No Strings Attached

Chapter One

He took that away with his brutal words – he turned the entire thing into a fairytale. One of those creepy kinds that never made it to Disney – the ones with the really nasty endings.

He’d left her believing that that kind of love was a mirage – if it wasn’t reciprocated what use was it? He’d completely shattered her soul, and it didn’t seem to have crossed his mind the absolutely gut wrenching effect that that would do to her.

Nate had been her everything back then – her safe harbour in the shit storm tornado that was her life – and every whispered endearment – every proclamation of love and every single touch had carried hope.

And hope had been all she’d needed to drag her through those days, and all that pain – just the thought of him could block out every beating, every harsh word.

Love like that has a power of its own – it brings validation, a reason to carry on – it brings a source of peace in your soul on which you can centre your entire being so that its capable of enduring anything.

Taking that away was the worst thing anyone had ever done to her – it didn’t matter what his reasons had been. And it’s not like he’d ever tried to put it right – four years is a long time to cast somebody adrift like that – somebody broken and damaged and completely alone.

She didn’t suppose it had ever occurred to him that, to somebody like her, those words would be more than a clean break – those words would imply that she wasn’t worth that kind of love, and never would be.

Groaning, she unfolded her body from the car, pulling her overnight stuff from the back seat she willed her mind not to go where it was on its way to.

She couldn’t turn around four years of bitter words, and hostile gazes, just because he decided now to tell her it was lies. All sounded very West Side Story, and there was nothing more that one corner of her soul would love than to run to him, that it was all just one great big misunderstanding and they’d all live happily ever after.

But this wasn’t a Mills and Boon, and Romeo never called Juliet a whore – at least from what she could remember.

Maybe he’d never registered what his saying that had done to her – maybe he didn’t care as much as he led them all to believe, he would have to save face in front of Tori, after all. Maybe that whole thing about it being a lie was another pack of lies? It didn’t entirely make any sense, there were still shadows in the logic that could never be erased. Protecting her was one thing, but it didn’t feel like that’s what he’d done at all.

She’d been broken when he told her those words – for weeks they had been planning to leave – and they’d finally saved up enough money to get to Gretna Green, where she could legally be married at seventeen without her parents’ consent. Every day for almost eighteen months, he’d made her say the words to him - make the vows, so often in fact, that she already felt bound to him and she didn’t see what difference a ring would make to her at all, but he was completely insistent.

He’d demanded her complete submission to him – body, heart and soul she was to be his, and the getting married part of events seemed to be the last thing he needed. For her, she already felt as though she was complete. Once he touched her, she belonged to him simply because he chased everything else out of her heart and completely consumed her.