Terms and Temptations:The CEO spoils me silly

Am I dreaming... or is this heaven? I thought I died. I know I died. I remember the coldness that settled in my chest like a final breath. The sting of betrayal. The flash of steel. The warmth of my own blood pooling beneath me, seeping into my favorite cream blouse - the one Diane said brought out my eyes.

Diane. She was the last face I saw. The same one who's calling my name now.

"Emma... Emma..."

At first, I thought it's an echo. A cruel trick of memory. Then her voice grows louder, cutting through the dense fog in my head.

"Emma! Get up, we're going to be late for the interview!"

My eyes fly open. The ceiling. The off-white cracks. The gentle hum of the standing fan in the corner. It's all... familiar. Too familiar.

I sit up slowly, my breath shallow. The blanket falls away from my body. I look down at my hands steady, warm, alive. Alive?

As I sit up in bed, memories flood my mind like a tidal wave. I remembered the night I died, the feeling of the blade piercing my skin, the sound of Diane's voice whispering in my ear. I remembered the pain, the fear, the sense of betrayal. But I also remembered the moments leading up to that night, the laughter, the tears, the fights. I remembered the way Robert smiled at Diane, the way Diane looked at me with a mixture of envy and hatred. I remembered the way I felt, like I was walking on eggshells, never knowing when the other shoe would drop.

I remembered the way Diane would make snide comments about my clothes, my hair, my makeup. I remembered the way Robert would flirt with me in front of Diane, making her seethe with jealousy. I remembered the way I tried to navigate their toxic dynamic, never knowing how to please both of them.

But most of all, I remembered the night it all came crashing down. The night Diane stabbed me, the night I died.

I shoot a glance around the room. My vision adjusts quickly, and everything registers with terrifying precision. The half-empty perfume bottle on the dresser. My broken phone charger coiled beside my pillow. The small dent in the wall where I once threw a mug in frustration. This is my room. This is our apartment. I'm back. But how?

I swing my legs off the bed, my heart pounding. Everything feels too real to be a dream, too detailed to be imagined. Then Diane's voice again.

"Emma?"

I freeze. No. Not her. Not now. Not again.

I inhale sharply, then turn my head toward the door. She peeks in her hair perfectly curled, her lips glossed in the same peachy tone she always wore to impress. Her eyes scan me, then narrow.

"We don't have time for drama today, Emma. We have that interview, remember?"

I stare at her, unable to respond. My throat tightens. She looks exactly the same. But the memory of her face twisted in rage, of her hands soaked in blood, crashes into me like a tidal wave.

Diane, the girl I called my sister. The girl who laughed with me over tubs of ice cream at midnight. The girl who... murdered me.

"What's today's date?" I ask suddenly, my voice cracked and dry.

She blinks. "What?"

I stand, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over me, but I force myself to remain upright. "The date, Diane. Please. What's today's date?"

She sighs, clearly annoyed. "June 5th."

My knees almost buckle. June 5th. No. This... this was the day it all started to spiral.

I shake my head slowly. "June 5th of what year?"

Diane rolls her eyes. "2022. Obviously. Are you okay?"

I don't answer. I can't. Because everything inside me is screaming. The last time I was aware of time, it was 2025. I remember being twenty-five. I remember running no, crawling out of that house. Blood soaking my chest. Rain mixed with my tears. Now I'm twenty-two again. My hands start to tremble.

"I... I don't feel good," I mumble, stepping away from her. "I think I'll skip the interview."

Diane frowns. "Seriously? Emma, we...."

"I said I'll skip it!" I snap, more forcefully than I intend to.

She raises an eyebrow. "Fine. Suit yourself."

She disappears down the hallway, and the sound of the front door closing behind her echoes like a gunshot. The silence that follows is deafening.

My breathing becomes ragged. My heart thuds wildly as I rush to the bathroom.

I flip the switch. The flickering bulb buzzes overhead. There, in the mirror, is a face I haven't seen in years.

Mine......but younger.

My skin is smoother, untouched by the harsh stress of the last few years. My eyes are still big and hopeful, though panic now clouds them. My hair is longer. I cut it after Robert broke my heart the first time. But what draws my eyes next stills me completely.

A thin, pale line just below my collarbone. The scar. The same one from the blade that pierced me the night I died. I remember the exact moment it happened. Diane's scream. My confusion. Her eyes not filled with concern but fury. The glint of the knife. The crack in her voice when she said,

"You always get everything. Robert, the position I've been working for for months everything." I trace the scar slowly, my fingers trembling. This... this confirms it.

