Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
ScarletSins
Check here if you've moved on. I have a new apartment.
Check here if you've forgotten him. I write in coffee shops now.
This is my life. Normal. Safe. Boring. I date men who don't know my real name. I drink lattes and pretend I'm someone who drinks lattes.
Why am I doing this?
Because the alternative is admitting I'm still his.
Six months. No answers. No closure. No contact.
I'm fine.
Watcher
Check here if you've given her space. I follow from three cars back.
Check here if you've stopped watching. I've memorized her new coffee order.
This is my restraint. No cameras. No contact. No crossing the lines she drew. I watch her pretend to write. Pretend to date. Pretend to be someone who forgot me.
Why am I doing this?
Because she asked me to leave her alone.
Then she laughed at his joke.
And I remembered—I never agreed to let her go.
Some monsters know how to wait. Others just learn when to stop.
Second Chance Pitch Black
She Ran/He Followed
Jealous MMC
Stalker Hero
He Never Let Go
Obsessed
He Reads Her Books
She’s Mine
Touch Her and Find Out
Pitch Black MMC
Claimed by a Billionaire
The Chase
Age Gap
Power Imbalance
Did I Mention Pitch Black?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Scarletta
I'm half-awake when the words come.
They always come like this—slipping in through the cracks in my consciousness before I'm fully present, before I can judge them or shut them down.
Ivy stands outside the sleek black door of Velvet Underground, clutching the embossed invitation Logan slipped under her apartment door three days ago. Her hands shake. Inside, masked strangers are doing things nice girls don't think about. Things she's been thinking about for months.
"You won't actually go," Logan told her last week. He was leaning against the doorframe of her apartment with that infuriating smirk. "You'll fantasize about it. Write about it in that little journal you think I don't know about. But you won't walk through my door."
She hates that he's right.
She hates that her pussy is already wet just standing here.
My hand slides between my thighs on autopilot, fingers finding the familiar path. I press against my clit, trying to chase the heat. Trying to follow Ivy into Logan's club where masked attendants will strip her bare and—
Nothing.
I'm not even wet.
I keep trying anyway, circling my clit, waiting for my body to catch up to the story playing in my head. Ivy's embarrassment, her shame, her desperate need for Logan to see her—
Nothing.
I pull my hand away and stare at the ceiling of my new apartment.
Six months.
It's been six months since Story Island. Six months since I destroyed every camera. Six months since I've heard Caleb's voice.
Six months since I've been able to come.
I throw off the covers and get out of bed because what's the fucking point of lying here pretending?
The master bathroom gleams with imported Portuguese tiles—soft blues and whites arranged in geometric patterns that conjure up images of Saint Lawrence. The walk-in closet attached to it is mostly empty except for the few things I bought when I moved in, but I like what it represents. Space I could fill if I wanted to.
After I pee, I wander back out into the living room, my bare feet silent on the hardwood.
This apartment is four times the size of my old place. Twenty-five hundred dollars a month—that's what this much space costs in downtown Idaho Falls.
The walls are painted a sophisticated sage green with tan and ecru accent colors highlighting the baseboards and crown molding. The floors are dark walnut hardwood, polished to a subtle sheen, and the floor-to-ceiling windows are framed in six-inch wood boards stained to match.
Like an actual interior designer sat down and made deliberate choices instead of just slapping beige paint over everything and calling it done.
The building itself is gorgeous. A four-story brick walkup from the 1920s that used to be the town's central bank. Only four units total—one per floor. I'm on the third. My balcony is big enough for a full patio set, though I haven't bought one. Two bedrooms, two baths, and it came completely furnished with butter-soft leather couches in that same ecru tone and a dining table I've never used.
The whole place really is beautiful in a way that still makes me uncomfortable—like I'm house-sitting for someone who actually belongs here.
I drift toward the far window, the one facing south, and pull back the heavy curtain. Natural light spills across the hardwood, warm and golden even though it's barely past dawn. Beyond the glass, the view opens up—the Snake River Greenbelt unfurling like a ribbon of green through the downtown corridor, the water itself visible in slivers between tree branches. Early morning mist still clings to the surface, and I can just make out the shape of a jogger moving along the paved trail.
I stand there for a long moment, my forehead nearly touching the cool glass, watching the jogger disappear around the bend where the trail curves toward the Japanese Friendship Garden. The light shifts as the sun climbs higher, burning through the last of the mist, turning the river from pewter to something almost silver.
They say that a view like this can save you. That if you just look at something beautiful enough, peaceful enough, long enough—if you let the green and the water and the wide-open sky do their work—eventually the noise in your head will quiet down. Eventually you'll feel something other than the dull, persistent ache of going through the motions.
I'm counting on it.
Because I've tried everything else.
I turn away from the window, leaving the river view behind, and make my way back through the bedroom to the walk-in closet. I haven't accumulated much in the months I've been here, haven't felt the urge to fill it with things that might anchor me to this place more permanently than I'm ready for.
I pull on a pair of black running shorts with the kind of moisture-wicking fabric I never used to care about, then reach for the matching sports bra hanging on the hook beside them. The tank top is a muted shade of grey-blue that reminds me of storm clouds.