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OPHELIA

“ O phelia, your days as a free woman are over.” My eyes fly up to Topher, my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

The casual tone of his voice doesn’t match his weird, fucked-up announcement, so I must’ve misheard him.

I must have. “We’re having an auction tomorrow, and you’ll be sold to the highest bidder. I hope you understand.”

My fork and knife clatter on the table.

The steak on my plate hasn’t been holding my interest to begin with.

Auction?

Highest bidder?

Hope I fucking understand?

What the hell?

I shouldn’t even be here. Yesterday, I gave him the infamous We need to talk line over the phone. He asked me for one last dinner at his dad’s place, which I foolishly agreed to.

A dinner, that’s all. Not this.

My mind races as Topher’s words replay in my head.

Snap out of it!

“Topher?”

He sits across from me at the long table in the dining room. His expression is blank, his mouth sealed. He can’t do that to me.

After the bomb he’s dropped on me, I’m owed an explanation. A million of them.

“Topher, what did you just say?”

Nothing.

His father, James, who sits at head of the table, is equally silent. I don’t dare look at him.

Can’t, since my mind is still hard at work. Since I’m frozen in place, furious and shocked. What the hell is this?

I couldn’t have heard it.

You’ll be sold to the highest bidder.

If he were actually saying what I think he did, James would have intervened.

Selling people is illegal. He’s a lawyer; he has to know that.

He doesn’t even have to care about me to realize that it’s against the law. That it’s wrong.

James and I have only met three times over the last month, five months after I started dating Topher. The impersonal dinners we’ve had in his mansion on the outskirts of New York City is not a lot to go on, true. We aren’t friends.

But he’s given me the impression of being a serious, no-nonsense type of man.

And if selling me isn’t nonsense, I don’t know what is.

Yup. I must’ve misheard Topher, then.

Deep breath.

“Topher?” I stare straight at the man in the perfectly pressed navy suit. His gaze is no longer on me.

He’s cutting into his steak.

Calmly. Another obvious sign that I had to have misheard him.

Of course I have.

After a long week at work, I’m exhausted. I love my job as a server, but pulling double shifts at the restaurant has taken its toll on me. That could definitely explain my disorientation.

Plus, I’m a nervous wreck. My stomach has been in knots ever since I decided to break up with Topher. I hardly ever dated anyone before him. I never broke up with anyone.

So yeah, my mind must be playing tricks on me.

“Hello?” I wave my hand to grab his attention. I should be embarrassed to raise my voice in front of James, who’s always so put together. The man who makes my heart race. Today, I don’t care. Mostly. “Earth to Topher?”

“You will be”—the steak’s juices paint the white porcelain plate in a dark shade of caramel—“auctioned off.”

Again with this auction thing.

This has to be a joke. One that isn’t even remotely funny.

I squint, staring at him silently. Waiting for the punchline.

It must be there somewhere. I’m just not looking closely enough.

But nothing’s out of place.

He looks the same as he did when he came to pick me up this evening.

His thick, dark, and short hair is styled to perfection. The oval shape of his jaw is set in place. He isn’t smiling or rubbing his mouth to hide the twitch of his lips.

Narrowed, harsh, pale-blue eyes glare at me.

He’s not fucking around.

This isn’t some sick joke.

Foolish me. Why would I think it is?

Topher hasn’t been remotely funny over the six months we’ve been dating.

In fact, since the day he took a seat next to me on the bench in Union Square, he’s always been somber. Definitely not what one would call funny.

For the first few weeks we’d been seeing each other, he’d been dark and mysterious. Since then, he’s been cold to me, and not in an attractive kind of way.

Not like his dad.

James. The man I haven’t been able to get out of my head ever since that first dinner at his place. Where Topher is uncaring and bland, there’s something about James that’s more than appealing to me. An aura.

I’ve been gravitating toward him for over a month.

I haven’t been able to stop.

At what I assume is six feet four—an inch or two taller than his son—James has the darkest presence I’ve ever come across. It isn’t fake. He isn’t putting on a show.

He’s simply dark.

Impossible to ignore.

His soul seems just as black as the outfit he dons today over his broad frame.

The rest of him is just as imposing.

Eyes that are icy blue.

Jaw so sharp it could do more than cut a person—it could make them bleed out and die at his feet.

Hair as dark as the night, cut short on the sides and a little longer on top.

