Inner modelPov: MaddisonMy stomach dropped as I peered out of the window of the shiny luxury car as we rolled into a parking spot and caught sight of the building that was going to be my photoshoot studio for the day.Yes, you heard me. Photoshoot studio.Thanks to Mr Winston, Mighty persuasion from Olivia and Kat and my deep rooted love for money, I decided to do the shoot after all and abandon ship if I didn't like the end product.Really, it was a win win. I get to try out being a model and get paid. And if I flop trying out to be a model, I still get paid for the time and effort... Just a little less than I would have gotten paid if I had gone all the way.Mr Winston drove me himself and looked over to me as I struggled to get out of my seatbelts. "Have you ever done this before?" Came his kind, yet domineering voice."No." I admitted. "Not really.""It's going to be okay. I'll make sure you're comfortable in there," he assured me. He reached out to take my hand, but thinking be
Concussions and oraclesPov: WinstonIt was a long drive to the doctor's office with Maddison yowling and mewling like a frustrated kitten in the passenger seat. From her movements and speech, she was dizzy, unbalanced, and incoherent and kept crying about how I didn't have to do this for her. She was fine, it was just a fall, she just needed to go home and sleep it off and it will all be better.But she was downplaying how hard she had fallen. I had seen it and I swear, an earthquake ripped through my chest when I saw how her head had bounced against the floor and made a BANG sound.There was a large bump on her head, an actual swelling the size of a tennis ball.I had felt around her head to check if her skin was broken and she had shrugged me away insisting that she was fine... And tried to stand on her feet. She swayed and would have fallen again if I hadn't reached out to grab her.Dr Collins was a good friend of mine. He had been over the years and the only human so far that I h
MakeoversPov: Maddison"Madday!!!!!" Olivia yelled, pounding on the door of my room. "Hurry your ass out here! I booked an appointment with the hair stylist at YOUR request! And we're running late!""I'm coming! I'm coming!" I yelled back, not too loud so that I don't get another headache.I looked at myself one last time in the vanity and resisted the urge to look away.These days, I could look at myself without being uncomfortable with my reflection. Without finding things that I wanted to change about myself... However, these days, my embarrassment came from the memory of what Mr Winston and I did in the examining room of his personal doctor.My heart started racing. My cheeks flushed red. I was going to die of an embarrassment so potent, it was searing the skin off my bones.And the only thing that began running through my mind was Oh shit oh shit oh shit HOLY SHIT! WHAT DID I DO?! WHY DID I DO THAT?!The reality of what I had done didn't really set in until the next day when I w
Strangers and secretsPov: MaddisonI woke up to Kat shaking me awake."Maddie," she called me, her voice, a little too loud and a little too fearful for this time of the day. "The apartment landline was blowing up and I picked the call. There's someone on the line asking for you."I roused into consciousness and looked at her in annoyance for waking me up from a perfectly good dream.She was wearing a loose sweater, the collar stretched and falling down her left shoulder and she was wearing her reading glasses and a giant accounting textbook was stuck under her armpit, in between the side of her arm and the side of her torso and I remembered that she and Olivia took night and evening classes in NYU, three times a week, trying to get their master's degree.She was handing the phone to me and it was shaking in her grasp. The cold, unadulterated fear etched in her eyes made me sit up, albeit sleepily, and take the phone from her hand, groggy and sleepy eyed. I sat up, resting my back ag
Second chancesPov: MaddisonI believed in second chances and William did too and that was the only thing keeping us together at this point, because we should have broken up and gone our seperate ways a long time ago.But I was a lover. A weak one at that. All I knew how to do was love. And all I have ever done is love and remain loyal... but the universe is shitty to people like me, people,who all they know how to do is love and I had a history of repeated heartbreaks and relationship trauma to prove it."I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he kept hugging me close and whispering into my hair. "I'm so sorry, Maddie. I don't want you to leave. I never want you to leave. I'm working on myself and I want to be better for you. I want to be better for us. I want to be better for our future kids. I never want to lose you."I closed my eyes and sighed into his chest. He was saying all the right things... He had said all the right things before and I had let him back only to break m
LeakedPov: WinstonMaddie was avoiding my gaze and i didn't know why.It troubled me. It troubled me a whole lot than I was letting on.She was walking at my side as we walked from the building where I just had a meeting with my board of investors and we were making our way to the car."What's next on my schedule?" I asked her as we got seated in the backseat of my Sedan.I noticed that she pressed herself into a tiny little corner, leaving ample space between the both of us and pushed herself up against the door, her knees together, her fingers clenching her iPad in a tight grip.I almost felt sorry for the poor device.She sat up, almost as if she had been zapped by lightning, at the sound of my voice... Something she had been doing all day, sitting upright, standing straighter, clenching her stomach, fisting her hands... Almost like she was scared of me.But i didn't understand, why would she be scared of m–And then it all came coming back to me.The night I had dropped her off a
ProfessionalPov: MaddisonTurns out that trying to be more professional with Mr Winston was harder than I thought. For starters, he was totally fine with my decision to do a complete one eighty on him.He kept his distance from me. He didn't even look my way. He didn't ask if I was fine or if I slept well. There were no covert looks. No warm smiles. No lasting gazes. No inside jokes. No more inviting me to his office to have lunch with him. There was none of that.I should love this. This was what I wanted, right? This was what I asked for... Right?I sighed as I walked into the building that morning. Olivia greeted me with a cheery wave and smile and I had smiled back tightly at her and kept on working, not wanting to strike a conversation with her...I wasn't in the mood. I walked into the elevator and pushed the button to take me to the suite reserved just for Mr Winston. I got off the elevator the moment I arrived and went to get those early reports printed, made his early morn
Decisions and RepercussionsPov: MaddisonWe finished up our lunch and were heading back to the office in Olivia's Mercedes, since she had carpooled all of us in her car."Speaking on this Mr Winston topic–" Olivia said, strapping herself to her seat and reapplying her lip gloss, whipping open her compact mirror she carried along with her all the time.A cold chill tickled my spine and my ribcage felt like it was constricting my lungs and heart until it became almost impossible to breath and my heart was skipping beats in my chest. "How're you two getting along?" She asked, touching up her mascara and wiping an inexistent smudge from the corner of her lips. "It's best you two maintain a good relationship so that I can get employee benefits for Mr Winston being hopelessly in love with you. String him along if you have to, until i get my money's worth, ya hear?" She said, snapping her compact mirror close and adjusting herself in her seat to key in the ignition.Kat turned around in he