwell, the discarded wife.As I applied a final coat of deep red lipstick, I paused, staring at my reflection. A treacherous, foolish sliver of hope flickered. *Maybe he’ll come home early. Maybe he’ll see me like this, about to leave, and.. My mind conjured the fantasy: Ethan walking in, his eyes darkening with that possessive heat I craved. Him crossing the room, pulling me close, his voice husky. ‘Where do you think you’re going, looking like that? Not without me.’ Maybe he’d kiss me, persuade me to stay, pro
Winning Her Back Chapter 71: Lila!
“Lila!” Naomi’s voice, bright and slightly breathless, crackled through the speaker. It was so jarringly normal, so alive compared to the oppressive gloom, that tears sprang to my eyes instantly. “God, Lil, I am so sorry!”“Naomi?” My voice came out rough, choked. I cleared my throat, trying to inject some semblance of cheer. “Hey! What’s wrong?”“What’s wrong is I’ve been the world’s worst sister!” she exclaimed. “Between finals kicking my ass and this insane internship that feels like indentured servitude, I swear I blinked and a month vanished. I haven’t called, I haven’t texted properly, I’m awful. Please tell me you hate me just a little bit so I can grovel properly?”The sheer, uncomplicated warmth of her guilt, her presence even through the phone, was a balm. “Don’t be silly,” I managed, forcing a lightness I didn’t feel. “It’s fine, Naomi. Really. I know how crazy it gets.” The words tasted like ash. Fine. Nothing was fine.“You’re too nice, that’s your problem,” she declared
Winning Her Back Chapter 70: The Thaw
The world outside the mansion windows was finally still. Not peaceful, perhaps, but exhausted. The raging, screaming fury of the blizzard had drained itself, and what was left was a white-hooded landscape standing untouched and rich. Flickering but true sunlight glittered on the drifts, turning them into fields of broken diamonds. The thermometer stuck by the back door read a cold but habitable fifteen degrees. The deep freeze was broken.Within, the heat seemed empty.The thaw in the world outside was a reflection of the frozen crack in these walls. Ethan had fallen back into his former self as inexorably as the snow had drifted, in silence, in entirety, and with a spine-tingling lastness. That man who had looked at me with smoldering desire across chess boards, whose fingers had etched trails of fire upon my body in the white glow of the fire, whose hands had danced the steps of seduction with a black, shivering turn, that man vanished.Replaced by a specter. A chilly, efficient spe
Winning Her Back Chapter 69: The greenhouse Confession
The icy terror Ethan had injected into the library clung to me like frostbite. His accusations about Julian, toxic, insidious, echoed through the cavernous silence, fighting with the lingering ghostly heat of his touch on my skin, the desperate hunger he'd stirred up low in my belly. I couldn't breathe in that room with him, with his accusations hanging in the air like toxic mist. I needed air, even if the air outside was a frozen nightmare.Blindly, I pushed through a door of solid oak concealed off the kitchens, a part of the house I rarely entered. The blast of heat that hit me was staggering, a tangible wall after the house's growing chill. Heat wrapped around me like a lover's arms, thick and sudden. I stumbled forward, panting, the change from icy fear to tropical suffusion leaving me momentarily dizzy.The air tasted rich and primal, wet soil, decaying leaves, and the heady, cloying sweetness of jasmine and orchids. It was thick enough to drink, coating my tongue, filling my lu
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