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Back Because She Loves Me Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Ninteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Epilogue
  48. Letter From the Author
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the Author

I undressed and slipped into bed beside her. We held each other. My brain was whirring, popping. The emotional storm echoed in the room, keeping us awake. Soon, we were kissing silently, and Charlie shrugged off her T-shirt and I ducked beneath the quilt and pulled off her PJ bottoms, and then we were making love, wordless, intense sex where we couldn’t get close enough to each other, though we tried, kissing hungrily, pressing our bodies together as hard as we could bear, arms and legs wrapped tight, like we were trying to melt into one another. A corporeal bliss touched every inch of my skin, buffed away the emotional pain. It was the best sex we’d ever had.

Twenty-five

Twenty-five

I awoke in the early afternoon, lay there for a while listening to the rain lashing against the window. Charlie was deeply asleep and I left her there, hair splayed across the pillow, while I spent the next hour clearing up the mess she’d made during the night. I binned the wine bottles, threw away, with a flare of sad anger, the ripped-up picture of Sasha and me. When I’d finished I peeked into the bedroom: Charlie was still asleep, the picture of tranquil innocence. She’d slept through my futile attempts to scrub away the wine stain on the bedroom carpet.

I made myself a coffee and sat at my desk. I checked my phone. Sasha’s locks were changed and the police had been round. She had to go to the station to make a statement. She ended her text with Thank you so much for last night. I don’t know I’d have coped without you. Love S xx

My thumb hovered over the text. Should I delete it? If Charlie saw it, it might cause another outbreak of jealous rage. I put the phone down. I couldn’t start hiding things, modifying my behaviour. The moment I did that, our relationship would be tainted. Doomed.

But what was I going to do? I had seen glimpses of Charlie’s jealousy before, like with the girl in the park, but this? This was something new. Something deeply disturbing.

A friend of mine called Belinda, whom Sasha and I had known at uni, had a jealous boyfriend. She told us about him after they finally split up, because she said she was too ashamed to tell anyone while it was going on. She said that if she ever spoke to another man, if she was late home from work, if she got a message or a text from any other young male, he would go mad.