by Alexis Anne
I needed to stop fantasizing about love and a life free of complications. I was being impractical and this was a time when I needed all my wits about me. I was about to survive a small war with my family—one that might end up with my name being dragged back through the media with mud all over it. The last thing I needed to be doing was letting my head get lost in some clouds.
I tossed and turned all night, finally hopping out of bed at dawn. Adam stirred soon after, making me coffee and watching me silently as I threw myself together for work. His eyes were hollow and a little harder than normal. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or disappointed that I was pulling away from him. It didn’t matter.
Adam doesn’t matter.
I kept chanting that to myself hoping it would eventually sink in, but inside I was dying. I was quietly shattering into millions of pieces.
Nothing my parents had done had ever made me feel like this. If I could barely survive my family then there was no way I’d ever be able to survive Adam. If ten days had done this to me…well, I needed to start ending things with Adam now. I’d let myself get too close. It was time to pull back while I still could.
“Have a good day at work. I’ll see you for lunch?”
I nodded and grabbed my bag. Andres took me to my office where I worked for the first hour of my morning before my first class. With five minutes to spare I grabbed my USB drive with the PowerPoint for the lesson, my coffee, and my badge. For the next hour I’d be Dr. Filler, a teacher. I would focus on my students and my lesson. It would be a nice break from the heavy reality of my surreal life.
I was so lost in my thoughts about class that I wasn’t paying attention when I stepped out of the main door of our department and into the foyer of the building. Andres was waiting for me on the bench outside, reading the paper and enjoying his own coffee.
“Elizabeth.” A familiar voice called to me quietly.
I froze where I was and very nearly lost my breakfast in the potted tree beside me. My mother.
I turned on my heels and met her gaze. She was standing three feet away. Her hair was perfectly bobbed, her clothes expertly tailored. Her face was more nipped and tucked than the last time I saw her and for a brief moment I allowed myself to laugh at the thought that Cybil was more plastic than human these days.
“Cybil. It isn’t Friday. You shouldn’t be here.”
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t,” I laughed and started to turn, but she reached out and grabbed my elbow. Her fingers were cold and I wanted to wrench my arm away from her and run screaming out to Andres. But I didn’t. I really don’t know why I didn’t.
“Yes. We do.”
I stared at her hand on my elbow as if it were the strangest thing I’d ever seen. In a way it was. My mother rarely touched me, even as a child. “Friday,” I repeated.
“Now. We have private things that cannot be discussed in front of lawyers or sisters. Certainly not photographers.”
“We have nothing to discuss ever again.”
Cybil let me go and pulled herself up to her full height, which in heels was a good two inches taller than me. She was trying to intimidate me. In a way it was working. I didn’t have much fight in me at the moment and while the hallway was quiet, classes were about to change and we would be surrounded by students—many of which were Cybil’s adoring fans.
“What do you want?”
A triumphant smirk pulled at the corner of her inflated lips as Max Vettel stepped up beside her. “Hello, Elizabeth. It’s been a long time.”
My heart stopped beating as I looked into the steely blue eyes of the one man who held the power to truly destroy me. “Not long enough.” I replied.
Tease: Volume 5
Coming August 4th, 2014
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TEASE: VOLUME 4
by Alexis Anne
http://alexisannebooks.com/
Copyright 2014 by Alexis Sykes
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alexis Anne.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author. All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
