جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

~LIAM POV~Thirty minutes later, I had given her one of my shirts to sleep in and shown her to my bedroom.We stood in the hallway outside my bedroom door.She hesitated. "Last time I was here, you wouldn't let me past the hallway." She was right."Last time was different," I said."How?"I didn't have an answer that wouldn't damn me.She walked into the room slowly, looking around—king-sized bed, dark sheets, floor-to-ceiling windows. The same view she would've seen from the hallway last time, but now she was inside.In my space. In my bed."Get some sleep," I said, my voice rougher than I planned. "I will be down the hall if you need anything."She nodded, but she didn't move toward the bed. She just stood there, looking at me like she wanted to say something but didn't know how.I left before she could figure it out. Before I did something truly stupid. Like pull her into my arms and never let go.Now I was in the guest room, lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. My h

~YVONNE POV~I was an idiot.That was the thought running through my head as the elevator went up toward Liam's penthouse. A complete, certified, should-be-institutionalized idiot.Because I was holding a box of cookies from Sister Margaret, wearing the green dress I had bought on sale three months ago and never had an excuse to wear, and I had spent twenty minutes in front of my bathroom mirror trying to get my hair to look effortlessly pretty instead of trying-too-hard pretty.And the worst part? I could not stop smiling.Like a complete lunatic, I was smiling at my reflection in the elevator doors, squeezing homemade cookies, on my way to see a man who had beaten someone half to death in a bar bathroom less than twenty-four hours ago.Normal. Very normal behavior, Yvonne.But last night had been... different.He had held me. It was not for the lesson, not because I was crying or scared. He just held me, like I was something that mattered.He had given me his shirt to sleep in. Made

~YVONNE'S POV~I was back.Because apparently, I was a masochist.Forty-eight hours after Liam Klein had kissed me like the world was ending and then told me to use it on his brother, I was standing in his elevator again, watching the numbers climb—28, 29, 30—and wondering what the hell was wrong with me.I should have canceled. I should have texted him some excuse about being sick or busy or literally anything that would let me keep the tiny shred of dignity I had left.But I did not. Because I was stupid. And because some pathetic part of me thought maybe—maybe—today would be different.Spoiler alert: it wasn't.The elevator doors opened, and I stepped into his penthouse. It was snowing outside, the kind of heavy Chicago snow that turned the whole city into a cloudy blur.Inside was somehow colder.Liam was standing by the fireplace, with no fire. Just him in all black—black pants, black turtleneck—looking like he had been professionally styled to break hearts.He didn't look at me

~LIAM'S POV~Two days.Forty-eight hours of radio silence, and I was losing my goddamn mind.I had not called. Had not texted. After what happened against that wall—after I had marked her throat like some territorial animal and then walked out—I knew I needed distance.Space to remember why I was doing this. Space to rebuild the walls she kept demolishing every time she looked at me.It wasn't working.I was pacing my living room at eleven p.m. on a Wednesday, wearing a path in the hardwood, staring at my phone every thirty seconds like a junkie waiting for a fix.I was Pathetic.I poured another whiskey and downed it. Then poured another.The plan was simple. Use Yvonne to destabilize Arthur. Make him obsessed with winning her back while I took apart his professional life piece by piece.She was the distraction, the bait, the perfect weapon.Except somewhere between teaching her how to kiss and watching her try not to cry in my kitchen, the plan had stopped being simple.Now I couldn

~ARTHUR'S POV~The sound of the teaspoon hitting the saucer was not just a noise. It was hard for me to stay awake.I shut my eyes tight, feeling the hangover from the scotch beating in my head.I opened one eye and looked at the back of Holly's head. She seemed perfectly put together. Her blonde hair was styled in a way that took a long time and cost a lot of money. She sat up straight, like she was always being watched. Her nicely done nail was tapping on her phone screen as if she wanted to make a hole in it."Are you even listening to me, Arthur?"I rubbed my face, trying to ease my headache. "I'm listening. You were talking about the gala."She turned around, smiling widely but without real warmth. "It's not just any gala. It's for the Children's Hospital. My dad will be there. Your mom will be there too. We need to plan. I'm wearing the green Valentino dress. You should wear the black velvet Tom Ford jacket.""I hate that jacket," I said quietly, getting up to put some space b