Maybe he’ll help me. For that to happen, I have to shake off this terror that clutches onto every part of my being.

Except I’m unable to bring myself to look him in the eye. I look at his hands instead.

His hands. Fuck. I shouldn’t be comparing them to Topher’s in a situation like this.

I do.

They’re large like his. But James’s fingers are longer. More elegant.

And one of his hands is tattooed.

The rose with the blood droplets tattooed on the back of his palm seems almost angry.

As the last words Topher said mess with my head, I search James’s body language for signs. Anything that might mean that he, too, thinks Topher is in the wrong.

No movement comes from the head of the table. James’s hands are flattened on the table top. His steak remains untouched.

I’ll have to face Topher alone, then.

Won’t be the first time I’ve had to stand up for myself.

I’ve got this.

Topher drops the piece of his filet into his mouth and offers me his famous so what look. His You’ll take the breadcrumbs I’m willing to offer you look—another reason why I’ve been meaning to end our relationship.

I will end it.

If I make it out of here.

Wait. Why wouldn’t I? They can’t—they don’t own me. They won’t sell me.

The pressure in my chest intensifies. My blood temperature rises. I can’t think straight. I can’t bring myself to get up.

I guess I’ll have to ask for help after all.

I brace myself before raising my gaze to James’s face.

His frosty eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes, stare back at me. They remind me of sleet falling outside my window at night.

Something’s brewing behind them. An emotion I can’t quite put my finger on. I wish I could.

Before this evening, I thought it hadn’t been fair to Topher. Me, being drawn to his dad. I’d been captivated by him in ways I shouldn’t have. I hated it. Hated longing for a man who wasn’t my boyfriend.

Hated that I acknowledged he was the hotter of the two.

This, too, is yet another reason for me to put this relationship and both Hawthorne men behind me.

They’re wrong for me. Both of them. Even though they’re my type.

Men who promise nothing but stomp all over my heart and leave me for dead. A rollercoaster that ends with my soul thrown out of the cart. Months of tears, sad songs, and heartache ensue once they’ve had their fun.

During my short twenty-four years, I’ve had three of those.

Topher is the last one, the youngest one I’ve ever dated. He’s three years my junior, but I wanted him.

He used to be a dominant man who would simply announce that he was taking me on a date via text. Appeared at my doorstep every Friday night after a long shift and demanded we go out to a restaurant for a late-night dinner. Told me I couldn’t talk to other guys.

He’d been a delicious red flag.

When he changed, I started losing interest.

He wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t try to fuck me like the other guys I’d been with had. I never let anyone get farther than a kiss, but that’s not the point.

The point is, the tension had been insane.

With Topher, nothing happened. He’s been against touching me since day one. Against sex before marriage. We hardly ever kissed.

I’d been hoping that he’d grow out of it.

He hasn’t. He’s become increasingly distant by the day and not in a good, sexy way. Called and visited less.

Since I couldn’t forget how good we had it early on, I gave our relationship another chance. Then another. He was supposed to revert to being his old self.

No such luck.

Which—Why am I having these thoughts right now?

Whatever’s going on here, I need to stay on top of it.

Losing my virginity should be the farthest thing from my mind when Topher’s words hang in the air between the three of us.

His deranged, violent words.

My tongue is heavy as both men stick to their silence. As I wordlessly beg James to tell Topher that even if he’s twenty-one, he’s still his son. He can still order him to stop it.

He stares back. Silent.

Infuriating.

The sound of a knife slicing into meat snaps my attention back to Topher. “He’s not going to help you, Ophelia.”

My heart slows.

He’s right. No one will.

Because there’s no one here.

The expansive dining room is empty but for these two men, me, and our food.

For the first time tonight, I notice that the staff left after they put the plates on the table and poured our wine. They haven’t been back since.

The other times I’d been here, they’d always stayed close by.

Ready with a decanter at hand. Hovering over us to change the silverware to fit each dish. Lingering in the corners of the room in case James or Topher called for them.

I’ve been left here to fend for myself. They even took my coat and purse. My phone.

It’s just me and my thin, black sheath dress against the world.

Against this… this…

Again, what the fuck is this?

My body is numb. Shock has stripped the fight off me.

Years of being an orphan and growing up in the foster care system had taught me better than this.

Get up. Get up. Get up.

Get. Up.

The heavy chair scratches the wood floor when I stand up abruptly. The sound is a thunder bumping across the room. The high ceilings.