She had gone on the pill but even as she had flown there, Abby had known that the nerves she felt weren’t the ones you should be feeling when you were about to lose your virginity.
Hunter made her feel nervous, in a way that she couldn’t quite define.
It had been cars that that had drawn them together at first but it hadn’t taken long to realise he didn’t want a discussion.
Hunter talked and she was supposed to listen.
Everything she had said about cars he had dismissed.
Oh, at eighteen, who wouldn’t be flattered to be going out with a star and to be picked up and whisked off to Monte Carlo in his private jet?
Only the gloss had already worn off by then.
Abby hadn’t wanted to go but her father had been appalled when she’d suggested cancelling.
Hunter’s jet was already on the way!
And so, Abby had gone. She had had a few drinks for courage during the race and then back at the hotel, as Hunter had faced the press after his surprise loss, Abby had had a couple more.
He had phoned and said that he was back at the hotel and Abby had taken the elevator up to Hunter’s room to tell him that no, she didn’t want to go out tonight and neither did she want to stay in.
In fact, Abby had already booked a ticket and was flying home to New York that night.
As her father had later pointed out—you don’t tell a man who has just lost a cup that you’re breaking up with him.
So what? Abby had thought at the time.
She hadn’t wanted to sleep with him and if she’d stayed, then she knew how the night was expected to end. Abby didn’t want her first to be Hunter; it had been as simple as that.
And, her father had also added, Hunter’s lawyers would make mincemeat out of her, given that she’d gone to his hotel room after all.
Drunk.
‘Not drunk, Dad, I was just...’ But then she had stopped trying to describe how she had felt that night as she’d knocked on his hotel door.
Abby couldn’t really remember how she had felt before it happened.
She simply couldn’t remember who the woman was that had stepped into a man’s hotel suite and expected to be able to speak her mind.
Which she had.
They were over, Abby had told him.
‘Not quite,’ Hunter said.
She hadn’t fought enough, according to her father.
There wasn’t a scratch on Hunter after all.
Abby had frozen when first he had grabbed her and then she had tried to run but had only made it a few steps across his suite and he had pushed her into the bathroom.
And when it was over, when she lay on a cold bathroom floor and thought she could not be more broken both inside or out, Hunter had stood and then urinated over her.
Just to be sure.
Absolutely he had broken her.
Not now.