CLARA

My heart was racing wildly like that of a horse retreating from a bloody battlefield. One half of me—the side raised to be a perfect Huntington — screamed at me to throw the key, burn the note, and scrub the memory of Tyler Wills from my brain.

The other half, the part that had felt alive for the first time in years against a display table in a downtown shop, throbbed with a desperate, animalistic need.

Maybe it was simply because of the fact that I felt unloved. Maybe it was because I felt a desperate need to be seen, adored and ruined by a man that didn't see...