have slowly come true. I pinch my right shoulder slightly and wince at the pain. There's pain! And the aftermath of light pink to remind me that this indeed is not a dream.

My (ex?) husband – no scratch that, my fake husband stands in front of me in living breathing flesh. He's wearing a Ted Baker button-down shirt. The white cotton stark against his tan skin and the dark stubble of his beard. His dark brown hair is a disheveled mess and his ocean eyes are full of misery.

I haven't even noticed that I've backed against the wall and my hands have dropped the bottle of gin. The concrete does nothing to soak the alcohol, just like these last three months did nothing to soak the ache from my heart.

Dimitri's pretty pink lips pull into a frown and on beat, he steps back. I've got room now, too much damn room. Enough space to fill the galaxy between us. We are better apart overseas and him knowing I was missing. "Hey, I'm not going to hurt you. It's fine. It's only me. Look!" he holds his hands up in surrender.

I crumble away and the tears I've been holding in break out. London's horrid night is replaying on my mind and all I can think about is Dimitri and the contract. Ana's loud thumps sound over the balcony, "Evangelía! Are you okay? I heard you scream. Hey! Who the hell are you! Scram otherwise I'll call the police." She sticks her hand over the railing, holding a wooden spoon down at Dimitri. I hope she chucks it at him, enough to leave a huge bruise in his wake.

He scrambles out the dark and begins explaining in his perfect accented Spanish. "I'm a friend of Bel– Evangelía's. I'm here to see her!"

"Is he telling the truth?" Ana asks me and awaits for the response. I've forgotten how to breathe and my tongue has fallen flat against my mouth. Dimitri nods at me in a desperate attempt to stop being attacked overhead with a wooden spoon and a police escort to prison.

I step out of the shadow and crane my head up to Ana's worried expression. No he's my fake husband, but I don't tell her that. "Yeah, he's a friend." I stammer out. "I'm okay. He startled me." Ana passes him a hard glare before plotting herself on the chair, ready to keep guard.

I finally turn around to face Dimitri but he's already staring at me with an ocean's weight of grief. "What the fuck are you doing here!" I switch languages. I don't want Ana prying. I should feel sadness, misery and resent for the perfectly polished man before me but instead all that throttles out is anger. Sheer red, hot sparked white anger. How dare he threat me in that manner. How dare he claim to love me and then accuse me.

Dimitri's soft expression turns to pain. "You left. It's taken me months to find you and– fuck, Bella. I miss you!"

"You can't be here! You need to leave. Go back to London, go back to your perfect life. You got everything you wanted. The company is yours and you're England's richest man. Go find someone else to play your pretend wife and spare me." I turn around hastily in my heels and finally manage to unlock the door.

I step inside and prepare to slam it in his face for my final scene. Dimitri has other plans though and he's playing the crappy director that disagrees. His large hand spreads out into the door, holding it from me. Even in my own damn house and street, I can't escape him.

"Just hear me out. Five minutes." No. He can go fuck himself and his inheritance. "You owe me this."

"I owe you this?! I don't owe you a single damn thing after London."

The anger and disagreement clash with his maddening need to explain himself. "You just left! You didn't even fucking think about Abuela or Theodore. Or even your best friend Quinn. Did you?" He's still holding the door open with all his strength. I frown at him, guilt nips away at my core. Abuela... I left without a word.

He continues, seeing my faltering expression. These months I've had time to reflect. Dimitri and I were good at pretending. We're also good at arguing. We argue so damn much.

"It's over. It's officially over. I need you to leave otherwise I'm screaming and asking Ana to call the police. I need you to leave me alone, Dimitrius."

He doesn't know how and when to give up. I resent this trait of his. It might have benefited him for his business empire but with me? I'm soaked dry of all things love and tender. "Have you really given up on us? I fucking told you I loved you that night and these months haven't change a thing. I loved you back then, and I love you right now. More than before." His voice cracks with the confession.

My eyes have started with their own waterfall. The pain still nestles deeply beneath my veins. "There was no us to begin with. It was just sex and pretending."

He inhales a deep breath, his chest rising and falling. The column of his throat dents with a hard swallow of courage. "Look me in my eyes and say it. Say you don't feel the same for me." So I do exactly as he told, I look him in his pleading eyes but nothing falls out of my mouth. I'm simply a broken shard of the former person I was. It would be so much easier if I hated him.

"Say it right now and I'll walk away." Again, my tongue and words fail me. The silence damps on and sprinkles more salt onto my wounds.