I died. I was murdered.....

But I'm back. Back in time. Back in this cursed apartment. I stumble backward and slump onto the floor, pressing my palms into the tiles as if grounding myself in reality.

What does this mean? How did I come back? Why now? I spend hours or maybe minutes, I can't tell, curled up in silence, questioning my sanity.

Was it a second chance? A glitch in time? Divine mercy? A cruel trick? Flashes come back in waves. Robert's betrayal. The way he looked at Diane when he thought I wasn't watching. How they both lied. Gaslit me. Used me.

Then the night everything ended. I remember the weight of my own body collapsing. The sound of thunder outside. Diane whispered something as I faded... "You were never meant to shine brighter than me." I shiver.

It wasn't just betrayal. It was planned. Premeditated. They wanted me gone. But I'm here. Why?

My phone lights up with a text from Diane. "I hope you're not sulking. Pull yourself together before I get back." I stare at it, then put the phone down, trembling.

No. I'm not sulking.

I'm processing.

This isn't something anyone could be prepared for. How do you face the person who murdered you knowing they don't know you know? How do you pretend nothing happened, while every nerve in your body screams, run?

I press a hand to my chest, just over the scar. The ache is still there, like a ghost. But so is something else. Resolve.

I stand. My legs are weak, but my spine is straighter. I glance at the mirror again. There's still fear in my eyes. But there's also fire.

I need time.

To observe.

To think.

To understand what this second chance means.

I can't act on impulse...... not yet.

I need to be smart. Calculated. Because whatever brought me back... didn't do it for nothing.

And this time.....,

I won't waste it.

I didn't sleep that night.

How could I? Every time I closed my eyes, I was back there again on the floor, bleeding out, Diane's silhouette looming over me, her words echoing like venom in my skull.

"You were never meant to shine brighter than me."

It had sounded petty at the time, almost childish. But there was a finality to it. A hatred that only festered when envy metastasizes in silence. The kind of hatred that kills.

And she did kill me.

But I'm not dead anymore.

I'm not even twenty-five anymore.

I'm twenty-two.

It still doesn't make sense. None of this does. But I'm here - breathing, blinking, aching - in the body of my younger self, living in the apartment I once hated and loved all at once.

I watched the sunrise through the dusty slats of the window blinds, the light casting soft golden patterns on the peeling white paint of the wall. For a moment, I just stared. The sunrise felt like proof. Proof that I wasn't trapped in some surreal afterlife. That this... this was earth.

This was life.

But what do you do when life hands you a second chance?

I didn't have an answer. Not yet.

So I got out of bed.

Slower this time, like I didn't want to scare reality into disappearing.

I padded across the room barefoot and sat down at my tiny desk. My old journal lay there - a faded pink notebook with a unicorn sticker on the corner. Diane always teased me about it, said it was childish. But I liked it. It reminded me of a time before life got complicated.

Before Robert. Before betrayal. Before I forgot who I was.

I opened the journal, flipped past old scribbles and poems written in the haze of heartbreak, until I reached a fresh page.

My fingers trembled slightly as I picked up the pen.

Then, slowly... I started to write.

> My Bucket List

Because if life gives you a do-over, you don't waste it.

1. Go to a party. A real one. Loud music, strangers, drinks, dancing until my feet ache the kind Diane never let me go to.

2. Take myself out to dinner. No compromise. No shared plates. Just me, dressing up and loving it.

3. Learn to drive. And actually get my license this time.

4. Buy a red dress. The kind that screams confidence and power.

5. Travel somewhere spontaneous even if it's just the next city over.

6. Learn how to say "no" without guilt.

7. Kiss someone who makes my heart race.

8. Forgive myself for all the things I let slide.

9. Tell the truth. About Diane. About Robert. About myself.

10. Figure out what I really want and go after it.

When I finished writing, I sat back in my chair.

It felt... real. Heavy in a way that filled me, not weighed me down. Like each item was a promise. A spark waiting to ignite.

I touched the list gently, whispering under my breath like I was afraid someone might hear.

"Whatever it is that brought me back... you're probably watching, aren't you?"

I let the silence stretch around me. The air didn't shift. The walls didn't speak. But something in my chest stirred ...... a quiet certainty that I wasn't alone. That this return was no accident.

"I'm going to live this time," I said. "Not just survive. I'll enjoy every moment I spend on earth. I won't waste it like before."

I didn't mean that my past life was worthless. But I had let fear steer me too many times. Let Diane dim me. Let Robert use me.

