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There was a tremble in her voice, something she tried to hide, but it was there. I could see it—the crack in her armor.

“Sloane, I wasn’t—” I said, stepping toward her. “It’s just…these paintings. They’re incredible. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Incredible?” she repeated, her voice thick with disbelief. “You think this is incredible?”

I nodded, taking a step closer, trying to bridge the distance between us. “Have you tried to sell these? You could?—”

“Sell them?” Her reaction was immediate, visceral. She stormed past me, grabbing one of the canvases and turning it to face the wall, like she couldn’t stand to look at it. “Sell them?” she repeated, her voice rising. “You don’t get it, do you?”

I blinked, completely thrown by her reaction. “What do you mean? Sloane, these are?—”

“I’m not an artist,” she snapped, cutting me off. “I’m not someone who gets to sell things.”

I stared at her, completely confused. “Why not? You’re obviously talented. You could?—”

“I’m awhore, Logan,” she spat, the word slamming into me like a freight train. “Whores don’t sell anything but themselves.”

The room went silent, her words hanging in the air like a cloud of smoke, choking the life out of everything. I stood there, frozen, the weight of what she said sinking in.

“Sloane,” I said softly, stepping closer, my heart aching. “What can I say to?—”

“Don’t.” Her voice was trembling now, filled with a pain that I couldn’t begin to understand. “You don’t get to stand there and act like this is something beautiful. It’s not.I’mnot.”

I didn’t understand where this was coming from. I’d thought we were fine until something had happened at the end of the parade, and then she’d been completely different. The last few days I could feel her withdrawing, until last night she’d finally asked to sleep back at her place.

Her shoulders shook, and I saw the tears start to well up in her eyes. She tried to blink them away, trying to hold onto the anger, but it was slipping through her fingers. “This—this isn’t who I am,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t get to have this. I don’t get to be anything but what I am.”

Fuck. I felt sick. She wasn’t just upset—she was broken. The way she looked at herself, the way she couldn’t see what I saw, it tore me apart.

I stepped closer, reaching out to touch her arm, to ground her, but she flinched, pulling away. “I’ll tell you until you believe it,” I said, my voice low, steady. “You’re not what you think you are.”

She shook her head, her tears falling freely now. “You don’t know what I’ve done,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “You don’t know what I am.”

“I don’t care,” I said, stepping closer, refusing to let her push me away. “I don’t care what you think you are. I know you, Sloane. I know the real you. And this—” I gestured to the room, to the paintings surrounding us. “This is you. Not what anyone else has to say. Not what the voice inside your head is telling you. Not what you’ve been forced to believe.”

Her knees buckled, and she collapsed against me, her sobs racking her body as she buried her face in my chest.

“But that’s just it…I haven’t been forced into anything,” she mumbled against my chest.

I froze. “What?”

She lifted her face and stared at me blankly, her walls fully up again.

“Ichosethis life. When I was eighteen, I was scared of having to leave my uncle’s house. He offered me an opportunity to give up my virginity in exchange for money and stability…and I took it. I sold myself for designer clothes, a penthouse condo, and vacations to Malta. I chose that.”

She sounded so certain of her culpability, but anyone could have listened to her and seen the holes in her story. She honestly thought that a decision at eighteen meant she was ruined forever? And that it was her fault?

“So that’s it?” I asked, keeping my tone calm. “You woke up one day, decided you needed designer heels and thought, ‘Hey, why not sell my virginity?’”

Her shoulders flinched, just barely. “It wasn’t like that,” she snapped, her nails digging into her arms. “I was scared…of going back to how I’d grown up. I was poor, Logan. Poor as in no food and living in shelters sometimes. There were so many times I wore the same outfit to school all week because I didn’t have anything else.” She lifted her chin, daring me to argue with her. “I saw a way out, and I took it.”

I let the silence hang for a second, watching the tension in her shoulders tighten, before a dark realization hit me. “Wait, did you say yourunclegave you the opportunity?”

She nodded like it was nothing. “Everett made sure I didn’t have to go back to that life. He organized an auction—he said I could finally take control of my life. He told me I was ‘mastering my destiny.’”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. Her uncle was her…pimp? He’d groomed her—there was no other way to see it. She flinched, and I realized I was holding her too tight. I released her, my head feeling like it was spinning. “Do you really believe that? That you had control?”

She whipped around to face me, her eyes flashing. “Yes,” she snapped, but her voice cracked. “It was my choice.”