Page 23 of Ruin Me Gently

She didn’t move.

I sighed. “Right. Emotional support lizard, my ass.”

Life had been a relentless shitstorm, throwing me one thing after another with no sign of letting up.

The whole mess with Clark had only escalated. At first, it was direct. Blatant. He showed up at the bookstore in the first week after the gala with the same old tired script. Apologies, excuses, pleas for a second chance. I’d frozen like a deer in headlights, but Molly had squared up to him, and he’d left. Hadn’t shown his face since.

Instead, the gifts had ramped up. But not in his usual over-the-top, look-at-me bullshit style. This time, they were calculated. Less grandstanding, more subtle manipulation. Smaller, sneakier things. Little offerings left on my doorstep—lattes, croissants, what looked like handpicked flowers, the works. He’d even gone as far as to drop off a first edition of The Secret History—my favourite book. He’d probably broken into a cold sweat typing the title into a search bar.

And let’s not forget the literary quotes tucked into each gift, like he’d suddenly morphed into Lord Byron. This was the man who needed a teleprompter just to string together coherent sentences on-air, and now he was quoting the greats? Next joke.

Then fourdays ago, he’d taken it a step further by having lunch delivered for both me and Molly. I’d trashed it without second thought and headed out to buy my own. Only for some freak to then grab me in the middle of the street. Broad daylight. No explanation—just one word.

‘Bike.’

That was it. No context. No follow-up. Just that single, bizarre word before I put as much distance between us as possible, and booked it back to the store, moving fast but careful not to look like I was running and screaming on the inside.

When I told Molly the whole thing, she just laughed.

“I mean, was he at least hot?”

I scowled, but my brain betrayed me with a vivid flash of the guy—tall, broad-shouldered, face half hidden beneath a hood and a scarf. But his eyes…

Dark brown. The kind of brown that looked almost gold, like whiskey catching fire.

I hated that I’d noticed that.

Molly’s grin stretched wide. “Oh my God, he totally was. Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

“You’re missing the entire point,” I grumbled, but I told her all about it.

And then she was off, spinning it into some ridiculous enemies-to-lovers plot in her head while I tried—and failed—not to think about those stupid, pretty, stupid eyes.

But pretty-eye-bike-guy and Clark’s bullshit had surprisingly been the least of my worries.

Shipments had arrived late at work, sending my manager into a meltdown, which meant the entire store suffered. Then the author we had scheduled for a reading never showed, leaving an entire room of disappointed customers. Molly and I had been forced to scramble, throwing out impromptu book recommendations, and handing out free bookmarks and limited-edition pins just to avoid a riot.

It’d been exhausting.Everythinghad been exhausting.

A sudden bang against the door split through the quiet, sharp enough to drag me back to the surface.

Every nerve sprang to life on high alert.

The knock came again, louder this time.

“Lils, come on!”

Clark. Of course it was Clark. Speak of the damn devil.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I swallowed hard, willing the bile that was rising in my throat to go back down, but my body had already decided we were in full fight or flight mode.

The problem? I didn’t have anywhere to run, and my best self-defence move was passive-aggressively sighing at people until they left me alone.

Another knock—harder this time, more impatient.

“Lilith.”

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