I didn't even know who I was back then. I was so desperate to be loved, I made myself small for people who didn't deserve me.

This time... I would be different.

And yet I couldn't pretend I was suddenly brave.

Even after writing that list, I was still terrified.

Terrified that I might be wrong. That this was all a hallucination. That maybe I'd wake up back on the floor in a pool of blood, and this was just my brain's way of easing me into death.

But the scar was real.

I checked it again pale and thin, just below my collarbone. A memory written in skin. That alone kept me anchored.

Still, I didn't rush into joy.

Change wasn't immediate. It was slow and uncomfortable, like stepping into shoes you haven't worn in years. They fit, but they pinch in new places.

Even writing the bucket list that small act of defiance felt dangerous.

But I needed to start somewhere.

And if I was honest, I'd already decided what came first. Even before I wrote it down.

The party.

Diane never let me attend one. Not unless she was there to control how I looked, how I spoke, how much attention I got. She always found reasons to cancel. "It's not safe." "You won't enjoy it." "They're not your kind of people."

But I realized something last night - she wasn't protecting me. She was afraid of what would happen if I stepped into a space where she couldn't dim my shine.

She was scared of who I might become.

Now I finally understood why.

Because even in her absence, even with three years shaved off the future, I felt different. I wasn't the same girl who used to seek her approval. I wasn't the same girl who folded in on herself when someone else raised their voice.

No.

That Emma was gone. She died on that cold floor.

This Emma was born of fire.

Still scared.

Still figuring it out.

But fire, nonetheless.

I stared at my list again and traced the first item with my finger.

Go to a party.

Simple.

Basic.

But revolutionary.

I didn't know which party yet. I wasn't going tonight. I wasn't ready to walk into the world just yet not before making sense of the battlefield that used to be my heart.

But I would go. Soon.

Maybe even tomorrow.

That was enough for now.

---

Later that afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. My hands were steadier now. My heartbeat no longer galloped every time I heard Diane's footsteps down the hall.

She came home around 5:30 PM, slightly flustered, tossing her heels aside and complaining about traffic like everything was normal.

And to her, it was.

She didn't know she was a murderer not yet.

She didn't know I'd seen the darkest version of her.

She didn't know I was no longer the girl who idolized her.

I watched her, quietly. Every little movement. The way she laughed into her phone. The way she checked her lipstick in the mirror. The way she paused when she noticed my gaze, then shrugged it off.

If she noticed anything strange about me, she didn't mention it.

And I didn't say anything either.

I couldn't. Not yet.

I needed time to understand how to navigate this new existence. What to change. What to preserve. What to destroy.

She smiled at me that evening and asked, "Feeling better?"

I nodded.

Lied.

"Yeah. Just needed some rest."

She accepted the answer too easily. The same way she used to accept my silence, my shrinking, my obedience.

But not this time.

Because I wasn't shrinking anymore.

I was learning.

Planning.

Becoming.

---

That night, I showered and sat on the edge of my bed with the list in my lap again. I re-read every word. And something shifted inside me.

I didn't need permission to want things.

I didn't need to ask if it was okay to live.

This time, I was claiming my space even if I had to fight for every inch of it.

Whatever brought me back...

It didn't do so for me to repeat old mistakes.

It did it so I could rewrite everything.

The rooftop glittered like a dream.

Lights flickered in soft golds and violets, music thumped in waves that seemed to pulse right through my skin, and laughter rose around me in bursts like firecrackers. I sipped something that tasted like strawberries and summer secrets, swaying a little to the beat.

This was it.

My first party.

My first real step into a world I'd been locked out of.

And God, it was intoxicating ..... the air, the freedom, the heat.

I didn't know how many drinks I'd had. Two? Four? Something sweet, then something fizzy, then something with a strange blue tint I couldn't pronounce. I stopped counting after the second glass. Tonight wasn't for numbers.

It was for forgetting.

For remembering who I could be.

"Careful," a deep voice murmured as someone caught my elbow.

I stumbled slightly, laughing at something a stranger said, but the voice that steadied me wasn't the same. It was silk and smoke.

I looked up, and the man's face was in the shadows. All I saw was a jawline .... sharp and defined .... and a silhouette dressed in black. His touch was light but firm, his fingers brushing fire into my skin.

"Thanks," I said, blinking slowly, the music echoing in my ears.

He didn't say anything else. Just tipped his head slightly and let go of me. But for the rest of the night, I kept catching glimpses of him. In the corners. At the bar. Near the DJ booth.

Never close.

Never far.

