I came to Callum Ashworth's estate to disappear for a while. Six weeks, one signature, a debt cleared for my family, and I'd be gone before anyone noticed I'd been there at all. That was the arrangement. That was supposed to be all it was.
Callum doesn't explain himself. He doesn't apologize for the cameras in the halls, the staff who report my every move, or the way he appears in doorways like he's been waiting for me to walk through them. He tells me, plainly, on the first night: I don't share what's mine, and while you're under this roof, you're mine. I should have walked out then. I told myself I would, every single day after.
But Callum Ashworth is not just controlling — he's haunted. Something happened in that house before I arrived, something the staff won't discuss and the locked east wing won't explain, and the longer I stay, the more I understand that his need to own every hour of my day isn't cruelty. It's the only way he knows how to keep something safe. Keep someone safe.
I wasn't supposed to want him back. I wasn't supposed to crave the weight of his attention or ache when he withdrew it. But six weeks isn't long enough to unlearn wanting a man like Callum — and by the time I understand what he actually lost in that east wing, and what he's terrified of losing again, I'm not sure I want to leave at all.
He calls it possession. I'm starting to think it might be the only kind of safety I've ever actually felt.