What Grows Dies Here

One person wasn’t dead set on me healing, going back to who I once was.

One man. The one who knew me better than anyone, knew he couldn’t change what was broken inside of me. The only man I’d ever loved. The only man I ever would love.

He’d take me now, exactly as I was. He wouldn’t make me feel less than, broken, tawdry, ruined.

But I’d feel that nonetheless. I’d feel all of those things. To an unbearable extent if I had to look into his eyes, see the unconditional love there.

So I was here, trying to heal. Trying my best to stay away from the only man I’d ever love. Trying to stop myself from dragging him down with me.

PART ONE

WHAT GREW HERE

CHAPTER ONE

THREE YEARS EARLIER

Champagne Problems – Taylor Swift

At first, I wanted him merely because I knew he was going to be a challenge. He had a marble façade, didn’t seem outwardly impressed by me. That in and of itself interested me. Not to be vain or anything, but men were generally impressed by me. I was beautiful. Our society doesn’t want women acknowledging their own beauty. If we did, we were conceited, vapid, superficial. Beyond that, there were billions to be made in the beauty industry. In order to make that money, women needed to be constantly criticizing themselves, looking for ways to hide things, create beauty in accordance with society’s standards.

Now, that is not to say I hadn’t been complicit in this system. I liked makeup, high heels, spending thousands on hair, lingerie, clothes and eye creams imported from France. I liked being beautiful. Which is something I’d never say out loud, of course.

But I was beautiful, and I was used to men noticing that. I was used to getting what I wanted. Who I wanted. Without much effort.

I was spoiled, in every sense of the word.

Men came easy, yet the second I laid eyes on him, I knew he wouldn’t. Knew he’d be a battle, knew this wasn’t a man to worship at my altar just because I had good bone structure and great tits. I knew it from the way his eyes had barely flickered over me before dismissing me, focusing on his job, which happened to be my best friend. I was itching for a challenge.

Beyond that, I was attracted to him. In a way I’d never been attracted to a man before in my life. Because I’d never been presented with a man. Not as carnally as I was when Karson stood on the sidewalk and stared me in the eyes. Something inside of me awakened when our eyes met.

Yes, that seems cliché and totally unbelievable, especially when it comes to someone like me, prone to embellishment and dramatics.

But even if I told the story of Karson and I in the blandest possible way, it would defy belief.

Now, I’d lived a pretty extraordinary life to say the least. I grew up surrounded by wealth and riches, immersed in a lifestyle that only one percent of the world’s population understood. I never knew struggle. Never knew hunger. I knew it in the sense that I was perpetually on a diet but couldn’t fathom that there were millions of people in the world who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.

No. I traveled the world in a private jet, without asking permission from my parents because they didn’t much care what I was doing as long as they could pay to get me out of whatever situations I put myself in.

And my family had enough money to buy me out of every situation I’d been in. Which was really saying something, considering the amount of international incidents I’d been involved in.

But I knew the second I locked eyes with him that there was no amount of money or power in the world that could save me from this man.

The first time I met Karson, he was trying to spirit one of my best friends off the street after a kickboxing class.

My best friend, who was tangled up with some billionaire who was involved in the criminal underworld. The one who propositioned her in a nightclub. A sex arrangement. You couldn’t write that shit.

My protective instincts had kicked in when a large, menacing—albeit attractive—man demanded Stella get in a car with him so he could take her to the man who propositioned her in the nightclub.

My friend Stella, who had been attacked the month before that. Almost raped. My friend Stella with a kind, gentle heart who was doing her best to act like she was okay when I saw she really wasn’t. And it broke my fucking heart.

And pissed me the fuck off.

A man. A piece of shit man could break off a piece of my precious friend, change her fundamentally because he thought he had the right. Because he thought he was entitled.

And here, on the street was another man thinking he was fucking entitled to do something like demand a woman get in a car. Furthermore, the man who employed him thought that he had enough power and prestige to make Stella want to get in the car.

I’d been all for the sex arrangement initially. Although a man was initiating the arrangement, Stella would’ve had the power. Because this man was obviously infatuated by her. Infatuated enough to have her pulled off a dance floor and propose sex. It wasn’t exactly politically correct in the current climate, but I thought Stella needed some excitement in her life. Needed some sexual freedom. Her sex life before had been so very vanilla.