“You want to tell me what happened?” Ian asked, glancing at my bandaged hand from the doorway.

“No.” I didn’t want to tell him anything until I knew whether or not Julia was lying.

“Kori, I can see that something’s wrong.”

“I’m fine.” And maybe if I said it enough, we’d both eventually believe me.

In the front room, I glanced around at the view, and the couches, and the huge television, and the bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice on a tall table against one wall—it had obviously been sent up moments before we’d arrived. This hotel suite probably cost more than I made in a month.

No one had ever wanted me as badly as Jake wanted Ian. But I knew better than anyone that the more Jake gave, the more he’d expect in return.

Angry, I marched across the room and plucked the small, embossed envelope from the tray the champagne sat on, trying to guess whether it had been sent by Jake or by Julia. But before I could take the card from the envelope, Ian gently pulled it from my hand. I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was something there. Something in his eyes when he looked at me. Something important, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. I’d lost all perspective.

Julia had stolen my perspective.

Ian looked worried—nervous—but I couldn’t tell if that was because he genuinely cared that something was bothering me, or because his game wasn’t working out the way he’d planned.

He stared into my eyes, and my palms started to sweat. My head felt like it was floating above my body, not truly attached. I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. Everything was all tangled up in a knot so complicated I couldn’t follow the threads. And I had no hope of untangling them.

He wanted me. I could see that in his eyes. In the way he stood close, but not quite touching me. In the way he kept glancing at my lips, like he wanted to kiss me.

Some part of me wanted to kiss him, and that scared me so badly I couldn’t breathe. I needed to back away. To put some space between us. But that same part of me remembered what things were like before the basement. Before every touch bruised and every mouth bit.

Ian didn’t look angry. He didn’t look nasty or cruel. He wasn’t stalking or skulking. He just looked…interested.

If we’d met somewhere else.

If my life and Kenley’s well-being weren’t in Ian’s hands.

If I were someone else, and he were someone else.

If the moment hadn’t been manufactured by Jake Tower.

If any one of those things had been true, I might have wanted more than a kiss from Ian. I might have wanted to be with him. For a night. For a week. Maybe for more.

But this was… I couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not when I had no choice. I couldn’t breathe past the bitter lump in my throat or make my head stop spinning. I couldn’t mute the voice in my head—my voice—shouting for me to run. Fight. Leave, before he said something neither of us could go back from.

“So, you all set?” I asked, and even to my own ears, my voice sounded brittle, like it might break any moment. Like I might break with it.

“Stay and have a drink with me.” Ian waved one hand at a minibar. “No champagne, I swear.”

I opened my mouth to say no thanks, and that’s when the rest of me discovered what my brain had already known, at least in theory. I couldn’t say no. Even trying to say it sent pain shooting through my temple, half blinding me. My hands started to shake. Jake had told me to do whatever Ian wanted me to do, and Ian wanted me to stay for a drink.

Just like Julia had said he would.

Ian was playing a game—I was his game. And I was going to lose.

With that realization, I knew what I had to do.

Turn it off. Turn everything off. Whatever happens, happens. But I didn’t have to feel it. I didn’t have to truly be there. No matter what Jake made me do or say, he couldn’t shove his greedy fingers into my head. He couldn’t control my mind, or where I sent it.

No one could.

“Fine. Just one,” I said finally, and my hands stopped shaking. My voice felt empty, like the prerecorded message on my voice mail.

Ian pulled the bottle of champagne from the bucket and scooped ice out with a plastic cup. I flinched when the cubes clinked into two glasses. I sat on the edge of the leather couch with my hands clasped in my lap while he pulled tiny bottles from the minibar. A minute later, he turned around with two drinks and gave me one as he sank onto the couch next to me. “What should we toast to?” he asked, holding his glass up between us.

“Whatever you want.” That was the game, right? The winner gets whatever he wants?

My glass smelled like vodka, a clean scent. Astringent. If I drank enough of it, could it make me clean on the inside? Could it wash the blood from my hands? Bleach the stains from my soul? If I started drinking right that moment and didn’t stop until it was over, maybe I wouldn’t remember anything in the morning. And if I didn’t remember what had happened, I could tell myself nothing had happened.

A lie is always easier to believe if there’s no evidence against it.

“Oh, come on. There must be something you want to toast. Dinner on someone else’s dime? Low heels?” Ian glanced at my sandals. “Borrowed blouses?” He touched the short, flared sleeve of Kenley’s shirt, and my hand clenched around the glass. He wasn’t going to let me check out. Ian wanted to hear the wind-up doll speak.