Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 188(@200wpm)___ 151(@250wpm)___ 125(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 188(@200wpm)___ 151(@250wpm)___ 125(@300wpm)
Fuck.
Most men only had lust in their eyes when they looked at her, and she had thought Ethan would be the same. In the years that would eventually pass, Guilia would often think back to this day and find herself thinking if only...
If only Ethan had been the same as the rest.
But instead, he had been different. Instead of lust, she had seen something else in his eyes. Something she had thought she would never see again.
And that had been the beginning of her downfall...and his.
TO SAY THAT THE WHOLE town disapproved of their relationship would have been the understatement of the century. Everyone thought Ethan Blackwood was too good for a bitch like Guilia Santos, and even worse, the supermodel seemed to go out of her way to prove them right.
In the beginning, the twins had been willing to give Guilia the benefit of the doubt despite their private misgivings. For Aidan, Guilia appeared too mercenary while Thornton thought her too sly. But because Ethan clearly loved the woman, the twins did their best to focus on what they remembered of Guilia in her younger years: proud, hardworking, and always giving as good as she got to those who tried to bully her.
Things changed, however, when disturbing rumors started to reach the twins' ears, and Aidan finally paid for a private investigator to look into Guilia's personal life.
When Ethan was confronted by his brothers with proof of Guilia's infidelity, it was like the past all over again, but instead of anger, he was filled with self-contempt. In his mind, it was his fault that Guilia had cheated, and he was grimly convinced that Guilia wouldn't have done the same thing if she were dating one of the twins.
GUILIA KNEW THE MOMENT she welcomed Ethan to her home that something had changed. Ethan was usually outrageously charming, and with the craziest ability to make her laugh nearly every second. No other man had done that, and in some ways, it had her hating him for making her feel so despicably human.
But this Ethan before her?
He was quiet and grim, and when she saw the bleakness in his gaze—-
He knew about Travis, she realized sickly.
And it was as if Ethan had heard her thoughts, with the way his lips tightened in seeming response.
"E-Ethan..."
"Tell me why, Guilia. Just fucking tell me why."
Oh God, if only it were that easy. If only her story was like a fairytale, and she could be sure there was a happy ending in the end.
If only it happened once upon a fucking time.
But it didn't.
It happened in the first place because she had been willing to sell her soul for fame. It happened again and again because apparently her soul hadn't been enough. And this time, it happened again because Travis simply didn't like seeing her happy.
"Guilia...please."
Guilia had the rarest urge to sob. She hadn't cried the first time Travis' dad told her she would have to become his whore before he gave her what she wanted, and she still hadn't shed a tear the night she had woken up from her first forced threesome. But the way Ethan was looking at her now...
The way Ethan so obviously still loved her despite what he knew...
If she broke things off with Travis, the other man would release all the footage he had of Guilia, and if she let that happen—-
Would Ethan still love her, she wondered hysterically, once he knew the truth?
The thought was too frightening to contemplate, and it was as if something snapped inside of her. Before she realized what she was doing, she had already dashed into the kitchen and sliced her wrist with a knife.
GUILIA HAD NOT SUCCEEDED in killing herself, but the Guilia Ethan used to know might as well have been dead. It was as if she had changed overnight, and when Guilia was finally discharged from the hospital, she was someone he didn't recognize at all.
Instead of coming home with him, Guilia insisted on staying at her apartment in New York, and it was there she seemed to spiral out of control. News of Guilia hitting the clubs every night soon filled the Internet, with photos showing her either drunk or getting into catfights with other girls. She had also started taking drugs, and the paps on her trail had caught her sneaking out like a hooker in various instances. There was one where she had climbed out of a window of an actor's RV, another from a rockstar's backstage room, and one time from the hotel room of a professional athlete.
It was one goddamn scandal after another, but since Guilia had asked for space from him following her discharge, Ethan was able to lie to himself about not having any right to expect anything. If she had called him out of the blue and asked for forgiveness, he would have given it. But the one thing he couldn't forgive was when he woke up to her newest scandal. The tabloid sites had released photos of Guilia and Travis inside a car, and even though they were both fully clothed, the position they were photographed in left nothing to the imagination.