“But—but that was seven years ago!” I sputtered.

“The contract has no end date. Once a queen, always a queen,” she said dramatically.

“Oh my God. So now what?”

“Your crown and title are being revoked, and we’d like you to sign right here.” She set another contract in front of me, the page full of tiny black print. “This says that you understand your title is being forfeited due to breach of contract and you will no longer refer to yourself as a former Queen, advertise yourself as such, or appear at any functions claiming to be such.”

“Seriously? I made a mistake! Don’t we all make mistakes sometimes?”

“Yours were very public, Ms. Nixon. Too public.”

“It was just a TV show!” But in my head I heard Miranda Rivard’s voice: Perception is reality, Skylar.

“It was a reality show. You played yourself,” Joan pointed out. “We would appreciate it if you did not speak to the press about this or mention it on any social media. We’ll handle it.”

“Speak to the press? Are you kidding? Why would I want to call attention to this?” I scribbled my name on the contract without even reading it. Didn’t matter what it said, I no longer cared.

“Leave the crown, please. It’s pageant property.”

My jaw dropped and I hugged the crown to my stomach. “You can’t have my crown.”

“Yes, I can.” She tapped my signature with the pen. “You just agreed to return it.”

I wanted to throw it at her, but I mustered my pride and managed to set it down gently on the desk—right after I bent that stupid fucking rhinestone-studded piece of shit in half with my bare hands.

After the episode at the beach, I went straight to the gym. In college I’d learned that working out helped me stay mindful of the present moment and stop “fearcasting” about the future. When I was running or lifting or hitting the heavy bag, all I thought about was my body getting stronger, my muscles working harder, my heart pumping faster. It forced me to stay in the moment, helped me work off the tension and anger I carried, and had results I could see, a clear cause and effect.

However, even running an extra mile and adding extra reps hadn’t been enough to banish Skylar Nixon from my mind.

But actually, it was kind of nice.

Because rather than the disturbing thoughts I’d had at the beach, my head was filled with other images of her—pleasant images. As I pushed myself to the limits of exertion, I thought of her body beneath mine, her hands on my back, her lips falling open. I thought of those blue eyes closing as I slid inside her, slow and deep. I thought of the soft sigh of pleasure I’d hear before she whispered my name and pulled me in deeper.

At home in the shower, I invited those thoughts back in, welcomed them as I let the water run down my body and took my dick in my hand.

Oh yeah, jerking off was another activity in which I stayed mindful of the moment. Sex was too, although I hadn’t had sex in almost a year. Fuck, I missed it. But sex with strangers had never been my thing—although I might have to make it my thing unless I wanted to spend my life celibate.

Or maybe sex with a friend…

I tightened my fingers around my shaft and stroked myself with long, hard pulls as the steam billowed up around me.

God, what would it feel like to get inside Skylar? To smell her skin, taste her lips, watch her arch beneath me?

Could I make her come?

Was she quiet or loud?

Did she like it on top?

Would she let me tie her up? Pull her hair?

Bury my tongue in her pussy?

My hand worked faster, harder. “Fuck,” I whispered, over and over again as my cock went rock solid and then throbbed in my hand. I groaned as the tension inside me released in thick hot spurts, my leg muscles tight and trembling.

For a solo flight, it was a pretty fucking good orgasm, and it made me wonder if maybe I should try talking to her again.

Immediately, the voice was back.

Don’t be fucking dense. You think jerking off to some adolescent fantasy means you can handle being alone with her?

I wouldn’t have to be alone with her. I could just talk to her. Reintroduce myself. Be her friend.

No. You can’t trust yourself. You want her too much.

I wanted to argue, fight back.

But I had no weapons to battle with, no words to hurl at this fucking ghost that refused to stop haunting me, shadowing my every thought, my every intention.

After getting dried and dressed, I scrubbed my shower tiles and called my therapist to see if he could fit me in this afternoon.

• • •

“I had a setback today.” I wasn’t much for small talk.

“Oh?” Ken, a soft-spoken man with glasses and a thick blond beard, crossed his legs and regarded me patiently. “What do you think triggered it?”

I shifted uncomfortably on the couch in his office. “I saw someone from my past, a girl I went to school with.”

“A friend?”

“Not exactly…I didn’t really have friends in high school, partly because of my erratic behavior in years prior, but also because I kept to myself. People really didn’t know what to make of me. But this girl. She was just…nice. We were assigned as lab partners in chemistry a few times. I used to get so nervous before school if I knew we had to work together.”

“Did you have thoughts about her back then?”

Fuck yes I did. I still do. “Not obsessive thoughts. Just average teenage boy thoughts and average teenage boy nerves around a pretty girl. But mine were compounded by the fact that I knew everyone thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy.”

Those years had been such a fucking nightmare—my father dragging me to doctor after doctor to figure out why I was so obsessed with germs, why I was always counting things like leaves on trees or blades of grass or lines on the highway, why I was convinced that terrible things were going to happen to people I loved because of me. They did everything from dismissing the shit I did as adolescent quirks to diagnosing me with depression.

Several therapists were convinced I secretly blamed myself for my mother’s death from a car accident when I was eight (she was coming to pick me up from a friend’s house) and believed the fear of doing harm stemmed from that, but they couldn’t tell my dad why I had to flip a light switch on and off eight times before leaving a room or explain to my teachers why I had to click my ballpoint pen eight times before answering every test question or clue my middle school gym classmates in as to why I would play second base but not first or third. I could still recall the what-the-fuck looks on their faces when I tried explaining that two was a good number because it was even, and even better, a factor of eight, but one and three were bad numbers because they were odd.

Ken pushed his glasses further up his nose. “You once mentioned things were better by the time you finished high school.”

“They were,” I conceded. By junior year, we’d found a doctor familiar with OCD and I was put on medication, and started seeing a therapist regularly. “By then, I had more good days than bad, but the social damage had been done, and I just figured, fuck it, I’ll start over in college.”

Ken flipped back a few pages in the notepad on his lap. “You said your undergraduate years were fairly normal, but we haven’t talked much about them. You had friends? Dates?”

“Yeah. Starting over in a new place felt good. The thoughts and the compulsions never entirely went away, but I learned to cope. I felt I had control over them.” I thought about Skylar and the back of my neck grew hot. “As opposed to fucking today.”

“But we’ve talked about how having control over your thoughts isn’t the answer. It isn’t possible for anyone, really. One of your main goals at this point is to let go of that excessive need for control and learn to live with risk and uncertainty. Learn to let the obsessive thoughts be.”