I was beginning to understand. With shocking clarity. “That’s what I was, wasn’t I?” I wasn’t really asking anyone. “A game. Your game. Together.” My legs went weak and I fell to the floor. “Oh god. Oh god, oh god.”

“Alayna—” Hudson fell to his knees and reached for me.

I scrambled away, my entire body shaking. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed. I couldn’t tell if he’d stopped moving toward me or not—my vision was blinded with fury and pain. My stomach twisted as though I might vomit and my head—my head couldn’t process, couldn’t think.

It didn’t help that Hudson refused to let me have a minute to hear my own thoughts. “It wasn’t what you think, Alayna. Yes, it started as a game. As Celia’s game. But I only went along because it was you. Because I was so enamored with you.”

I stared at him, blinking until my vision cleared. Then it was as if I were seeing him for the first time. I’d known this was his M.O. How could I have ignored that this exact situation was a possibility? Our beginning had been strange and unusual. He’d bought the club. Then he’d hired me to break up his engagement—an engagement that wasn’t ever a real thing. Why had I not questioned the bizarreness of it before?

And now he was trying to reason with me. My stomach wrenched tighter and I began to dry heave.

“Alayna, let me—”

I held a hand out to stop him from coming toward me. “I don’t want your help,” I said when the heaving subsided. With the back of my hand, I wiped the spit from my mouth. “I want f**king answers.”

“Anything. I told you I’d tell you anything.” His words tumbled out as if he thought that answers might benefit him.

I already knew there was nothing he could say to fix this. That every answer would likely be more painful than the last. Still I had to know everything.

I bent my fingers into the carpet, trying to grasp onto something to give me strength. “You were enamored with me?” The phrase was sour on my tongue. “So you decided to f**k with me?”

“No.” He sat back on his haunches and shoved both hands through his hair. “No, I wanted to get near you, and her plan was an excuse.”

“And what was her plan? ‘That girl presenting now. Make her fall in love with you and’…what?”

He shook his head fiercely, emphatically. “No, it didn’t happen like that. It wasn’t like that.”

I slammed a fist into the floor. “Then what was it like? Tell me!”

He clambered to find his words. I’d never seen him so lost, so off-balance, so miserable. “I saw you, like I’ve told you, and I was drawn to you. Completely drawn to you. I’ve never lied about that.”

“Drawn to me so you decided to destroy me.” And it had worked, hadn’t it? Because here I was, completely destroyed.

Hudson shook his head again. “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you. It’s not coming out right at all.”

“You mean if you told it another way, you could manipulate it to make it sound better.” I was shaking so badly, my teeth chattered as I spoke.

He winced as if I’d slapped him across the face. “I deserve that. But that’s not what I meant.” He inched closer, then stilled when my expression told him not to dare move nearer. “Let me tell it the way it was. Please. It won’t be better. It will still be awful, but it will be accurate.”

I leaned my back against the desk front, not wanting to hear more, needing to hear it all. “I’m waiting.”

He ran his tongue along his lips. “I saw you. And Celia noticed, I think. Noticed me noticing you. A few days later, she showed up with information about you.”

“She showed up with information?” My interruption shook him from what I’d guessed was a memorized script. Too goddammed bad. I wasn’t about to let any of it be easy for him.

“Yes, Celia had investigated you. It wasn’t me. She had your police record and the restraining order, plus a copy of your mental health record.”

Another wave of nausea rippled through me as I thought about Celia being the one to uncover my secrets. As I pictured her running to Hudson with the information of my worst sins.

He seemed to read my disgust, seemed to want to ease it. “It was in complete opposition to what I’d seen of you, Alayna. Everything she’d gathered—that wasn’t the strong, confident woman we’d seen at the symposium. It was obvious those things existed in your past. You were better. I saw that.”

“I was better.” I said it defiantly, even though it was exactly what he’d just said. “I was.”

“Yes. You were. It was evident.” He took a breath. “Her theory, though, was that you could be broken again.” His eyes flared. “I didn’t agree.”

He let those words hang in the air, waiting for them to sink in.

But what did he expect that I’d do? Stand up and give him a f**king medal because he’d wagered on my side? Because he’d assumed that he couldn’t break me?

He’d still tried!

Anyway, he’d been wrong. He had gone beyond breaking me. He’d shattered me.

He kept talking, my brain barely computing his words. “That was the bet. She made up the whole idea to have you break up our nonexistent engagement. After a time, I was to end things with you, naturally. Say that the farce was no longer necessary. Then we’d wait and see what happened.” He paused to find his words. “But I didn’t ever feel—”

I cut him off. “So all of it was a scam. Every single part of us was a lie.” My speech was labored as I forced out words that I could never have imagined saying.

“No!” He was animated, passionate. “Even in the beginning, it was never about the game. Not for me. I wasn’t supposed to seduce you. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you. And I did both before you’d even agreed to play along.”

I tilted my chin up, the only challenge I could muster besides my heated words. “But you didn’t fall in love with me. There’s no way, because you don’t do shit like that to people you love!”

“I’d never been in love, Alayna! I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I only knew I had to be with you and this was the way to do it.” His voice cracked. “I’m not excusing what I did, but I’m explaining. I’m pleading for you to try to…to try and…”