Return to Me: #1 Love Gone Rogue Series by Kahlin Rogue

Nikki
    “ O  
    h my God! It’s happening!” I exclaimed. “It’s finally happening.”
    I have been waiting for this day for a while now, but now that it has come, I am scared. I am alone, no one to help me keep calm or to stay with me or to help me get through the pain. No one there for me at all.
    However, it isn’t time to think about how pitiful my life is or how I wish things were different, that I’d made different choices. It was no time for self-pity.
    It was time to steel myself and be strong, because even though the ultimate sign hadn’t happened, my instincts told me it was about to happen and when they fired up, they were usually never wrong.
    Too bad I hadn’t listened to them at all in the first place because if I had, I wouldn’t be in this position at all. All those months of sorrow and heartbreak would have been avoided. Besides, the spasms running through my body at the moment led up to an obvious conclusion.
    I hobbled, as was my walking style these days, into my tiny bedroom, huffing and puffing all the way, hoping to quell a bit of the pain. I packed a bag with a few essentials, grabbed my purse and keys, and left my sparsely furnished apartment, biting my lip all the while and refusing to shed even a single tear despite the pain currently twisting inside me.
    It was a good thing my landlord had fixed the elevator because I didn’t think I would have been able to take the whole journey down the stairs. Good, it hurt! I almost sat down on the elevator floor but thought otherwise. It would be impossible to get stand back up. Why isn’t the damn elevator moving faster?
    By the time the elevator doors re-opened I had gotten some bit of relief from the pain, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long so I tried to hurry up. I held onto my bag tighter, took a deep breath, and walked out of the building.
    For a moment, the sunlight blinded me. For a moment, I thought that I was hallucinating, because as I walked outside, I saw a black limo. And the only person I knew that owned a limo was --- No, I don’t even want to think about it. That man wouldn’t be caught dead in this part of town and what would he be doing here anyway? It’s not likely that a mega-billionaire had any work to do in that run-down part of town. They were done, and he didn’t even want to see her again. He’d declared that himself.
    Nevertheless, my heart raced, and I felt the pounding in my ears. His last words to me rang through my mind, like a siren that just wouldn’t stop.
    “You are just a common whore, and I never want to see you again! Leave my house!”
    Really, it couldn’t be his limo. Yet somehow, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t move an inch, because despite what I wanted to believe, my heart knew otherwise. It had to be him. No, it was him, it was Damien Knight.
    Then, just like a movie where the star appears on his cue, the car door opened, and the man I had sworn never to see or talk to again got out. His dark hair still as ruffled as it always was, and his suit, just as pressed and perfect as if it just came from the runway. And not forgetting, Italian leather shoes. He never wore anything else, anything other than the very best. It was like his very own brand.
    I refused to look at his face. That face that I had fallen asleep to and woken up to as well. That face that I had stared at for hours on end.
    That face which the very last time I had seen it, was cold and unflinching as I was insulted and kicked out of the place I had come to call my home. The face which belonged to the man I had loved and lost; the man, who for all he claimed to love me, didn’t care about me at all. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have destroyed me like he did. He wouldn’t have looked me in the face and said all those terrible, soul-crushing things that made me feel like my heart was being ripped out.
    No, I would not look at that face.
    Suddenly, dragging me back to earth from the place I had drifted off to, and back to the reality of the