chapter 17
She looked over her shoulder once, checking the street. “Not here.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the back booth of a twenty-four-hour café that smelled like burnt coffee and wet pavement. She kept twisting a napkin to pieces between her fingers.
“I know you hate me,” she said.
“I don’t think about you enough for that to be true.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, like she knew she deserved it.
Then she said, very softly, “If I tell you something, will you believe me?”
“No.”
Her eyes filled anyway. “Fair.”
For a moment she just sat there listening to the rain.
Then the words came.
Ethan had not fallen in love with her all at once. He had become obsessed with her. There was a difference, she said, and by the end she had learned it with her whole body.
At first he had been intoxicating—attentive, relentless, the kind of man who made the rest of the room disappear. He gave her things she had never been given: protection, money, choice, hunger directed entirely at her.
Then came the conditions.
Who she could see. What she could wear. Which friends were disloyal. Which smiles were too long. Which calls needed answering on the first ring.
If she cried, he soothed her.
If she resisted, he punished her with silence sharp enough to slice skin.
And when she tried to leave, he always seemed to know before she reached the door.