Page 34

CHAPTER 32

SLOANE

T he ceiling above me was a familiar sight. I stared at it, my eyes tracing the same cracks in the plaster I’d memorized over countless sleepless nights before I’d met him. It was always the same. Hours would pass, and I’d lie there, my body restless, my mind refusing to quiet. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in years—not until Logan.

I’d tried to come back to my place alone last night, but he’d insisted on coming with me, sensing something was wrong. I was acting crazy, but I couldn’t help it.

I tried turning on my side, then back again, bunching the pillow under my head, hoping the change would help. But nothing worked. What was Everett thinking? Why had he been there?

I should go talk to him. Cut the cord. I knew that.

Why was it so scary?

Logan was promising this wasn’t just a short-term fling…but a part of me thought—what if he decided he was done?

How could I go back to my old life?

After what felt like hours of staring into the void, I gave up. I slipped out from under the covers, a pang of longing hitting my insides when Logan rolled over and reached out his arm, like he was searching for me. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet hitting the cold floor. The chill sent a jolt through me, but it wasn’t enough to shake off the weight pressing down on my chest.

I padded across the room, my bare feet making soft sounds against the floorboards, and made my way down the hall to the room where my art supplies were set up. The smell of paint and turpentine greeted me as I stepped inside. Canvases were scattered everywhere, leaning against walls, piled in corners, each one of them a glimpse of my tortured psyche.

I stood there for a moment, taking it all in. Half-finished paintings, smeared palettes, and brushes that hadn’t been cleaned properly. It was a mess, unlike the rest of the condo. But in this mess, I found a strange kind of peace. Here, I didn’t have to pretend. I didn’t have to play a role or wear a mask.

I picked up a brush, my fingers closing around the familiar handle, and pulled a fresh canvas onto the easel. The brush moved almost on its own, instinct taking over as I dipped it into the paint, the strokes flowing in a way that felt both effortless and necessary. Each swipe of the brush felt like an exhale, a release of everything I couldn’t say out loud.

The room was quiet, save for the soft sound of the bristles against the canvas. I tried not to think about Logan or our ending. I tried not to think about anything but the colors—the way they blended together, the way they formed something that wasn’t quite whole but was still something .

I painted until my hands ached, until the colors blurred and the shapes bled into one another. But even then, the weight didn’t lift. It never did.

I glanced around at the paintings littering the room, each one a piece of me that I kept hidden, locked away. They were the only things that made sense when everything else was falling apart. But no one would ever see them. They were mine. My private rebellion against the world that owned me.

With a sigh, I set the brush down, stepping back from the canvas. It was unfinished and dark. A reflection of me. Unfinished. Fractured. I stared at it for a long time, wondering if I’d ever feel complete. Or if I’d be stuck like this forever—just pretending, just surviving.

I didn’t have an answer.

I slipped back into the bed where Logan was still peacefully sleeping, and finally fell into troubled and restless dreams, telling myself no matter what happened, I would still be me.

Even if I didn’t know who that was anymore.

* * *

LOGAN

I didn’t know what had woken me up. Sloane was curled up on her side, her body finally still after hours of restless tossing. Last night was the first time she’d done that. The way she’d slept—like she was constantly bracing herself for something—I didn’t like it. I watched her for a minute, the rise and fall of her breathing, trying to reconcile the fragile way she slept with the way she carried herself during the day.

I tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t happening. Finally, I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and moved quietly through the condo, aimlessly wandering.

There was a door slightly ajar down the hall. She probably wouldn’t like me exploring her place without her, but it felt like there were layers of her I hadn’t even begun to see yet. I wanted to know all of her. Pushing open the door a bit more, I stepped inside.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of paint—rich and sharp, mixed with the subtle scent of something else, like turpentine. It was a studio, or at least it looked like one. Canvases were stacked haphazardly against the walls, brushes scattered on the floor, on tables. And in the middle of it all, a half-finished painting sat on an easel, of a sailboat tossing on a stormy sea. I walked over to it and realized the paint was still wet.

She’d done this at some point during the night.

I was frozen for a second, taking it all in. I’d known there was more to her than she let on, but this—this was something else. Each painting was a different piece of her, raw and visceral, like she’d poured every emotion she couldn’t express into the canvas. The colors were dark, layered, the strokes aggressive but deliberate. There was a sadness to every picture, a sense of devastation she was trying to express that I could actually feel as I studied them.

I pulled out my phone, snapping a few pictures before I could stop myself. This wasn’t the kind of manufactured art you saw on postcards. It was real, and it hit me right in the chest. I couldn’t stop myself from capturing it, like I needed proof that this part of her existed.

I moved to the next canvas, one leaning against the wall. It was half-hidden, but when I tilted it up, I felt my breath catch. The image was haunting—a silhouette of a woman standing alone, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were trying to hold herself together. Her face wasn’t visible, just shadowed, but the sadness in the image was palpable. It was like she was crumbling from the inside out, but still standing. Barely.

I took another picture, then another, my fingers moving faster as I tried to capture the details. I’d never seen anything like this. It was like she’d taken every part of herself she tried to hide and poured it into these paintings. It was mesmerizing, and I couldn’t stop.

And then I heard it—the soft creak of the floorboard behind me.

I turned, my phone still in hand, and there she was, standing in the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was sharp, filled with something I couldn’t quite place—fear, anger, betrayal…maybe all of it.

I froze, and for a second, I felt like an idiot. “I was just…” I started, but I didn’t know how to finish. What was I doing digging through her private world without asking, like I had any right to be here?

She stepped into the room, her expression hardening. “You were just what? Going through my stuff?”

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 a whore , 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’m not.”

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.

“I chose this 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 your uncle gave 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.”

“Was it?” I asked, my voice sharper now, cutting through her defenses. “Because the way you talk about him—it doesn’t sound like you had much of a choice at all. Sounds to me like he groomed you for it.”

Her jaw clenched and she looked away, her breath coming faster. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t I?” I took a step closer, trying to keep my voice steady, calm, even though my anger was clawing at me. Not at her—at him. “Think about it, Sloane. Eighteen isn’t exactly the age of sound decision-making. And you had someone whispering in your ear, dangling luxury and comfort in front of you like a carrot. Scaring you about what would happen if you didn’t go along with what he was offering you. He made you think it was your idea, didn’t he?”

She stared at the floor, and I could see her hands trembling. “You don’t understand,” she murmured. “It’s too late, Logan. I’ve been this person for too long. It’s who I am.”

“No.” I stepped closer, making sure she couldn’t look away. “It’s who you were made to think you are. That’s not the same thing.”

She shook her head, her voice shaky. “I can never be anything else.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, my voice firm. She finally looked up at me, and the rawness in her eyes nearly broke me. “What would you tell another girl, Sloane? Someone you met randomly who was eighteen, and she was telling you she sold herself at an auction…because her guardian encouraged her. Would you tell her she was horrible? Would you tell her she was a whore, that she deserved everything she had coming to her?”

She blinked, her breath hitching, and I could see the cracks forming in the walls she’d built around herself. She shook her head. “What? I—no! Of course, not.”

“Well, then why would you say that to yourself?” I said, stepping even closer. “Why are you different?”

Her lips parted like she wanted to argue, but no words came out. For the first time, she looked unsure. And that, to me, was a win. Small, but a win.