Just there.

Like a ghost tethered to mine.

I don't know what drew me to him.

Maybe it was the way he didn't chase me, didn't try to charm me like the others had.

Maybe it was the air around him...... like he didn't care who saw him, or maybe he wanted to disappear entirely.

Or maybe it was me.

Maybe I just wanted to feel something different. Something reckless.

And when I saw him again ..... leaning against the balcony railing, a drink in hand, the city lights painting his skin in gold . I walked up to him without thinking.

"Mind if I stand here?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away.

Then, "It's your night too, isn't it?"

There was something in his voice. Low, almost tired. But it made my pulse skip.

We didn't talk much.

Didn't need to.

Sometimes connection isn't in words. It's in glances. In shared silences that say more than full conversations.

I laughed at nothing. He smirked at something I said. Our shoulders brushed. My skin buzzed. His eyes... too dark to read in the night ..... held mine for a beat too long.

Then someone bumped into me, and I stumbled.

Again, his hand caught me.

This time, it stayed longer.

And maybe it was the alcohol.

Maybe it was the loneliness I didn't want to admit.

Maybe it was fate.

Then the words slipped out before I could stop them.

"How much for a night?"

No hesitation.

No fear.

Just heat and hunger and that unfamiliar voice in my head whispering, Live.

I could've sworn I felt his face change, but he replied calmly,

"Where do you live? Let me ask someone to take you home."

And then I did the dumbest thing ever.

I kissed him and whispered in his ear,

"I want you... and I'm not leaving without you tonight. My place or your place?"

---

The apartment smelled faintly of leather and something expensive.

The space was sleek, masculine, and oddly quiet for a man like him.

I barely looked around.

I didn't care about the art on the walls or the way the marble counter reflected moonlight. All I could focus on was the feel of his lips when they found mine.

His kiss was deep. Confident. Like he knew what he wanted and how to take it.

I kissed him back harder.

Clothes melted away. Buttons hit the floor. Fingertips skimmed bare skin.

My back hit silk sheets.

My breath caught in my throat.

His body hovered above mine - toned, warm, unfamiliar, and thrilling.

I couldn't see his face.

The room was dark.

His back was mostly turned as he undressed.

And when he joined me in bed, I was already drunk on adrenaline and sensation.

We didn't speak again.

Just moved.

Danced.

Sank into something wild and wordless.

I gasped when he traced his mouth down my collarbone.

He groaned when I pulled him closer.

And in those moments, it didn't matter who we were.

As long as it wasn't Robert.

Or that old man.

As long as he was someone I chose for myself...

Everything else didn't matter.

We were just strangers with a connection.

I knew I'd regret it by morning, but I didn't care.

And I knew we'd never meet again.

We were just bodies.

Fire.

Need.

---

The room was silent when I woke up.

The first light of dawn crept through floor-length windows, casting gold slants across the bed and floor.

I blinked.

Head heavy.

Mouth dry.

My limbs ached..... in the best way.

For a moment, I didn't move.

I just stared at the ceiling.

Had I really done that?

Yes.

And a part of me regretted it.

But at the same time... no part of me regretted it.

I rolled onto my side slowly, the silk sheet sliding down my bare back.

He was still asleep beside me.

His body turned away.

The lines of his back rose with each deep breath - smooth and sculpted, his skin a rich shade of bronze touched by the early morning sun.

I let my eyes trace him.

There was something oddly peaceful about the way he lay there.

Like a man who carried too much in the day and finally dropped it at night.

The tension in his shoulders was gone.

His face - what little I could see - softened in rest.

But I didn't look too hard.

I didn't want to know.

I didn't want names or stories or the risk of being disappointed.

This wasn't about forever.

This was about now.

I slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to make a sound.

My dress was crumpled on the floor, and I stepped into it like armor.

My heels dangled from my fingers.

I padded barefoot toward the door, heart hammering.

Then I paused.

I reached into my clutch and pulled out a folded bill - the only cash I had left.

A hundred dollars.

I placed it gently on the nightstand beside the bed.

A laugh escaped me.

Soft.

Disbelieving.

Not because I thought he'd asked for it - he hadn't.

But because I wanted to leave with the upper hand.

The final say.

The ghost of a smirk danced on my lips as I grabbed a pen from the desk and scribbled on the envelope:

"Thanks for the night. Keep the lights off next time."

I didn't sign it.

I didn't need to.

I left before the sun fully rose.

Before his eyes opened.

Before my courage faded.

I didn't look back.

If I did, I might not have left.