**Chapter 68**

ELLIE'S POV

I didn’t take the lingerie off right away.

I lay there in the dark with the red lace still cutting into my skin and Richard’s voice playing on a loop in my head. *Dressed like a whore.* The words sat heavier than the silence coming from the guest room down the hall. I could still feel the shape of them, sharp and deliberate, like he had chosen the one word that would cut the deepest. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew early light was leaking through the curtains and my phone was buzzing on the nightstand.

Nathan.

**Can...