Something unreadable passes through his gaze, but it’s gone just as quickly. “You ready to go?”
I glance back at the room. At Melissa’s smile. At Jack’s careful posture.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
Karson leads me toward the door. This time I don’t stop to say goodbye.
KARSON
The Steele estate disappears from the rearview. Ashlynn doesn’t speak, but the tension leaves her body as we get further away. She’s staring out the windshield again as my Camaro glides down a dark stretch of road, champagne silk catching the low dashboard lights. Her fingers twist the fabric at her thigh. From the minute we arrived at Jack and Melissa’s tonight, she’s been wound tight. I can see the war happening in her mind, so I let the silence breathe.
I let her breathe.
Approaching the main road, streetlights streak across the windshield in steady intervals. Her reflection flickers in the glass, features calm but eyes lost once again.
“You hate it there,” I say finally. She inhales deeply, holding it for a long minute before releasing it.
“I don’t hate it,” she whispers.
Lie.
I shift gears smoothly as we merge onto the highway.
“Why do you go?” I ask. That finally brings her back from wherever she was a minute ago. Her head turns slightly. Not defensive. Just tired. She watches me from the corner of her eye, chewing on her bottom lip, as if she’s unsure whether or not she wants to tell me. Looking down at her fidgeting fingers, then the windshield again, she rolls her eyes.
“They pay for my car and the loft,” she says. “They call it support. I call it leverage.”
My grip tightens on the steering wheel.
“If I don’t go to at least that one gala every year, they’ll take it all back. And now that I’m not going back to Rapture,” she continues, quieter, “I’ll need it until I find something else.”
The defeated look that I see on her face at this moment makes me want to turn the car around and burn that house to the ground with them still inside of it. Ashlynn is vibrant, full of fire and sass, and they’ve managed to find ways to dull that flame. She’s a puppet. Rage blooms in my chest and I work hard to tamp it down before glancing at her.
“Is that all?” I ask, keeping my tone even.
She frowns slightly. “Is that all what?”
“Is that the only reason you go back there?”
She nods once. I look back at the road, loosening my grip on the wheel.
“Well,” I say, “that’s easy.”
She blinks. “How?”
“The car will be back in their driveway in the morning, as well as the keys to the loft.”
Her spine straightens. Silence floods the car.
“You can’t just–” she starts.
“I can,” I cut in. I don’t look at her, but I can feel the tension building again.
“So then what, Karson,” she snaps. “I don’t have a job anymore. No car. No house. Am I supposed to just stay with you in the penthouse and do nothing?”
My hand reaches over and cradles the back of her neck gently.
“I won’t have you tethered to people who use you, and then make you feel like you should be grateful to them. Fuck that, and fuck them.” My thumb strokes her cheek, putting out the flames of her anger before they consume her.
