You're not his type. He prefers them beautiful.
The words circle through my mind like vultures over carrion, picking at what's left of my composure. I've replayed Tyler's voice a hundred times since this morning, each repetition scraping the wound a little rawer.
Beautiful. As if beauty is a membership card to this world, and I showed up without one.
I tried lunch in my room, but the walls kept shrinking. The ocean view that seemed so magnificent this morning became a taunt.
I tried the beach, but Tyler was somewhere out there, and the thought of seeing him again made my stomach clench.
So I've been avoiding everyone all day, mapping the mansion's quiet corners like a refugee charting safe zones.
The media room with its leather seats. The sunroom where light pools on marble floors. The wine cellar, cool and dim, where I sat for twenty minutes pretending I didn't exist.
But the mansion isn't infinite, no matter how large it seems. Eventually, collisions are inevitable.
The library feels safe. Dust motes drift through slanted afternoon light, and the silence here is different—welcoming instead of oppressive.
I sink into a leather armchair, pull a random book from the shelf, and pretend to read.
The words blur on the page. Tyler's image burns behind my eyelids every time I blink—those sharp cheekbones, that cruel mouth, eyes the color of a winter sky and just as cold.
Why does he despise me so much?
I'm not used to being hated.
Back home, people liked me well enough. I was the quiet girl who always said yes, who never made waves, who smiled even when she didn't feel like it.
Pleasant, agreeable, safe. I made myself easy to be around because it was easier than being difficult and alone.
But Tyler took one look at me and decided I was the enemy, and no amount of agreeableness will change his mind.
I turn a page I haven't read. The spine creaks softly in the quiet.
"Reading?" The voice comes from the doorway—low, mocking, instantly recognizable.
Tyler leans against the frame, blocking my only exit. He's still sweating from training, his shirt clinging to his chest in ways I refuse to notice.
He makes the word reading sound like an accusation. "What, poverty wasn't entertaining enough?"
I keep my eyes on the page. The letters swim, meaningless, but I stare at them anyway.
"You know, the silent treatment only works when the other person actually wants to talk to you." He pushes off the doorframe and moves closer. "I looked you up."
My fingers tighten on the book's edges.
"Ellie Harman." He says my name like he's tasting it, deciding whether to spit it out. "No social media, no friends, no life. Just a dead-end town and two parents who couldn't be bothered to stick around."
He stops beside my chair, close enough that I can smell sweat and expensive cologne. The combination shouldn't work, but it does—clean and masculine and infuriating.
"Now they're actually dead," he continues, "and you come running to my father for scraps."
I stare at him—this stranger, this arrogant, cruel stranger who typed my name into a search bar and decided he understood everything about my life.
As if a Google search could explain the silence of an empty apartment on Christmas morning.
As if an absence of Instagram posts could capture the particular loneliness of watching other kids get picked up from school while I walked home alone.
No friends.
I had friends. I had people I sat with at lunch and partnered with on group projects and occasionally texted about homework.
My hands shake as I close the book. "Are you done?"
"Not even close." He crouches, putting himself at my eye level. His face is inches from mine. "You think I don't see what you're doing? Playing the sad orphan, wandering around, eating food you didn't pay for, sleeping in beds you didn't earn?"
His breath is warm against my skin. I refuse to lean back, refuse to give him the satisfaction of my retreat.
"You're not subtle, sweetheart." The endearment drips with condescension. "And I will not let you worm your way into this family."
My palm connects with his cheek before I consciously decide to move.
The sound cracks through the library, sharp and satisfying. Tyler's head turns with the force of it, and for one suspended moment, neither of us moves.
My palm stings. The outline of my fingers blooms red across his cheekbone, spreading like watercolor on wet paper.
His jaw clenches, a muscle ticking beneath the skin I just struck. His eyes—those cruel, ice-blue eyes—have gone dark.
He's beautiful.
The thought arrives unwanted, settling into my chest like a splinter I can't reach. And some weird part of me wants to press my mouth to the place I just hit.
What is wrong with me?
Then his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.
He yanks me up from the chair, spins me, pins me against the bookshelf. Spines dig into my back. His body presses against mine—all heat and hard muscle—and his other hand grips my jaw, forcing me to meet his gaze.
"There she is." His breath ghosts across my mouth. "The girl who bites back."
I struggle against him, but he doesn't budge. His thigh presses between mine, and I hate the gasp that escapes me. Hate even more the way his lips curve into a smile when he hears it
"Get off me." The words come out breathless, unconvincing even to my own ears.
"Why?" His thumb traces my lower lip, feather-light and devastating. "I heard that gasp." He leans closer, his mouth brushing my ear. "You want me to touch you, don't you? Little orphan Ellie, so desperate for attention she'd take it from someone who hates her."
"Funny way to show hatred." I force myself to hold his gaze. "Looks like a lack of self-control from where I'm standing."
His laugh is dark and triumphant against my throat, but beneath the mockery, I feel the rapid beat of his pulse against my chest.
"You're pathetic." He doesn't move away. His hand slides from my jaw to my throat. "You'd let me do anything right now, wouldn't you? Beg me and I might even consider it."
I find my voice somewhere beneath the humiliation. "I'd rather die."
"Liar." His other hand releases my wrist, trails down my side, stops at my hip. His fingers dig in, pulling me harder against his thigh. "Your body's begging for it."
He rolls his hips once, a slow grind that makes my vision blur. Fuck.
Fuck…
I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. No one has ever touched me like this.
"But here's the thing, Ellie." His voice drops to a whisper, intimate and cruel. "I don't fuck charity cases. And that's all you are. All you'll ever be."
He releases me so suddenly I stumble, catching myself on the bookshelf behind me. He steps back and looks at me like I'm garbage he scraped off his shoe.
"Clean yourself up," he says. "You look desperate. It's embarrassing."
He leaves without looking back, his footsteps echoing down the hallway until silence swallows them whole.
I slide down the bookshelf until I'm sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, shaking with humiliation and arousal I can't separate.
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