Page 2 of Unwritten Rules

Satisfied that I have everything of value, I rapidly stride to the entryway to find Wetherby, with my still-drenched coat in hand, by the front door.

“Sir, please…”

I hold up a quelling hand, halting his speech immediately.

“I shan’t require any of my personal items, Wetherby. Please see that my quarters are secured and that Miss Harrison returns my mother’s engagement ring before she leaves.”

He moves to drape my coat over my shoulders, a sad, pensive look on his familiar face. “Sir.” His voice drops to a whisper. “Nathaniel, it has been an honour to watch you grow into such a wonderful young man.”

My heart, or what’s left of it, clenches in my chest, and I offer him a terse nod before ducking out into the wild winter storm that’s got nothing on the storm raging inside me.

CHAPTER 1

MILA

FOUR MONTHS AGO

My body jolts to awareness, sweat and tears mingling across my face as I desperately try to slow my pounding heart and racing thoughts.

I reach for my phone, knowing precisely who to call – who I’ve always called in the past – when the nightmares return.

My thumb hovers over his name as awareness returns to my sleep-addled brain and his words echo excruciatingly in my ears.

“I’m not into fucking little girls.”

“Now run along, Hellcat. It’s past your bedtime.”

A lump catches in my throat as I try to swallow down the ache that those words fill me with. My eyes fill with a new influx of tears for a memory more painful than those I relive in my nightmares.

I allow myself sixty seconds. One minute to grieve the loss of the most beautiful friendship I could ever have wished for – thrown away in a moment of temporary insanity.

A moment where I’d all but begged my brother’s best friend to kiss me in some ill-conceived hope that my feelings, hopes, and desires were somehow reciprocated.

Dashing the tears from my lower lashes using the back of my hand, I throw off the cover and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I grab my mobile phone, toss a white satin robe over my shoulders, and stride into the open-plan living area of my new London penthouse.

Pacing up and down in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that stare across the London skyline, I blow out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding.

Fuck’s sake! What are you doing?

It would have been easier and much less lonely to have just taken my brother, Henry, up on his offer to move in with him and his wife, Liv. But I’d needed space from everything that reminded me of making the greatest mistake of my life.

In the six months that had passed since Henry and Liv’s beautiful wedding – where I’d fucked things royally – I’d carried on as though everything was perfectly fine. As though Nate packing up and moving to fucking Surrey was an everyday occurrence that in no way, shape, or form bothered me.

I’d visited my other brother, Alex, in New York.

I’d helped my best friend, Eliza, get settled at school.

I’d thrown myself headfirst into helping a newly pregnant Liv with her brand-new non-profit. Katherine’s House is a halfway home for London’s homeless funded by my family’s company, DeMarco Holdings, a global entertainment giant led by my savvy eldest brother, and our father before him.

I’d followed my heart, enrolling in university here in London rather than following in my siblings’ footsteps to work at DeMarco, despite having worked there on and off during previous years.

But none of it could ease the soul-deep sadness that permeated me and soaked into my being when I allowed myself to stop running from the past. When I let myself remember how things could have been had I not misread all the signs.

If I’d not misread his kindness and thoughtfulness as something that it clearly was not.

Heaving a heavy sigh of remorse, I stop my incessant pacing. Once I’ve stilled, my eyes land on my rose-gold Mac sitting on the marble countertop of the kitchen island.

Crossing the distance, I’m already opening it and signing in before my ass has touched one of the high stools surrounding the island.