The Arrogant Young Lady’s Awakening Chapter 02

The Arrogant Young Lady’s Awakening Chapter 02

“No need.”

The elevator doors slid open. I stepped inside.

Whitman froze on the threshold like he’d just seen a ghost.

He clearly hadn’t expected me to ever, in this lifetime, be this reasonable.

After all, in the past, I had never waited for an announcement.

I’d kicked doors in.

Once, when Adrian was running a board meeting, I’d marched in with soup in hand, climbed into his lap in front of fifteen shareholders, and asked him sweetly why he wasn’t answering my texts.

The whole boardroom had gone dead silent. Adrian’s face had gone glacial.

Back then, I’d thought it was great fun.

He didn’t acknowledge me.

He didn’t love me.

It twisted me up inside.

So I made him pay in public humiliation.

As long as we were tangled together, I told myself, that was enough.

Pearl Langford had never lost anything she set her sights on.

September in this city felt like a sauna.

The wet heat slammed into my face the moment I stepped out, flipping the hem of my skirt up.

The driver had already pulled up to the entrance.

He saw me and rushed out to open the door.

“Where to, Miss?”

I slid into the back seat and thought for a moment.

“The Hamptons.”

Adrian’s house. Our first house.

The one we got married in.

I hadn’t been there in a long time.

The car pulled out of Midtown and headed onto the parkway.

I rolled the window halfway down.

Hot wind whipped my hair across my face.

I didn’t bother fixing it.

I just sat there, a mess.

My phone buzzed.

Adrian.

“Whitman said you came by the office.”

“Why didn’t you come in?”

I waited several seconds. Didn’t reply.

How was I supposed to reply?

Tell him I’d seen him being tender with another woman?

Or tell him I’d just realized that maybe—for the first time—there was something Pearl Langford couldn’t have?

Forget it.

I locked the screen.

The comments scrolled in again.

“She’s not replying??? Pearl Langford, the Pearl Langford, isn’t replying to Adrian???”

“Sun rose in the west today. Used to be, if Adrian took two minutes to respond, she’d call and chew him out.”

“She’s probably plotting how to lose her mind.

With her personality, seeing him with our girl Vivienne would absolutely send her over the edge.”

“Side note though—Vivienne is so freaking gorgeous. That misty-blue dress today? Soft girl perfection. And the way Adrian tucked her hair back? I’ve replayed that gif eight hundred times.”

“Sob, they’re the real deal. My poor star-crossed babies.”

“Honestly, if Pearl had even a shred of self-awareness, she’d back off. Adrian and Vivienne had a thing in college. Now that they’ve reunited after years apart? She’s a nobody.”

“If she hadn’t used her dad’s money to extort him, he never would’ve married her.”

“Poor baby Adrian. Stuck with a psycho for three years.”

I stared at the words, thumb absently tracing the edge of my phone.

So her name was Vivienne.

College. They’d liked each other in college.

I let out a bitter laugh.

I tried to glean more from the comments—what does Adrian look like when he actually cares about someone?

Because that was a luxury I had begged for for three years and never received.

Unfortunately, the comments didn’t dwell on their past.

They just filled with one screaming demand: get out of his way.

The car kept gliding forward.

The comments kept spitting venom:

“Crazy bitch. Mental case dragging the male lead down with her.”

“Doesn’t she know that every time she touches him, the way his body recoils—that’s literal physical revulsion?”

Oh.

So that’s what it was. Revulsion.

No wonder, every time I’d dragged him into bed, he’d been rough enough to bruise me.

Hurt me.

Every single time.