considered swapping now…but quickly changed my mind.
If my plan went as it was supposed to, my shoes wouldn’t be staying on long anyway.
With that in mind, I unlocked his front door and pushed it open — and gasped.
My body locked in place and my heart stopped.
My brain wasn’t computing what I was seeing. Rolland’s bed sat against the back wall of his studio flat…and directly in line with the front door. In the back of my mind I registered Paul McCartney’s voice serenading through the open room, but my ears zeroed in on the throaty, screaming moans of the naked woman sitting on his very naked lap.
All I saw was a whole hell of a lot of pale skin…and my boyfriend’s hands squeezing another girl’s massive tits as they bounced wildly. The image was burning itself into my retinas.
I needed to move. I needed to get the hell out of here. But my body was locked in place. Rolland sat at the edge of his bed with the woman’s back pressed tight to his chest so they were both facing me as she rode him like he was a Clydesdale.
The woman screamed my boyfriend’s name and threw her head back onto his shoulder. She reached up and dug her fingers into his hair with one hand and scratched her nails down his bare thigh with her other. Rolland groaned and cursed violently. The bed squeaked with every move and the woman screamed loud enough to wake the neighborhood.
My stomach turned and bile rose up my throat. Move, Chloe. MOVE. I leapt backwards — and slammed into the doorframe. Picture frames fell off the wall beside me and crashed to the floor, the glass shattering on impact.
Rolland looked up and gasped. His blue eyes widened and his face paled. “Chloe?”
“Excuse me—” The woman looked up and froze. She smacked Rolland’s arm. “You said she wouldn’t be back until tonight!”
My breath left me in a rush. I knew her. Shelly. She was the American granddaughter of his neighbor one floor down and was in town on holiday. She was eighteen. My stomach rolled and I actually swallowed vomit.
“I…she wasn’t…I don’t…I…I—” Rolland stood like he wanted to come over to me but the movement made Shelly moan like she was getting paid for this. Rolland’s blue eyes rolled and he groaned.
Finally, my feet unglued themselves and I took off. He called out my name several times but I wasn’t stopping. I had to get out of here before the shock wore off and I bloody effing lost it. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. My throat and chest burned, like the oxygen I was breathing was pure acid. Or maybe I wasn’t breathing at all. My hands trembled. The world passed by me in a blur. I didn’t even realize I’d gone down all three flights of stairs until the cold morning air slammed into my face.
I stopped on the pavement and a sob ripped up my throat. I pressed my hand to my mouth and tried to hold it in. I was British, we didn’t cry in public. But I didn’t have a car. Edith had dropped me off. Rolland lived a couple miles from my flat in Oxford. My whole body was trembling. Little shocks shot up and down my limbs like electricity. My heart pounded in my chest. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Images of Rolland screwing Shelly replayed in my mind to the beat of my pulse. I gagged and sprinted down the pavement.
There was only one place I could go…Red Rose Books. The privately owned and operated bookstore that’d been passed through the Lancaster family for centuries. My family. I couldn’t even remember which one of my family members currently owned it. I wasn’t sure any of them actually knew. All we knew was that it kept running. I’d been working there off and on since I was fourteen and it was only a few shops down. No one was out on the streets at six in the morning in early December, it was far too bloody brittle out, so no one heard the sobs ripping up my throat…or the runaway tears I couldn’t swipe away fast enough.
My chest burned the whole way down the street. Don’t cry, don’t cry.
The backs of my eyes stung more with every step, like there was a countdown to privacy…to when I could fall apart. Almost there. Hold it in. Don’t cry, don’t cry. I felt the wetness on my cheeks, but