All Chapters of WHERE SIN FEELS LIKE HOME: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER TWO : Umbrella in the Rain ~Zella's POV ~---I had given him six years.I stood in that hallway and I thought about that. Six years of turning down opportunities because he said he wanted me close. Six years of keeping quiet at work so nobody would think I'd slept my way into a position I had actually earned. Six years of planning a wedding, choosing flowers, dreaming about snow and candlelight on Christmas Day, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, apparently, this had been happening.I pushed the door open.Cole had Dara bent over the edge of the bed, moving behind her at a pace that made my stomach turn, and the worst part, the part that would stay with me longer than anything else, was that neither of them noticed me standing there. They just kept going. Like the door opening meant nothing. Like I was air."Yes.... Cole.... God, I love this, you're so big.""Want me to go faster, baby?""Yes Cole, just.... fuck, I've missed this so much."The car key slipped out of

CHAPTER FOUR : Dragged Back ~Zella's POV~ I went home and I did not leave. I locked the door, I closed every curtain, and I sat on the floor of my sitting room for about an hour before I moved to the sofa, and then I didn't move from the sofa for a very long time. The flat felt different than it had five days ago, smaller somehow, like the walls had shifted inward while I wasn't paying attention. I drank what was left in the kitchen cabinet. When that ran out I opened my phone, ordered more, and when it arrived I tipped the delivery driver too much because he smiled at me and it was the kindest thing anyone had done all day. I cried until I ran out of it. Slept. Woke up and started again. I kept thinking about the wedding dress hanging in my wardrobe, the one I hadn't looked at since I bought it, the one I had tried on alone in the shop because I wanted the first time someone really saw me in it to be Cole's face when I walked toward him. I didn't open the wardrobe. I didn't throw

CHAPTER SIX: An Agreement Neither of Us Meant~Zella's POV~I went back to my room and sat on the edge of the bed and hated myself quietly for about ten minutes.Not for what had happened in the hotel room , I had made my peace with that, or at least I was working on it. What I hated was my face. Specifically the way it refused to behave like a normal human face when Evander Ashford was within twenty feet of me. The redness. The heat. The complete inability to maintain eye contact for longer than three seconds before something in my chest started doing things I had no name for and my eyes dropped to the floor like they were trying to save me from myself.I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and made the catastrophic mistake of letting my mind drift back to the hotel room.The dark. The way he had moved, unhurried, certain, like a man who knew exactly what he was doing and had decided to take his time doing it. The moment the pain had shifted into something else entirely and

CHAPTER EIGHT : I Dare You~Zella's POV~Everything happened at once.Evander was already moving before I had finished saying her name, crossing the pool edge in two steps and going in without hesitation, the water closing around him as he reached for Brynn and pulled her up and toward the ladder. I crouched at the edge with my heart somewhere in my throat, reaching down, and between the two of us we got her out and onto the tile and I was already pressing my hand to the side of her head where the blood was coming from, not much, not as much as the pink water had made it look, but enough."Brynn." I held her face in both hands. "Hey. Look at me.""I'm looking." Her voice came out irritated, which was the most reassuring thing she could have said. "You can stop doing that, I'm fine.""You hit your head.""I'm aware, I was there." She tried to sit up straighter and I pressed my hand to her shoulder to keep her still. "Zella, I'm fine, it's just a scratch.""You don't know that.""I lite

CHAPTER TEN : Alone~Zella's POV~The question sat in the middle of the table like something that had been placed there very deliberately and was waiting to see what everyone would do about it.Brynn, predictably, did not wait."I think..." I started."She's staying as long as she needs to," Brynn said, at exactly the same time, in the tone she used when a decision had already been made and the discussion was a formality. She pointed her fork at her father. "I brought her here because she needed to get out of London before she became one of those people who just exists inside a flat with the curtains closed.""I was not..." I started again."You had been in that flat for five days, Zella. With empty bottles on the floor." She looked at her father. "She just walked out of a six year relationship with an absolute idiot who cheated on her with her own cousin. Eight days before the wedding."Evander looked up from his coffee. "What?""Right?" Brynn pointed the fork again, now using it for