“Miss Elena are you truly in love with Brandon?” an old man with a white beard asked. No…but for the sake of repaying my debt…yes…“It’s a little embarrassing to say it out loud but…I am indeed very much in love with him. Unlike my first marriage, I hope with all my heart that my second marriage will be for love and no other reason,” I said before smiling humbly and then bowing my head slightly. Glancing up, I could tell that the board members seemed satisfied with my response. Various of them nodded. Even if they didn’t like my story, I was sure that they at least believed that Brandon and I are dating right now. “I guess that’s more than enough interrogation for my beautiful girlfriend for the day. I wouldn’t want to put a frown on her pretty face,” Brandon cut in as he could sense that the audience seemed to have had their fill. Suddenly, Brandon wrapped his arms around my waist and began hugging me from behind to the surprise of everyone in the room. I turned my head back a li
“I wonder if it’s still there…” I mumbled to myself. There used to be a sweet shop a short walk from our university where Brandon and I would drop by often for me to restock my supply of sweet goodies. The old couple that ran that shop was a loving couple and they always gave me free extras. Brandon would tease me about getting fat or rotting my teeth out from eating too many candies. However, whenever I got depressed or we got into a fight, he would buy me candies from that store to cheer me up all the time. “The store? It’s not…sadly,” Brandon replied. “Really?” I exclaimed with disappointment as I turned to face him. “Yeah, I checked…” he replied with certainty. He checked? Did he go back there just to check on it? I looked at Brandon as he casually picked up a pink heart-shaped lollipop. Just like back then, the cute candy doesn’t seem to fit his image when he held it in his hand. I was going to ask him why he went back to check but I decided not to. “That’s too bad. Well,
“Thank you so much, Brandon. I would have liked to say that I didn’t want it back, but I guess I do. I know I don’t need these luxurious things after I lost them, but it still feels so good to see them all back together like this…” I thanked him honestly. “You always hated losing your things, right?” Brandon whispered from above my head. His tone was so gentle that it brought tears to my eyes. This is bad, I’m going to start crying for real.“Thank you…” I whispered as I stared up into his grey eyes. “Don’t start crying. You’re supposed to be over the moon happy about this and you better be. This all costed a small fortune,” Brandon said in a mocking huff. I smiled knowingly at him. It was a small miracle that he managed to buy back everything for me; however, that didn’t mean that I felt comfortable taking it back. “You know, I’m just glad that the collection has been kept together. However, I don’t think I can accept this gift after all,” I said honestly. “Who says I’m handing
“Yes, we have seen parts of the script before accepting the offer for EROS to star in the movie. Regarding the issue…” Mark began inquiring once again about the issue mentioned. I was starting to see the issue that he wanted to discuss now because if I remembered correctly, EROS’s problem was…“Honestly, we’re not sure if EROS can adequately express deep love, desperate longing, and passion on screen. I know that EROS has been successful in many movies prior to this but they were all action movies,” the director raised his concern. “What do I have to do to prove that I am capable of taking on the role?” EROS asked. I was so shocked that he actually spoke that I almost gasped out loud. EROS sounded serious and I could tell that he was determined to get casted in this movie no matter what. “There’s a new scene that the scriptwriter just adapted for me. Of course, it’s a love scene. I’ll pass the script onto you, and I want you to act it out for me. That’s all,” the director said sim
Despite my brilliant display of courage in front of EROS, the issue of the script bothered me greatly. That night, I ate almost a pint of ice cream by myself as I sat on the floor of my room and leaned my back against my bed. I hated my stress-eating habits. Honestly, I’ve never succumbed to this before in years. It wasn’t even this bad when George passed away. I stuffed another spoonful of ice cream into my mouth before sucking on the spoon, feeling the cold stainless against my tongue. That night I went to sleep with dreams of various scenes that might appear in the script that the director would mail over. I thought my imagination had run quite wild in my dreams as I dreamt up various classic romantic scenes from movies that I’ve seen before. However, I was about to find out that my imagination couldn’t beat that of a professional scriptwriter. The next day was another day with EROS and his manager at the agency. Since I didn’t sleep very well the night before, I had a slight hea
“Let’s start reading the lines. We’re not physically acting it out yet but try your best to put emotion into your voice. This is a very emotional scene. She just lost her parents, she is scared, she is devastated so on and so forth. EROS, you try your best to comfort her,” Doreen instructed. My hand clenched harder around the script as I felt increasingly dizzy. I tried not to look down at the lines, instead, I looked over at EROS. “Ok…” he said. “Let’s start. I’ll be Naomi for you because you have to be Dylan. From the top please,” Doreen said. “Naomi…are you ok?” EROS said, basically reading the script. Doreen frowned by decided to go on. “I’m so scared. I don’t know what happened. Why did my parents…” Doreen said while sobbing. She wasn’t crying but it sounded like she was. Wow…“Let’s go to my room for now,” EROS said emotionlessly. Doreen sighed softly but decided to continue. “Thank you for helping me…” Doreen mumbled sadly. “Have you called the police?” EROS asked. Su
