Chapter 13: The Night Before Day 30

Tomorrow was Day 30. Tomorrow her father could call. Tomorrow the isolation that had been built into the arrangement as protection would officially end, and she would have to face the world again, would have to make conscious decisions about staying instead of having them made for her by circumstance. The weight of it sat between them like a third person.

They were sitting on the terrace, watching the lake move in the moonlight, watching the way the silver light moved across the water like something alive. Neither of them had mentioned what was coming, as if not speaking about it might make it not happen, might suspend them in this perfect moment where everything was still uncertain.

"Tell me the truth," Scarlett said finally, unable to stand the not-knowing anymore. "All of it. Everything. I want the complete version of why you did this."

"About what?" Julian was lying on the chaise beside her, close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.

"About why you did this. Not the version you told me in the club, not the version about the photograph and my face. The actual truth."

He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that she thought he might not answer. Long enough that she started to think maybe she'd asked for something he wasn't capable of giving.

"Your father's debt came to me through a chain of acquisitions," he said. "It was nothing special. It was one account among dozens. I could have liquidated it through standard collection procedures. I could have called it in cash, broken him, and moved on to the next thing."

"But you didn't."

"But I didn't," he agreed. "Because I saw your name, and I had your name looked up, and I found out you were a musician, and I became curious. And curiosity for me is dangerous because it's the one thing I can't control. Everything else in my life is about power and precision and the ability to predict outcomes. But curiosity is about wanting to know something without knowing what you'll find."

"So you're saying this was about curiosity."

"I'm saying this was about me wanting you in the most selfish way possible," he said. "It wasn't about helping your father. It wasn't about protecting you. It was about the fact that I could have anything in Chicago except the thing I wanted, which was you, and that made you more valuable than everything else combined. So I constructed a situation where I could have access to you, where you'd be trapped here with me, where you'd have no choice but to let me know you. I rationalized it as business. I told myself it was an investment. But it was just me taking something because I wanted it and I could."

"And now?"

"Now," he said, "nothing has changed about how I want you. But everything has changed about why it matters that you're here. You're not here because of a contract anymore. You're here because you chose to stay. And that's the only thing I want that's actually worth having."

She reached over and she put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and she felt it beating under her palm. It was steady. It was real.

"I asked you something the other night," she said. "And I want to ask you again. If I wanted to leave tomorrow, if I wanted to take the debt erasure and walk out of this house and go back to my old life, would you let me?"

"Yes," he said. "Without argument. Without trying to change your mind. Without making you feel guilty or obligated or any of the hundred things I could do to make you stay."

"But you don't want me to leave."

"No," he said. "But I want you to stay because you want to stay, not because you feel like you have to. There's a difference between choice and coercion, and I've spent a long time in my life using coercion. I've learned that choice is much better. I've learned that having someone who wants to be with you is infinitely more valuable than having someone who has no option but to be with you."

"What if I chose to leave?"

He was quiet. He looked at her with an expression that suggested he was working through the mathematics of pain, trying to calculate how much of it he could bear.

"Then I would let you," he said. "And I would destroy the people who sent those men to my house. And I would spend the next fifty years waiting for you to come back. But I would let you go."

She thought about that. She thought about the version of Scarlett that had walked into the club on that first night, desperate and proud and certain she'd hate every second of this arrangement. That version of Scarlett would have already left. That version of Scarlett would have run the moment she had the freedom to do so.

But somewhere over the course of twenty-nine days, she'd become a different version of herself. She'd become someone who could play Shostakovich without her hands shaking. Someone who could stand up to a man like Julian Voss and refuse to be erased by his presence. Someone who could love someone dangerous and still maintain the integrity of her own choices.

"I'm not leaving," she said.

"I know," he said. "But I want to hear you say it tomorrow when your father calls. I want to hear you tell him that you're staying. I want there to be no ambiguity about the fact that this is your choice."

"Are you afraid he'll convince me to go?"

"No," he said. "I'm not afraid of your father. I'm not even afraid of you leaving. I'm afraid that you won't trust that you actually have a choice. I'm afraid that you'll stay because you think you're obligated. I'm afraid that sixty days from now you'll realize you were trapped in a different way and you'll hate me for it."

She sat up, and he sat up with her, and she took both of his hands in her own.

"I'm going to stay," she said. "Not because of an obligation. Not because of a contract. Not because I think I have anywhere else to go. I'm going to stay because I love you. I'm going to stay because you make me want to be better. I'm going to stay because I've never been as alive as I am in this house with you."

He reached up and he touched her face, and his hand was trembling slightly, which might have been the first time she'd seen Julian Voss anything less than completely in control.

"I'm going to love you for the rest of my life," he said. "Even if tomorrow you change your mind. Even if next month you decide this was all a mistake. I'm going to love you anyway."

They didn't kiss. They didn't cross whatever line existed between them, didn't move beyond the space they'd occupied since the night in the library, since they'd admitted what they were feeling. They just sat on the terrace with their hands joined and their foreheads close together, and they waited for tomorrow, knowing that tomorrow would change everything fundamentally, knowing that the outside world was about to intrude on the perfect isolation they'd constructed here in this house by the lake.