Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,1

my family, the literary world. I reveled in being an outcast but basked in the beige, rich, and bigoted world of my fiancé, and the boyfriends that came before him.

Then there were the hotel rooms. The rooms I had once loved for their lack of personality and wealth of possibly only taunted me with my empty page and broken brain. That yawning emptiness that only intensified as I continued not writing.

Not writing turned me into…something.

Someone decidedly more volatile and unhinged than I already was before, which was pretty fucking unhinged.

I became more paranoid, uncomfortable, moody, all-around evil, if I was honest. My vision sharpened as well. I saw too clearly just how much I’d been lying to myself. The horrid and vapid life I’d wrapped myself up in. Starting with the man who gave me the tacky, expensive, and cliché diamond I’d slid off my finger the same morning I’d bought the cabin in Washington.

Yes, bought. Sight unseen. In somewhere as drastically different from New York as I could possibly get. I wasn’t known for doing things by halves, and this was a full overhaul of my life.

The plan was to lock myself away from civilization—if that’s what you could call New York—and write a book I’d promised my publisher. That’s what all the great writers did, didn’t they? Shut out all outside distractions, forced themselves to look forwards for the story, for their madness.

It had seemed so simple, so enticing. It was a Band-Aid over a bullet wound, to be sure, but I thought it would tide me over for this book, at least.

But now, staring at the road, feeling the trees swallowing me up…it was not enticing at all.

I’d made a mistake.

A huge one.

But I had to follow it through.

So, I followed the road.

The feeling of panic and suffocation followed me, just like the memories I was leaving behind.

“You’re not serious,” he said, sneering down at the small picture open on my laptop.

I hadn’t planned on showing him the cabin before I bought it. In fact, I hadn’t intended on telling him I was buying it at all. I was planning to do the evil, selfish, and cowardly act of slipping away in the night, selling the apartment from under him—it was in my name anyway, because despite his trust fund, he was cheap—and blocking his number.

Things didn’t really go to plan when he snuck up behind me, saw the photo on the screen, and demanded answers.

I wasn’t one to give in to the demands of men in general, or this man in particular, but I was meant to love him. Except I had realized I really despised him.

Case in point, the sneering tone. One of many, many things I hated about him.

And the fact he hadn’t noticed I hadn’t been wearing my engagement ring for two days.

I hated him, and definitely didn’t want to explain myself to him, but the only other way to escape the conversation at this point was to hit him in the head with a blunt object. As much as I was obsessed with violence, I wasn’t too keen on wasting a potential felony on this manicured fucker.

So, I told him.

I was buying a cabin in Washington and would be staying there until the book was finished, and who the heck knew how long that would be.

“You better not be expecting me to come with you.”

I stared at him. Really stared at this man. Classically handsome in every single way. His face so symmetrical it was giving me a migraine. How did I not notice that before? Or the fact he had no features that were weird or unique. No, he was a cookie-cutter guy. Tanned. Muscled. Three-hundred-dollar haircut. T-shirt that cost the same. Loafers that were made from some endangered animal and were definitely at least eight percent gay. I had been aware of all of this when I slipped the ring onto my finger and his moisturized body into my apartment, of course. Aware of how utterly wrong he was for me but that had served a purpose. He had served a purpose.

And now he was expired.

“No, I’m not expecting you to come with me,” I said, closing my laptop and standing. “In fact, I’m demanding you don’t.”

I glanced down at my phone, vibrating in the passenger’s seat. Man of the hour. He’d been calling me since that day. I hadn’t answered.

He wasn’t calling because he loved me.

He was calling because I’d walked away from him. From his perfect version of