“I chased her off. She’s useless…” EROS repeated. I didn’t know what to say so I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open. She was a professional and how she read her lines was very emotional while he sounded like a monotonous robot! At this rate, I couldn’t imagine how EROS was going to land the lead role in this movie. Tonight, I’m going to binge on his past movies just to confirm that he didn’t suck this badly in any of those.“Unbelievable…” I muttered underneath my breath. I took in a deep breath before I strode out of the toilet back to the hallway. EROS followed after me with a laugh. …It’s Sunday so why the hell am I here?! In all my life I have never worked and now I’m doing some serious overtime on a Sunday which was the only day that I had left to myself. This only confirmed what I should have known when I signed my contract with EROS: this is a complete and utter disaster. **Last night**I was in the shower and my phone just wouldn’t stop ringing. At first, I d
EROS nodded and sat down next to me on the sofa. He sat down so close to me that our thighs were practically touching. I scooted over a little to put some space between us, but my effort was thwarted when EROS moved over as well. In the end, we had our thighs pressed against each other again. “Where’s your script?” I asked, eager to start so that we can get this over and done with as soon as possible. “Before that, can you tell me what really happened yesterday?” EROS asked. “What are you referring to exactly?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t want to recall the episode from yesterday or tell him about it. “When you walked out, you had a very troubled look on your face. I could be wrong, but it looked like you had seen a ghost. You looked…so scared…” EROS said softly as his golden eyes met mine. My heart skipped a beat, and I wasn’t certain if it was because of his maddeningly hot looks or the genuinely worried expression in his eyes. “It’s nothing,” I replied as I broke eye contact
“What are you sorry about, Elena? Are you sorry for turning me down?” he asked.His cold and very calm tone made my body tremble, and I could feel myself sweating from my own nervousness. I wanted to answer him but then I realized that I didn’t know what I was sorry for. “Please let me go home. I’ll make it up to you another day,” I said to excuse myself for the day. I turned to reach for the car door and once again I felt his grip on my arm pulling me back. It was rare for Brandon to act persistent like this, and it just made me want to scream at him out of frustration. I whirled around to face him ready to do just that.“What is it that you really want?” I spat. “To have sex with you,” he replied smoothly.“You know well that that isn’t want I’m talking about…” I said through clenched teeth as my frustration quickly turned to anger. “What’s wrong, Elena? If you can do it with him in the hospital, surely, you can do it with me here in the car…” he said as he stared at me with a v
The lights turned green, and we were on our way again. Our brief yet intense conversation came to a pause. We were getting close to the intersection where Brandon would usually let me off so that I could walk back to my place. The night felt darker than normal, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of my mood or not. Not a lot of cars were on the road which thankfully made the traffic lighter than normal. “Should we go to your room? It’s supposed to be really close by, isn’t it?” he suggested seductively. I turned to give him a curious look. His sudden question came out of nowhere and it surprised me even more to find that he seemed quite serious about it. My lips curved into a smile before I automatically began laughing it off as a passing comment that didn’t mean anything. “Thanks for driving me back,” I said as I reached for the door. There was no point in delaying my departure any further. We had arrived at the spot where I was supposed to get off and so I should do exactly th
“Yes, and I like it that way as long as I’m the only one buying,” he replied without missing a heartbeat. I bit hard on my lower lip when I had to admit to myself that I had asked him the wrong question and had invited this misfortune upon myself. His hand around mine felt warm and his grip was firm as he pulled me after him toward his car. Something told me that he wasn’t kidding when he said that. I let out a sigh when I resigned myself to following him silently to his car. Fortunately, there weren’t many cars on the road and traffic was extremely light. That meant that it wouldn’t take too long for him to drop me off so that I could walk back to my place. It wasn’t like I was scared of him, but I did feel uncomfortable being in the enclosed space of the car with him alone. The revealing and brightly colored dress that I had on did not make me feel better and I wondered why I wasn’t smart enough to opt for a pair of pants and matching blazer instead. Everything might have been in
