Chloe’s POV
The silence was louder than any screaming match. Three days. It had been exactly seventy-two hours since Drake had left me trembling in that hotel room, dictating the terms of our affair like a corporate merger. “You do not text me. You do not call me. You wait until I tell you when and where. You are mine, but you will only exist for me on my terms.”
I was drowning in those terms.
Every buzz of my phone, every notification, sent a jolt of raw anxiety through me, only for it to be Hilda asking if I wanted takeout or a spam email. I felt like a creature caged, waiting for its master to drop a scrap of food. It was pathetic, but the hunger, for him, for the power he held over me, for the danger was absolute.
I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to dissec
