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Please continue reading if you’ve read the story starter – a very long Chapter 1 – and you’re ready to dive into the story with me.

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About the story: (short description. Click here for longer)

“Let Me Love You” is a tale of love and sacrifice and a poignant story of self-discovery, celebrating the human capacity to find love in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Please enjoy the current WIP of Iris and El. This will be published freely up to a point, like in the old days, and then the entire book will be posted for full download. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And don’t forget to check out the companion stories. (Wicked Chances, Dreams of Reality, The Convenient Wife, The Other Side of Love, She Works Hard for the Money & Ravenous)

Enjoy, Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard

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Read more: Let Me Love You – Chapter 41✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromance

Redd is an intertwining character throughout several books. She’s been appearing frequently in the Kindle Vella series The Windfall Brothers. I enjoy her.

As soon as Iris opened the door, El was standing there fully dressed except for shoes, looking down at her feet in distaste, but after a moment, his eyes slowly rose over her body, lingering at her chest before meeting her eyes.  He still looked damn handsome no matter the time of day, freshly cut, put together, and looking as if he had just been groomed to a T.

El could also speak in eardrum-breaking decibels without making a sound. The intensity of those powerful looks he cast and his facial expressions told her a mouthful. 

Why did she expect him to be standing in a towel half-dressed, sweeping her up in his arms, and kissing her like there was no tomorrow? Iris cursed to herself because she had read too many romance novels in her young college days. 

Quickly, Iris removed her shoes after stepping into the room and followed his eyes to a bin right by the door.  The room was freshly vacuumed and spruced up. She could tell by the smell of cleaning solution and the carpet showing fresh runs on the floor.

The hotel room didn’t look like anyone stayed there, and she was doubtful her boss stayed full-time in this pristine room. Was this arranged so she wouldn’t taint his living quarters? 

She wouldn’t be surprised. 

Taking off her coat, she noticed a hook by the door, and she left her jacket and purse there before turning to him. His hands were clenched in tight fists as if he were fighting himself. 

“I’ve never been here before,” she noted to break the tension. “I know this hotel has been around for a long time, and I was glad they started offering living spaces instead of closing this hotel down. It’s a lovely-“

“Stop talking,” El cut her off, turned away, and started walking to a bedroom. 

Iris followed eagerly.

Over his shoulder, he asked, “Why didn’t you list anything to retrieve from the house?”

“I had nothing there that I figured Dwayne had not destroyed,” she answered. When I moved in, all I had was my purse, and I was wearing some hand-me-downs from Violet.”

“How’d you run your small business on the side?”

She took note that he must’ve researched her. “I had free computer time at the library when I could walk over there. Leaving a lot of instructions with Aunt Rose, who wanted to learn new things, but she couldn’t get out of the house, and when I could sneak Clem’s tablet without anyone seeing.” 

El stopped at the closed bedroom door and faced her again, shooting her a disapproving look. “You possess no personal items, Iris? No pictures? No diary? Awards? Books? Nothing to remind you of the woman you want to be?”

Lowering her eyes slightly, she admitted. “Most of the things I had for myself my father destroyed. I keep most of everything I need in my purse, and when you have lived as I lived, you pray you can remember everything because that’s what you end up doing.” 

He looked back at the door where she had left her purse and frowned. “It’s not that large,” he said.

“Why is this important to you?” She wasn’t going to let him know some more of her things were in her broken-down car at her father’s house because she wasn’t going to trust anyone with personal information about her so they could destroy what little she had.

“Because I looked all over that house to find something of yours, and I was sadly disappointed there wasn’t much there. I wanted to get to know you more.” He shifted his weight, standing akimbo. 

“If you wanted to know more about me, all you had to do was ask,” she said, not feeling so stressed now that she knew his motivations. 

“How have you survived so long not being yourself?”

“Survival,” was her first response as she glanced at her purse. “I always wanted to run. I could’ve, but there was always something there keeping me.”

“Or always someone there making sure you were kept,” he murmured and started to reach for her but drew his hand back quickly. Folding his arms over his broad chest, El questioned, “If nothing was keeping you, would you leave?”

“In a heartbeat!” she exclaimed without hesitation.

His grimace told her he didn’t like her answer, but he didn’t say anything further as he opened the door to the double bedroom. Initially, she saw the items from Clem’s list sitting on the bed, and then all the books, journals, and shoe boxes with Violet’s name on them. The private bathroom with a strange grow light inside caught her attention, and slowly, she walked toward the red-bluish light and gasped. 

Her small experimental plants from the side of the washer and dryer settled into the sink, soaking up much-needed water, barely alive but present. 

El had gotten them without asking. Turning to him, where he was standing at the bedroom door uncomfortably watching her, she asked, “How’d you know to get them?”

“You mentioned plants before, and I saw the greenhouse at your aunt’s house. Why didn’t you instruct me to get these?”

“Honestly, I thought my dad or Dwayne discovered them and destroyed them. I wrote down my process and have seed examples to grow these again, but this makes me happy.” She bravely approached him, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, El.”

He stepped away, taken aback, and then looked at the bed. “You came to look at Violet’s stuff,” he reminded her. 

