Oh, fuck it.
Right before I could bang on the door, it swung open and knocked me off my feet.
Adelaide stood with a snarky tilt to her dark coloured lips, wearing a low-cut satin dress. She curled her hair and kept it down—she never did that. Around her neck curved a diamond choker matching the studs on her ears. They had to be made by her. The diamonds aligned with her signature pattern.
A pattern she did when she was stressed out.
I analysed her with careful precision. One skim and I would’ve missed the way her legs squeezed together beneath the dress. I would’ve missed the way her tits heaved with fast-paced breaths.
There was a slit that started much too high for my liking, exposing her curvy thighs. The same thighs I’d dreamt about every fucking night.
Dark eyes, dark gaze, darkeverything.
Adelaide Mikael looked ready to walk all over me.
Not sparing me a second of her time, she brushed past me.
A whiff of her natural rosy and musk scent sent me over the edge, and I grabbed her wrist, spinning her around to face me.
My heart was racing but Adelaide met it with a bored look.
Her eyes narrowed at my hands, then turned into slits when they darted up to meet mine.
Shelooks so fucking beautiful. I want to stay inside with her and spend the rest of the night admiring her. I want to apologise and kiss her and tell her about what’s weighing on my mind.
I cleared my throat. “You should cover up.”
It was early August and thirty degrees in New York, she didn’t need to cover up, but I’d rather not spend the rest of the night plucking eyes out of sockets from whoever looked in her direction.
Adelaide pulled her chest out and lifted her chin in a form of defiance.
Still giving me the silent treatment, I see.
It took plenty of effort to not look down and notice the way her tits pressed against the fabric of her dress.
She yanked her wrist back and turned around, strutting down the hallway toward the stairs.
I rubbed a hand over my jaw with curved lips.
Adelaide didn’t wake up one day and become a different person.
She woke up and settled into the woman I always loved.
THIRTY-TWO
ADELAIDE
The momentwe got inside the venue, I let go of Christian’s hand and my anxiety came rushing back.
I’d been to a fair share of events my whole life, but it rarely got better. The music, the noise, and the people.
Everyone looked at me—or at least that’s what it felt like. Their muttering whispers, their chuckles, and the way they’d watch me while I grabbed a drink. It ate me out from the inside, sticking eaten parts of different organs to create a new one that didn’t know how to function.
Social parties turned people like me into their entertainment for the night. The public may have stopped talking about my scandal, but the elitists didn’t forget.
They judged. They wondered. They destroyed.
Which is why while Christian spoke with other guests, I stayed in a dark corner near an exit.
