Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

“Not quite,” she whispered. “But I’ll be on my way in five

minutes.”

Chapter 19

Claire

The fact that it was the middle of the night didn’t mean

anything to her. Claire had spent every single one of the past

four days since sending Haley home doing nothing but

restlessly wandering the house. When she wasn’t restless in

body, she was restless in mind. She’d sit for hours, staring into

blank space, seeing nothing, lost in memories.

It was the first time in a long time that those memories were

pleasant ones. That made them hurt so much worse. One

single good memory could be far more cutting than all the bad

ones combined.

She felt like she was coming apart. All the neat stiches

holding her

in line were splitting open. She was oozing at the

seams. She was destroyed at those neat little black lines of

thread that were becoming so increasingly messy.

Her sister called. She didn’t answer. Her mom called. She

put her off. The stacks of paperwork on her desk should have

been growing like the number of emails in her inbox. She

missed meetings. People from the company called. They left

messages that she didn’t return. She didn’t leave the house.

She was afraid of anyone seeing her the way she was. She

didn’t look at herself in the mirror. She was afraid of seeing

herself.

Wrecked.

In less than a month, a twenty-one-year-old had wrecked

everything she’d so carefully assembled herself into being. It