The desire that I sensed in his intense gaze made my heartbeat quicken despite the many times that I told myself silently in my head to remain calm. My lips felt dry, and my tongue instinctively moved to lick my lower lip. “Thanks for the advice, I guess. If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave so you can get back to whatever it was you were working on,” I muttered softly as I tried my best to excuse myself. “One more thing before you go,” he said to halt my departure.This time it was Brandon who got out of his seat. I turned my head around as he walked toward the worktable in the room. To my surprise, he returned with a box. Brandon came to stand right in front of me before shoving the box toward me. “What is this?” I asked with a hint of suspicion. “Open it and you’ll see,” he said without answering my question. “Ok…” I murmured while feeling slightly confused. It was so like Brandon to be mysterious about everything. With what had just happened between us, I didn’t think
Maybe, just maybe, things would have turned out differently if he hadn’t left me. If we never broke up, my life might have been better or more normal. I was very tempted to think that it was his fault that I ended up the way I was. If I had been younger and less experienced, I would have thought exactly that. That it was all because he dumped me that I was forced to marry George to save my family’s face. Back then, I was too heartbroken to think straight or resist my parent’s proposal. The man that I chose out of my own free will had betrayed me and suddenly left. I was too shocked to even face reality and the mistake that I made. It made me lose all self-confidence that I could make any correct decisions in my life and that perhaps, my parents were the ones who knew better. If I had been younger, I would have pinned everything on Brandon as his fault. However, I was no longer that young, fresh, and green. I looked up and I couldn’t hold in my giggle and ended up laughing softly at
There were many things that I needed to apologize for, and I was certain that he knew that already. It was unfortunate, but I wasn’t in a position with a whole lot of bargaining power, and he absolutely knew that as well. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he wanted to hear me say it, then I had no other choice but to say it. “That day at the hospital, I was unprofessional. Although I was supposed to be working for you, I ended up serving another client when we happened to run into each other…” I said before I pressed my lips tightly into a thin line. My throat and my lips felt dry, and I had to run my tongue along my lower lip. Brandon did not say anything, and he did not seem at all impressed at my attempt to do things his way. His eyes stared coldly at me, and I knew that he was waiting for me to go on. “This is all still kind of new for me, and yes, I know that it’s not a great excuse, but I didn’t know how to handle running into two of my clients at the same time. I panicked…” I
Just as I had expected, within the already very private space was another level of privacy when he led me to a private room. Once again, I began to wonder what exactly Brandon had planned. Although he appeared the way that he always did, I couldn’t deny that the atmosphere between us was unusually tense. I wondered if he also felt the way that I did or if I was the only one who felt unusually stiff while we were together. “Sit anywhere you like,” he instructed casually as he gestured to the large set of white sofas in the middle of the room. My eyes scanned the pristinely white and modern interior of the private room that we were in. Apart from the large sofa set that was in the middle of the room, there was a very large shiny white work desk with a matching white leather chair. Brandon must have been working in this room before my arrival because his laptop still had its lid open on the table. “I didn’t know that you liked working in shared working spaces nowadays…” I said to make
Brandon was definitely the heir to the largest chain of casinos on top of hotels for sure. Brandon never played any game unless he was the gamemaster. I have never seen him lose a bet before either in my life. George was seriously a fool to think that he could win against Brandon and at his own casino at that. So now, what game is he going to make me play?The only way to find out was to ask him. I thought that that was ironic in and of itself. If I had to pick, then I would say that I would prefer not to see Brandon. Although what happened was more my fault than his, my desire to hide away from him outweighed my rational sense and reason to want to meet him. Before I would chicken out and change my mind, I took out my phone and sent a simple text to Brandon. ‘Where and when do you want to meet me?’ I counted silently in my mind to around twenty as I stared at my phone screen. Just as I had anticipated, Brandon sent me back a reply within that timeframe. Had he been expecting for m
“About that trip to the orphanage that we were talking about…” he began before looking at me as if to gauge my reaction. “I’d still love to go if you still want me to,” I replied almost immediately. “Really?” Adrian asked with such an excited look on his face. Suddenly, he appeared much younger and a lot more innocent. Just like an excited little boy who had successfully invited his friend on a trip, he beamed a smile at me. With what had happened between us, maybe he thought that I would have changed my mind about going on a trip with him. If he was someone else, that might have turned out to be the case. However, if I was being honest, I really looked forward to going on that trip with him. It wasn’t just because it was a chance to spend more time with Adrian, but the idea of visiting orphanages felt like the right thing to do for me. Getting in contact with my past life might do me some good and help me figure out something about my sense of self and who I was. After being adop