All Chapters of Worship Me, Duncan: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWELVE—Aphrodite—I’ve learned the most dangerous thing you can give a man isn’t your body.It’s consistency.The illusion of stability. That subtle, soft rhythm of showing up and staying.Even when I’m not sure what staying means.Even when I’m not sure I care.---When Duncan opens the door, I smile like I haven’t left him starving for days.Like I didn’t vanish without warning.Like he didn’t fall asleep curled around my pillow, inhaling the scent of my shampoo with something close to grief.“Hey,” I say simply.He stares at me for two long, suspended seconds. I watch the tension in his shoulders dissolve as he exhales.His voice is low. A little hoarse. “You came back.”“I missed your bed,” I tease.It’s a lie.I missed his obsession.He lets out a quiet laugh—relieved, disarmed—and moves aside so I can enter.I kiss him in the foyer.Not the kind of kiss that wrecks.The kind that heals.He doesn’t realize I’m not kissing him back—I’m repairing him. Just enough.---He’s

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—Aphrodite—There’s a quiet kind of power in knowing exactly what someone needs before they do.Duncan has learned to need me. He’s learned the curve of my smile, the sound of my laughter, the way I tilt my head when I’m about to say something dangerous. He’s learned to crave my touch like it’s his last breath. But what he doesn’t realize—what he hasn’t seen yet—is that I don’t need him at all.I’m the one who holds the reins, and I’ve already made sure he’ll never slip out of my grasp.---The dinner is perfect. Of course, it is.I’ve planned everything—from the wine to the music to the way he’ll look at me when I walk into the room.He’s already dressed, waiting for me in the living room. The light from the fireplace casts soft shadows across his face, making him look like he belongs in a dream. But I don’t let him get too comfortable with the idea of that. I keep my distance, make him wait just long enough for that brief, maddening itch of impatience to grow.“You

CHAPTER SIXTEEN— Duncan —There’s a very specific kind of silence that lives inside hope.The kind that fills the room just before you ask a question that could change your life.The kind that lingers in the seconds before a woman like Aphrodite Sivan either breaks your heart—or makes it beat for something more.That silence surrounded me as I stood alone on the rooftop I’d rented for the night, clutching a ring box in my hand, watching the city lights blur beneath the soft, golden glow of the candles I had arranged just for her.Aphrodite once told me she didn’t believe in forever.That people always leave, and even when they stay, they don’t stay whole.But I didn’t care about forever. I just wanted her.In this life. In this body. In this moment.Even if she broke me after.---I’d spent days planning the proposal. Weeks picking out the ring. A cut that would shine the same way her eyes did when she was teasing me, when she let her guard down just enough to touch something real.I

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN— Duncan —I didn’t cry again after that night.Not because I wasn’t broken.But because I was done bleeding.There’s a difference.Bleeding means you still want to live.I didn’t.Not the way I had before.---The first three days after I saw them, I barely moved.I laid on the floor of my apartment like some wrecked animal, surrounded by the debris of what used to be me. Broken glasses, empty bottles, the shattered ring box lying in the corner like a grave marker.Her scent still clung to my pillows.Her lipstick was still on one of my glasses.Everything felt infected with her.And I couldn’t breathe.Not without tasting her.---By the fourth day, something inside me cracked.It didn’t happen like a lightning strike. It didn’t come with screaming or a dramatic epiphany. It was quiet.Like the final ember of a fire dying out.I got up.Showered.Shaved.Put on a suit like I was dressing for my own funeral.And looked in the mirror.There was no grief in my reflecti

CHAPTER TWENTY— Duncan —At first, I didn’t notice.Her silence felt like a gift. Like closure. Like the end of a nightmare I could finally learn to forget.But silence has a way of creeping in—slow, unsettling, clawing at the back of your mind when you think you’re finally moving on.Now it’s everywhere.She’s everywhere.Even though she’s nowhere.---Aphrodite Sivan is vanishing.Not dramatically.Not all at once.No headlines.No scandal.No rumors of a mental breakdown or drug addiction or public meltdown like the kind the press would salivate over.Just... nothing.She fades the way sunlight disappears during an eclipse. You don’t see it until it’s too late. Until you’re standing in the dark, wondering why you feel so cold.And the worst part?I hate that I noticed.---There used to be at least three or four stories about her a week.One about a dress she wore that broke the internet.One about her rumored new deal with some luxury brand.One about me.And always the same word