I open the door wide for him to enter. He meekly steps inside and I close it. Just like that. It's only taken him a few words and pitiful pleas to crave his way back into my heart. Just like that, I've let him in over again. He's chipped that tiny crater I've spent months crying over and gluing shut with burning sage.

"What do you want?" I ask him rather pathetically.

"You." My heart aches and crumbles into pieces. He takes a step closer, his suffocating cologne washing over and holds my cold hands in his.

"This time, there will be no contacts, no NDA's, no agreements, no lawyers and no more fabrication or pretending. This time, it'll be real and it'll just be you and me," Everything sounds so sweet from his dreaded lips.

Last time, he said something similar and I believed every single word. This time, I like to believe I'm smarter and will not let a man cloud my decisions. Even though I've claimed it as such, Dimitri ruins everything. Through the clouded vision of tears and crackle of my breaking voice, I find myself saying: "Kiss me. Kiss me only for tonight."

I'm so selfish. I'm too broken and needy with his tender affection. I've missed him. Of course I have. I've missed every aching inch of him. And because Dimitri will do anything to save his reputation and prove himself worth it, he grants me my wish. His lips softly pressed against mine without a second thought and for a second, the world fades away. All the anger in my core for him fades out. All the misery, heartache and sadness dry up.

His eyes are moist with tears. His hands are clad against my waist. Despite it all, he kisses me with depth and intensity. I can hardly piece together a coherent thought in the sickening haze of it.

Dimitri is a masochist too. He knows he can't save me, nor can he have me back after tonight but he holds onto the thought of us a little longer because it makes him feel better. Dimitri and I? We ruin everything we touch, including each other.

We rip each other's clothes off in a frenzy. The quicker, the better. The quicker, the easier I can forget about it. He tears and rips and crunches it all off me until I'm bare. Burning skin against skin. His shirt button is shred apart, the buttons popping off in different directions. His trousers removed with the loud clunk of his belt buckle. It all needs to come off. Flesh and heartache melting into the tan of our torso's – there's no room to breathe nor collect ourselves from the foggy acts. It's just us, raw, naked and brutally honest at our worst. Lingerie and boxer briefs all lie in a turbid mess on the wooden flooring.

"I missed you," he states breathless. I don't reply. I don't know how to reply. Months of longing and desire well deep between us.

Then the kiss sparks hot and angry. He's angry. So fucking full of rage. It shows. He slams his lips into mine, bites harshly on my bottom lip and tugs. I hate you, he silently states. I loathe you for running away. My hands dent into the slate of his shoulder, nails digging deep, the tiny curved marks a punishment and reminder of this night. He kisses me in a wretched slow tumble, so breathless and numb. My skin is growing damp with a profound river and he lavishes in it damningly.

It's all spark and fire and agony. My legs twine around his waist, his hands dented across my back and I motion for the bedroom in a clouded delirium. He takes us there.

He's too gentle and places me softly on the white sheets, my legs still clad around his waist. When his teeth sink into my neck in a nimble, I call out his name in a strangled exhale. His face grows with grief because he's hearing it slip past my lips after months. He's bought no protection because he wasn't anticipating an outcome like this. At this rate, I neither care or give it any attention.

My hands reach for him and give him a stroke and his face grows pained with pleasure at my touch. He stops me immediately, his large hand over mine "Are you sure you want this? We should talk first–" his dark blue hooded eyes search mine for reassurance.

The sensible Bella would stop and re-evaluate the situation before kicking Dimitri out. The foolish and sticken with need Isabella would tell him to shut the fuck up and fuck me. That's exactly what I do. I'm too needy and it's been too long. "Yes, I'm sure."

His lips press against mine in the darkness of the bedroom. The small opaque curtain filters through some street light but he doesn't need it. He knows my body well and touches until sparks of fire alight inside me. The first slam is slow and full of torture. He does it again, muttering a tumble of profanities.

Then he forgets how to be gentle and nice, it's all anger and heartache. He fucks me raw, he fucks me rough, he fucks me sober. There's nothing between us but broken vows and empty promises. I don't care enough. I need the flesh of his embrace.

I have nothing left to give him. Yet he takes it all.

Every last piece of me until I have absolutely nothing. I'm stripped naked to the core and Dimitri hollows me out even. There's no sense or sensibility. There is nothing sweet about this, just a merciless brutal slamming. Again and again. Sweats builds in droplets on his forehead and his back is slashed with my nails.

In a beat, he rolls me over until I'm straddling him. My hands laid flat against the tan of chest, the ripples of his abs glistening with sweat and salt and my legs buckled on either side of him.

