All Chapters of A Whole New World: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

ESSENCE My alarm dragged me out of a sleep I didn’t remember falling into. For a second, I forgot why my chest felt so heavy..... then I remembered. I sat up slowly, stretching my arms until my shoulders popped. Yawning, I glanced at the clock. Almost five in the morning, because apparently, heartbreak wakes up early. I was still surprised I’d made it home last night. After everything that had happened—the humiliation, the cold, and the fact that my family treated me like an afterthought—I’d driven home like a zombie on autopilot. And I lived to tell the tale. Sort of. It still hurt, thinking about last night. But sitting around feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get my family back. I was determined to fix it..... to fix me. I climbed out of bed, splashed water on my face to clear the fog, and headed straight for the kitchen. A while later, I had breakfast set up at the dining table. Toasted bread, eggs, sausage, fruit—served with the kind of love and hope only a wo

ESSENCE I turned and ran back to my room. I didn’t stop until I was face-down on my bed, crying my heart out.At some point, I slid down to the floor. I sat there for hours, my back against the bed, my face streaked with tears. I wasn’t just crying over what I saw, I was mourning everything. All of it. I thought back to how it started. How I met Alex. He was in a wheelchair back then. An accident had left him paralyzed, but he still showed up to support kids at the orphanage. I was there, too. I had lived a few years of my life in that same orphanage. I understood those kids better than anyone.That was where we met.I had just started my company with my best friends, Hailey and Sky. Life was good. It was mine. Until we fell in love. Alex proposed, and I said yes. I was a size twenty-two even then, but he never complained, he loved me that way. And I believed him. After we got married, I found out he could walk again, if he had surgery. But it was expensive... very

ESSENCE For a second, I was too dazed by the impact of my face against a solid chest to react. A warm, unmovable wall of muscle, dressed in expensive black fabric and smelling faintly of rain and something sinfully masculine. I took a shaky step back, trying to regain what little composure I had left, and made an awkward move to sidestep him. But before I could take another step, his hand shot out and wrapped around my wrist, holding me firmly in place. Not rough. Not painful. Just… steady. I looked up, and my breath hitched the second our eyes met. It was him. The hot stranger from the gym. His black suit was tailored to fit his annoyingly perfect frame and he held a black umbrella over his head, although the rain had already dampened his dark hair. His gaze flickered downward, meeting mine, and I saw rage in his eyes. Quiet but burning. And I had no idea why. Was he angry because I’d slammed into his chest? Because I’d run away the last time we met? Maybe he was the k

ESSENCE I didn’t know what to say. A part of me wanted to reject the bag Lucian was handing to me, not because I was ungrateful, but because it was all beginning to feel a little… unreal. He had already done so much for me tonight, and quite frankly, it was starting to scare me. No one had ever treated me this well. It was the kind of thing you see in romantic dramas, the ones where the girl gets swept off her feet by the handsome, mysterious stranger. Except I was not that girl. Not even close. He stood there, arm extended, waiting patiently, and I was shivering even with the heater on. The stubborn chill wasn’t just from the rain, it was from life. The kind of cold that clung to your soul and refused to let go. But the moment I looked at Lucian’s hand still holding the bag, not backing away, I felt guilty. He wasn’t pressuring me. He wasn’t doing it to impress me. He was just… kind. And that messed with me more than anything else. With a weak smile, I reached for the bag.

ESSENCE The shrill sound of my alarm dragged me out of the shallow, miserable puddle of sleep I’d fallen into. I hadn’t slept much, but sleeping in wasn’t an option either. I needed to hit the gym—not because I wanted to, but because...well...I felt I had to. When I came out of my room, the house was as silent and empty as it was last night. The silence was almost theatrical, like even the walls were pretending I didn’t exist. I walked into the kitchen, made breakfast out of habit, but didn’t bother setting the table. What was the point? Alex and Asher weren’t home. They were probably off having their little family moment with Mother Remi the Great. As usual, I freshened up, put on my gym clothes, and headed out. I was nursing the tiniest hope that maybe Lucian would be there again. But of course, no black-suited dreamboat today. I remembered what he’d said about meeting someone three days in a row being fate. Ha. Fate clearly ghosted me. Maybe he said it out of pity. Maybe I look