Iris nodded and moved over to the stack. All the journals were dated by year, and El had neatly stacked them in order next to various boxes coinciding with the same year. There was a box of gloves on the nightstand, and without hesitation, she put a pair on and then started on the first year the journals started. 

She had been in high school, and it was around the time her mother was slowly losing her mind, and the blackouts for her mother were getting worse and just starting with Iris. 

“I sprinkled the powder in the sheets like Da told me to,” was the first line in the journal. 

Instantly, tears welled in Iris’s eyes because she knew the deception done to her by her sister would hit her like a ton of bricks. 

El came to her quietly and read over her shoulders. He pulled her close so her back was against his chest. Occasionally, he would hand her face tissue. Soon, she started reading out loud about the nights they drugged Iris and sent her to places her memory never kept. 

After putting on a pair of gloves, El picked up the box that coincided with the journal’s year and opened it to reveal its contents. 

Iris was on the part where Violet talked about how her father made her marry Dwayne because he had the contacts her father needed. Even though they were related, “Da said, keeping things in the family would mean more when he had a real grandchild. But I don’t want any kids.”

Most of Violet’s journal consisted of her complaining of how watching her mother dying was more painful than the pitiful way Iris attended to their mother and also went above and beyond necessary to make sure her scent didn’t bother their mother. 

As she sat down on the bed, she peeked at El as she read. She saw he was looking through the box, pulling out a small jar.

Gasping, she said, “That was mine.” 

It was one of her small jars, which she would use to make various scents. El handed the jar to her, and she opened it up and smiled, loving that even though the jar was old, the scent was still strong and nice. “I remember she smelled me one day and said it smelled nice.” 

El smelled it as he sat on the adjacent double bed across from her. “It does.”

“It’s one of the earlier scents I was experimenting with.”

Opening up the journal where she left off, Iris read, “Da said Iris’s attempt at making scents was stupid and that I’d be wise to keep my eyes on his research instead of my sister’s because his research is where the true money will be.”

El commented. “She was jealous.”

Iris remembered how her sister had helped her for a while, secretly referring friends who were still long-time customers to this day. Then, her sister suddenly stopped but never told their father about Iris’s business endeavors. 

“Where have you kept Iris all this time without losing your mind?” her boss asked.

The question floored her. No one had ever cared about her except her mother, but the woman had been too ill to really be concerned. Iris never was herself. Her mother was only grateful someone attended to her needs. 

Shifting her weight around, Iris suddenly felt vulnerable and looked at the doorway as if Arum would come in and hear them. 

“He can’t hurt you when you’re with me, Iris. No one will,” El said.

Was El speaking about Dwayne or her father?

Either way, the words gave her so much safety; she hadn’t felt that in a long time. “Inside.” She placed her hand on her heart. “If I don’t, I’ll lose myself, and I need to be reminded of who I want to be despite everything that’s been taken away.”

“Do you really think you aren’t supposed to have anything of your own?” 

“I’ve never thought it was an option, not after what I’ve done.”

“Iris-“

She cut him off. “You can tell me until you’re blue in the face that was the past, but it was ignorance and selfishness. If I had paid more attention, been more aware… cared…” Speaking was becoming difficult, but she took a deep breath and toughened through the emotions. “I would have known I was pregnant and taken better care of myself. No one can tell me different because that’s my truth, and I live with that guilt every day and will continue to carry that as a punishment for what I did to another life.”

To change the subject, Iris reached over and handed him another journal. “Let’s continue to read through these; if we find something, read it aloud.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Anything and everything that will help me keep my father and Dwayne away from me as legally as possible. Anything they hid from me that I should have known.”

El nodded and took the journal. 

She was glad he stopped prying because she didn’t want to feel those horrible emotions in front of anyone. That pain had been hers so long; she did well not dealing with it. 

The journal she had went up until her mother’s death, and she picked up the box El had been looking through. Along with pictures from the prom, Violet had pieces of their mother’s hair tied neatly in a ribbon as if it had been cut off. Pictures of people Violet had interacted with in high school and receipts from her first job. 

There was a thick red card with a phone number printed on it in black lettering – nothing else. 

“That’s Redd,” El said, glancing up from his reading. He immediately recognized what the card was. His frown deepened. “And if she had that card, that means something terrible.”

“What kind of terrible?”

“Redd is a person. A street doctor. I remember her handling a lot of illegal things here and there growing up in the projects. And I know that’s her calling card she’d give to women who wanted to keep women things secret like abortions and getting diseases.” Before she had time to recover from what he said, El flipped through the journal he was reading and read off the page. “I don’t see why Iris is so upset about losing the baby. Da said it was dead when he looked at it but told me not to say anything and convince the dummy the baby was still breathing, and she killed it. Iris acted like she lost her best friend. I killed dozens of babies, and I’m not whining like a bitch all day and all night. She gets on my nerves. Why is she so weak? Why is she so gullible? It’s just a stupid baby.”

End of This Chapter | Post your thoughts in the comment | Let the author know what’s going on in your head

Let Me Love You (c) 2024 Sylvia Hubbard All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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