Chapter 221: Chapter (Two Hundred) Twenty: Lipstick

Navaya clutched her binder of documents as she scurried to the elevator, pushing at its button impatiently. The longer she lingered in that building, the more her anger and frustration mounted. She could faintly register the clacking steps on the neatly tiled floors, knowing it belonged to Johnny but choosing to ignore it. To ignore him. She didn't have it in her to face him. Not now. Not while she still held the shards of her fractured confidence in her palms. 

She was too vulnerable, too raw. Broken. She let Draven's jabs coil around her like a vice, let his acid words and infuriating actions wound deep into her skin and made a home in her. Despite not wanting to, she felt like she had let him win. The lights seemed too bright for her frayed nerves.