Lila's POV
I didn't remember the drive home. There were just some fragments: I saw headlights blurring past, my hands shaking too hard to grip the throttle steady, the sting of every bruise blooming dark under my jacket with each bump in the road. It was a miracle I got home in one piece.
By the time I made it through my own front door, I collapsed straight onto the bathroom floor and stayed there a long time, staring at the tile, feeling something inside me that used to be steady and unshakable finally crack clean down the middle.
I'd been hurt before. Hell, I'd built an entire second life around controlling pain, dishing it out, taking it when I chose to. But that man hadn't asked. Hadn't cared about a single rule, a single boundary, a single ounce of the control I'd spent years conv
