HIS ONE TRUE LOVE

BROOKLYN 8

“She is ginger and her name is Sophia”

“I don’t care what or who she is,” I snapped.

He smiled, wicked and mischievous. “You cared enough to call her my girlfriend. Is that jealousy I smell, Hailey?”

“Jealousy? You wish. She isn’t half the woman I am”

“I agree, she’s so much more,” he said , smirking at me.

“Go meet your girlfriend,” I yelled, shaking with fury and something else.

He didn’t even deny it. That hurt worse than the accusation. “Right,” he said easily. “Maybe I should. She doesn’t vanish and end up in another man’s bed.”

I raised my hand again but before I could hit him, he caught it and pushed me fast and smoothly to the nearest wall he could find. . My breath caught. His body caged mine in, solid, radiating heat and fury.

And then he saw it.

The bracelet.

His bracelet. The one he’d given me in Paris, gifted me and told me to touch whenever I thought of him, the one I never stopped wearing. His gaze dropped onto it, as if the earth had tilted.

“You kept it,” he said, his voice suddenly low.

I swallowed, feeling the heat of his body course through me. “It’s just an accessory, it means nothing.”

“It means nothing, but you’re wearing it at your engagement party because you want to remember me.” He smirked.

I should have lied, maybe I should have shoved him off. I should have said something, anything—but my throat closed, the press of his body on mine numbed my mind.

He lifted my wrist to his mouth, slow, deliberate, his lips brushing the inside of it and I shivered, my lips parted and I wanted to tell him to stop, to say this was not right but the words would not come out.

He kissed higher, up my arm, then my shoulder, all the way to the slope of my neck. My body betrayed me, arching toward him as soft moans escaped my lips before my mind caught up.

His mouth found the hollow of my throat, then lower, at the edge of my dress where the skin of my chest met silk. Then he placed an open-mouthed kiss all over my cleavage. Heat pulsed everywhere his breath touched.

He pressed against me and I felt the outline of him, hard, unyielding—and I felt the air leave my lungs. His mouth traced my jaw, placing hungry kisses along it. His hands framed my waist, and then I wasn’t standing anymore. He lifted me like it was instinct. My legs wrapped around him on their own, traitorous and desperate. My dress rode up, his grip bruising my thighs.

He kissed me like he was starving, and I was the last thing alive. Teeth, tongue, fury—months of pent-up anger, want, betrayal, and memory crashing all at once. I moaned into his mouth, helpless, hating myself for how easy he could unravel me. He grunted into the kiss, pressing his length further against my clothed heat, right where I needed him the most.

When his hand slid under the hem of my dress, I didn’t stop him. I could not stop him no matter how badly my instincts told me to. “Harlan— please.”

“Please what, Ma vie? Hmm?” He breathed.

He rubbed faintly between my thighs and I bucked against his fingers, needy— pathetically needy and I didn’t breathe. I moaned silently as he hooked his fingers into the edge of my soaked panties.

“You are soaked.” Surprise, amusement and undeniable hunger evident in his voice as he looked at my dazed eyes.

He pulled my panties to the side and rubbed circles on the c**t and my breath itched. I needed him more than words could say, I needed him to touch me, to fill me, to own me and he did. He touched me like he remembered every inch. Like his hands still owned me. Like my body had been waiting a year to be reminded of who it belonged to.

A finger sank into me, wild and impatient. “Oh my God. Harlan please”

He added another finger and I saw stars, curling them just right as he rubbed his thumb on my c**t, I clutched his shoulders and he smirked, “Not so immature now huh?”

His fingers moved faster inside me, right at the spot I needed him. I was shaking, clinging to his shirt, lost in the way he moved against me. The world narrowed to his mouth on my skin, the rough drag of his breath, the filthy satisfaction in his eyes every time I gasped his name.

“I’m gonna c*m… Harlan” I moaned uncontrollably.

He kissed me, hard. Like he wanted to consume me, to possess me. “c*m for me Hailey. Right on my fingers.”

I came apart against him—silently, violently—my whole body seizing as I buried my face in his neck.

I didn’t have time to recover before he pulled back slightly, his voice rough. “Open your mouth.”

I was dazed, drunk on oxygen and him and shame, and I did.

He pressed his fingers to my lips, smirking when I hesitated, and I tasted myself there. My cheeks burned as I licked him clean without thinking, my hands fisting his shirt like I’d drown if he stepped back.

He looked pleased, cocky even. Like he’d proven something. Then he pulled his phone out of his pocket.

I froze, still half-wrapped around him and breathless, wondering what he needed his phone for.

“Soph, Hey babe” he said into the receiver, voice suddenly casual. “Uhm… You wanna go get Ice cream? Our usual spot? Yeah. Wait for me in the car. I’ll be right there”

I stopped breathing and my mind blanked, in this moment where I was wrapped around him, he was thinking about her? He hung up, tucked his phone away and finally looked at me.

The warmth was gone from his expression and all that was left was control. Indifference.

He set me down gently like I was something fragile he was done using. I swayed on my heels, legs barely working, mind blank.

He didn’t fix my dress. Didn’t smooth my hair. Didn’t kiss me again.

He just stepped back and let his gaze drag over me slowly—my swollen lips, my disheveled clothes, the fresh wreckage he’d made of me.

“It was nice seeing you again,” he said softly, mocking me with the politeness of it. “Happy engagement, Hailey.. I mean Brooklyn. Have a great night”

And then he walked away.

Leaving me standing there—aching, confused, furious, and wrecked in ways I didn’t have language for.

My chest caved in, my heart ripped to pieces as I walked from the garden through the back door of the kitchen where Hannah found me .

“What happened? Where were you?” Hannah asked.

I brushed past her, needing to breathe before I exploded. “Not now Hannah… Please I can’t.”

I ran before she could probe me any further, straight into my room and I locked the door, my back hit the door and I slumped against clutching my chest and the tears would not stop rolling.

He had given me a taste of everything and yanked it away from me. And I had never felt colder or more abandoned ever.