The dark abyss of his blue eyes are filled with desire and despair. I'd do anything to pluck it out - even for a few moments. So I give him what he needs, slowly and leisurely. His head tips back, his lids beginning to close and only my name clamping out from his lips. The tan long column of his neck is exposed to me this way and his large hands dent into my waist harder. His hand reaches out, caressing my cheek in so much ducking affection that my heart pangs with agony. Fuck, I've missed him.

My legs are breaking in unsteady jolts, he's growing irritated with his hands fusing harshly on my hips. I roll into him and he hisses harshly. His mouth falling open and his forehead beginning to dent in concentration. It's bad for me, it's ten times worse for him. He doesn't give me any time to process the small victory and minor crack in his system because I'm rolled onto my stomach again. My hair is harshly pulled back until the column of my throat bares out and he's hovering behind me.

Without warning, he slams into me. Once, twice, Three times – again and again. I cry out in the brutality and lack of closure.

"You wanna play it like that. Let's play it like that then." He curses in my ear and tugs my hair harder. My mascara has smudged down my face and the cries are his own personal tune of victory. In all the pain and pleasure and clouded desire, I'm pressed underneath him again. He fills the hollow crack inside of me and takes everything. It's brutal and awfully rough and I don't care because for a short second of forever, he's mine.

He's so close – he's close to me, his body pressed against mine and yet he's not mine. His breath hitches and he's holding back as his fingers squeeze firmly. "Fuck, fuck - Bella."

Then with final thrust, he's releasing into me and crashing. After everything crashes down, I lie with him and cry into his chest. He's crying too and we just hold each other.

It takes us a while to stop, the sniffles and wiping away of the tears fill the room, when a few minutes ago, it was the creaking of the bed against the wall "How did you find me?" I inquire in a crackled tone. My throat is parched dry.

It takes Dimitri a while before he replies. "After you left, I was a mess. I was on the verge of becoming an alcoholic and neglecting all my duties to Asterio Industries. There was this one particular night I stumbled into the penthouse. I was staring at the ceiling and remembering the night I discovered Hugo Antolin was your father. We had sex and asked if I could go any place in the world where would it be."

The tears start afresh. He remembers, he remembers it all. "I told you it was the Maldives but you gave me a specific answer. So I followed through with the hunch and believe it or not, I knocked on every door asking for a Bella Romero. Then I see you stumble past me with a bottle of gin and talking to the lady above you on the balcony."

Silence dreads on, he cranes his neck to look deeply into my glassy eyes.

He reaches out, the pad of his thumb wiping away a fallen tear and asks. "You came back to see your mother, didn't you? And you've started calling yourself her name." I don't reply because the answer is obvious. I didn't want anyone locating me nor did I need the burden of being Mrs Dimitri Asterio.

We bask in silence, hardly finding any words to say to one another. It's fine – the presence matters more. There's a slight problem that begins to dawn on me the more Dimitri's left hand strokes my back in a rhythm. He's still wearing his wedding ring.

He hasn't once taken it off, whereas me? I've taken it off multiple times throughout the course of our relationship. Guilt and remorse sink their teeth into me. He's noticed I'm not wearing mine – of course he has. The diamond was giant and it was the first thing strangers noticed. Despite it, Dimitri hasn't said a single word about it.

"Come back to London with me. Let's fix this." He finally pleads.

"No - I'm not going back to hellish London."

He pleads again, trying harder. It's a sheer paradox knowing he's able to convince investors with a sentence, but with me, it's taking him more than that. "Abuela misses you. Theodore's been crying about you. Even bloody Christian - who's only christian by name - started attending Church so Jesus brings you back. Then there's Quinn, she resents my guts for everything. Everyone misses you, baby."

"I'm not coming back, Dimitri."

"I swear to God, I've cut off all ties with Antolin Corp. you'll never have to see his face again. The media won't bother you because I'll drag their ass to court for violating privacy. It'll fix it all Bella. Just come back."

I free myself from his embrace and search for my robe and shrug it on. His eyes follow me, and he slowly begins riding from the bed in an alarmed trance. "I think you should leave."

His face strikes with sadness. I know exactly what he's thinking, he shouldn't have spoken about London because it's probably a new trigger for me. I want to scream and tell him I'm not some delicate flower. I watch Dimitri as he silently dresses and follows out the room to find his other discarded clothes. His body and neck is visible with purple hues where my mouth and teeth have been from minutes before. I'm marked too by him.

"Have a goodnight, Bella. Estaré esperando," he reaches for the door.

"Oh and Dimitri?" I impulsively find myself saying. He doesn't turn around but freezes in his tracks. "I want a divorce." He slams the door shut behind him. The quicker he gets out of my life, the better.