I can bury whatever feelings I thought I was beginning to have, bury them deep underneath the shame I feel for letting Poppy talk me into doing something so stupid in the first place. I will follow his rules, attend his events, speak when spoken to; hell I'll even eat food off the list he provides me. I won't let him beat me, I will walk out the other side of this experience and I will never speak of it ever again. It will be one of the many blips of my life that will pass me by as I get older, perhaps a funny anecdote to tell my adult children in my nursing home. They'll probably call me an i***t for letting a guy with that much money get away, but I'll know that I'm better off actually finding love, than having to pay for it.
"Thank you, Ambrose," I say to Ambrose as I climb out of the
