Gone Bad

The Good Girl

Ava woke up the next morning in her tiny, sunlit room with the same words echoing in her head: "You’re a virgin, aren’t you?"

She lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, still in disbelief. It had all felt like a dream no, a nightmare she was too embarrassed to tell anyone about. She hadn’t even told Mia what had happened the night before. How could she?

She rolled over and grabbed her journal.

"What was I thinking? I walked into that room like a lost lamb. And he, Xavier Hawthorn isn’t even human. He’s dangerous, and I froze. I didn’t fight. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even walk away fast enough. What is wrong with me?"

The pen scratched harder against the paper with every word. Like she was trying to carve the guilt out of herself.

Her mother would’ve had a fit. “You don’t go anywhere alone at night.” “Don’t trust strangers.” “Always protect your virtue.”

Virtue.

The word made Ava scoff. If only people knew how hard she worked just to be seen as good. It wasn’t natural it was drilled into her.

Raised in a deeply conservative Christian home, Ava wasn’t allowed to wear trousers until she turned sixteen. Makeup? Worldly. Parties? Devil’s playground. Relationships? A distraction from destiny.

She could still remember the Sunday morning sermons with sweat beading on the pastor’s forehead as he shouted about purity, sin, Jezebels and modesty. The way the church aunties would eye teenage girls who wore lip gloss like they were already pregnant. The unspoken rule, If something happened to you, it was because you invited it.

So Ava grew up small. Careful. Controlled.

She memorized scriptures instead of song lyrics.

Learned to lower her gaze instead of her standards.

Prayed every night that God would make her “clean,” even though she hadn’t done anything to feel dirty for.

Her father had walked out when she was ten, and her mother had spent the last decade using the Bible as both shield and sword.

“You are all I have,” she would say, tears in her eyes. “You will not end up like me.”

Ava had taken that to heart. She had been the perfect daughter. The straight-A student. The prayer warrior. The soft-spoken girl who never questioned rules. Who dressed modestly. Who never looked boys in the eye too long.

But that was the surface. Underneath it?

There was a whole storm she never spoke about.

Questions she swallowed. Desires she denied.

Rage she journaled instead of screamed.

Because no one wanted to hear the good girl confess that sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to not be good. To stop being a role model and just be... real.

It started in High school. The first time she felt something stir inside her while reading a romance novel a classmate had smuggled in. She hadn’t even made it halfway through the story before tossing it aside in panic and praying for forgiveness.

But the curiosity didn’t go away. Neither did the shame.

She became obsessed with control, perfection, routine and discipline.

If she was perfect enough, obedient enough, holy enough, maybe she could shut that part of herself down completely.

Not until last night.

Xavier Hawthorn looked at her like she was a secret he wanted to ruin.

And she hated that he stirred something in her that the church never told her what to do with. She wasn’t supposed to feel hot. Or curious. Or hungry. But she did.

She bit her lip and shut the journal. This wasn’t who she was. She wasn’t the girl who stumbled into billionaire hotel rooms.

Ava shook the thoughts away and moved to her closet. She yanked out a long, cream-colored dress and threw on a jean jacket. Modest. Clean. Respectable. The kind of outfit her mother would approve of.

As she tied her scarf, her phone buzzed. A message from Mia:

Mia: “Girl where are you ? Don’t tell me you're skipping the mentorship meeting. The professor is here.”

Ava sighed, slung her tote bag over her shoulder, and headed out.

What she didn’t know was that fate wasn’t done with her yet.

Because the man she thought she’d never see again?

Was already looking for her.