Uncovering You 9: Liberation Read Online Free PDF Page B

knows the depth of my situation… unless they shared it…
    But no. Not with the way we left things. I’m sure I am firmly out of their minds—at least for the time being. Robin’s note notwithstanding.
    Besides, they have more pressing things to think about: Graduation. Their wedding. I’m sure my invitation has been rescinded.
    I sigh. That is what I wanted. It is for the best. But still …I wish I could be there. Just because I cast them aside does not mean Fey and Robin are unimportant to me.
    But that, I hope they don’t suspect.
    My plan, whatever it might be, however it might unfold, is what I really need to consider. I have all that I need, I think, to finally make good on it. Or rather, to set something in place that will come to fruition in the future.
    There’s just that niggling, annoying issue of “love” to deal with.
    How can I make Stonehart pay while simultaneously being in love with Jeremy? Can I be so cruel, so heartless, as to strike him down after he’s exposed himself, after he has made himself completely vulnerable?
    That’s what I intended at the start. I wanted to worm my way into Jeremy’s mind, heart, and soul. I wanted to make him reveal himself to me, so that I could use that information to find his weakness.
    I just never imagined that I’d fall in love along the way.
    It’d be easier, in a sense, if Jeremy stayed Stonehart. Even if that meant the collar was still on. Even if that meant the contract was still intact. Hell, even if it meant that I’d have to spend more time in the dark.
    Being placed in those situations would have made my hatred grow. It would have strengthened my resolve to get back at him, the way it did in those first awful weeks when I was left starving by the pillar.
    Then I would have played my part to perfection.
    The problem, of course, arose when the act became the truth. It came when Jeremy changed his attitude toward me.
    Whatever outcome he expected when he first drugged me in the restaurant, it was not this. His whole life had gone precisely the way he’d planned it before. He thrives on control.
    But burning the contract, removing my collar? Those were deviations from the plan. Very real deviations. They not only affected him, and his attitude toward me, but they affected me.
    I would have never imagined that things would have transpired the way they did. That puts a damper on things. It changes my perspective just enough to make me reconsider my original stance.
    There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to castrate Jeremy and have him kneel before me. That time is past. Now, I can’t envision doing anything, willingly, to harm the man.
    Call it a feminine weakness. Call it me succumbing to feelings I should have never had. Call it whatever you want. But don’t dare call me weak.
    It’s not weakness that is making me give in. It’s strength—strength, courage, and perspective. I’m not bull-headed enough to throw away everything Jeremy and I have built because of a promise I made myself before I gained a full understanding of events.
    It’s almost like the question Jeremy asked me when he heard Fey reveal to me the reason why : He asked if knowing it made me hate him.
    I said no.
    It did not change things between us. I said no because it all happened in the past. I said no, most of all, because I was never there to influence things before.
    I am now. Now, Jeremy’s vendetta against me and my family is not an empty rage directed at a faceless entity. When I came into his life as myself—not the idea of Paul’s daughter…When I did that, and he saw me for who I was, his perspective changed.
    If a man as uncompromising as Jeremy Stonehart could be persuaded to change, is it such a stretch to think that I could change, too?
    After all, my anger and hatred toward him was as uninformed, as flawed, as deaf and blind and dumb as his was toward me. It came before we knew each other. He was Stonehart, the monster in the dark, the sadistic