Poison - Jade West Page 0,3

score.

If only I could believe we were real, him and me. That what we had really was all that mattered.

But how could it be?

How could he be in love with someone who didn’t really exist anymore?

“Tell me you love me,” I said. “Tell me like you mean it. I don’t think you’ve said it in years.”

“What?” he asked, eyes still glaring.

“Just say it, Seb. Tell me you love me and mean it.”

But he didn’t say it.

“I take care of you, Anna. I put up with your medical crap and make sure you’re okay every fucking day. I keep you from being an utter state with yourself. If that isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what will be.”

He stepped away and tutted, and looked at me like I’d gone mad.

Maybe I had.

I was questioning my own sanity, and wondering myself what the hell I was doing when he finalised my thoughts for me by laughing that cold laugh of his.

“Just get back to fucking bed and sleep it off, will you?” he said. “Have you been on the wine or something? You’d better not have been fucking drinking.”

Maybe I should have been. Maybe a couple of glasses of wine would have seen me asleep in bed and immune to the feelings spinning deep.

My tears were brimming as I picked that case back up from the floor. I could barely take a breath as I summoned the last of my words to the man I’d pledged my heart into marrying.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I said again. “I mean it, Seb. I can’t do this.”

“Your brain really is a poor excuse for one tonight,” he said, pacing the room. “This is madness. Total fucking madness. They need to up your fucking meds and get your stupid head back in gear.”

It may have been insanity, but madness was better than living an illusion for the rest of my life. It had to be.

“Goodbye, Sebastian,” I told him.

“You’ll be back when you realise what a stupid cow you’re being,” he said, and got back in bed.

I left my engagement ring on the counter next to his keys, and then took my first shaking footstep into a whole new world.

Chapter One

Anna

Three months later

I pulled my phone from my handbag at the ping, calling up the message with one fumbling hand as I carried on up the street back to the office. I shoved it back in my bag without answering. Sebastian and his regular text, the same routine as every other lunchtime these past few months.

Have you come to your fucking senses yet?

No, I hadn’t come to my senses yet. So many nights I’d paced up and down my new apartment living room when my new housemate, Vicky, had bailed off to sleep, trying to make myself see reason and return to the man everyone was continually telling me I was insane for leaving. So many nights I’d failed.

This Friday lunchtime wasn’t any different.

He didn’t even put kisses at the end of his messages. No attempt to tell me he was missing me, or wanting me, or loving me. Just that same blunt question, as though it was inevitable I would one day realise I wanted to go wedding dress shopping and walk up the aisle to him, the god of an ideal existence – Sebastian Maitland and our world of perfect.

Life might’ve been so much easier if I did.

I answered the messages from Mum, desperate to know if I was still alive and free from seizures, then walked into work with a smile at Lucia on reception and dropped myself down at my desk to prepare for the afternoon project meeting. I had my sales strategy notes all mapped out, the coming quarter plotted for Pewter Security’s campaign, and that’s when another ping sounded from my handbag.

This was a different ping altogether. One that did actually have my heart racing.

Trojan from the online dating app. Trojan, the huge specimen of a man who’d been promising me all kinds of wonder in the bedroom if I agreed to a meet-up.

I’d been replying, flirting, asking about his preferences and his wants and his needs. It seemed they matched pretty well with mine. Fire and lust and flesh on flesh. The churn of animalistic excitement and desire coming to life.

Stacey from the marketing team headed on over with a file pressed to her chest, and I dropped my phone on the desk. She was one of the only people far enough removed from my life