𝐑𝐀𝐘𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑 is your average do-good lawyer on the rise to fame as a representative of young victims. Except her motivations aren't all that innocent. Rayne's only goal is to run from her past, to leave confrontation for the courtroom, no...
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RAYNE WOKE TO DARK ROOM.
Still slightly dazed from unconsciousness, she rolled to her back and blinked the drowsiness away at the ceiling. The moment her thoughts went from hazy to clear, the memories of earlier came flooding back like they were itching to break her mental damns.
In some stupid way, she convinced herself that sleeping would take away her reality—that the demons she faced today were mere figments of her imagination she conjured up. But they plagued her. Left her destitute. And she knew they were real—every word that slipped from soft pink lips and eyes glazed with green.
But the tears she expected to fall never made their appearance.
Rubbing her palms over her eyes, she strained to sit up. More than anything, she wanted to rot in this bed and succumb to every suicidal idealism running through her mind, but they were just excuses. Matteo was out there somewhere, and with three and a half years of needed forgiveness already under her belt, the notion of adding more choked her lungs.
Her eyes met with the digital clock to the side and she almost fell out of bed at the red 11:45 p.m.
Only she could accomplish sleeping for twelve hours.
Rayne pulled herself from the covers and gingerly plopped in the seat before her vanity. The state she left herself in had a groan pulling from her throat, forcing her to retrieve two makeup wipes and a brush that wouldn't leave her bald from detangling.
Fixed up and changed, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and padded down the hallway in search of her boyfriend who had decided not to share the bed with her. Her phone buzzed in her hand, but she fought the urge to look at the screen.
She wasn't ready to face the music quite yet.
Just as she assumed, Christian was sitting—more like slumping—on the couch with parted lips. His deep inhale and exhale pattern filled the dark and empty living room, sounding like a contemporary melody as she reached him and instinctually ran her fingers through the front of his soft brown hair, smelling a musk that indicated he had showered.
He moved an inch, mumbling something incoherent, but didn't wake.
Pulling the laptop off his lap, she gently shook his shoulder.
"Christian, wake up."
Another mumble.
"Christian," she tried again, shaking harder.
This time, his eyes fluttered—the hope that he would rise dissipated as his shoulder slipped from the couch cushion holding him up and he tumbled into a half-sitting, half-lying position. Rolling her eyes, she put the device on the coffee table, lifted his feet, and placed a blanket over him.
Parting with a forehead kiss, she retraced her steps until she was doing her routine open-and-step charade of entering the balcony. The sunless air ran shivers up her exposed legs, finding routes through the slivers of her shorts, but she hardly noticed when the heat of her cell phone burned her to her core.
