The car drops me off at my building just as the sun fully breaks over Seattle.
I climb the stairs to my studio apartment like I'm walking through water. Everything feels heavy and surreal, like I'm moving through someone else's life instead of my own.
Inside, my space looks exactly the same. Tiny kitchenette. Murphy bed still pulled down from yesterday morning. Art supplies scattered across every surface. The half-finished illustration I was working on before everything changed.
But I'm different.
I can feel it in my bones, this fundamental shift that happened somewhere between walking into the wrong hotel room and walking out wearing a stranger's shirt under my dress.
My phone has been buzzing nonstop. Seventeen missed calls from Todd. Twelve texts ranging from worried to angry to desperate.
I should feel something. Rage, maybe. Heartbreak. The satisfaction of righteous fury.
But all I feel is tired.
And disgusted.
I text him back: We need to talk. Coffee shop on Pine. One hour.
His response is immediate: Thank god. I've been so worried. I'll explain everything.
I'm sure he will.
Todd's already there when I arrive, sitting at our usual table by the window. He stands when he sees me, relief flooding his face, and for a second—just a second—he looks like the man I thought I knew.
"Sloane, thank god. I've been going crazy. Where were you? I waited for hours and you never showed up, and then you wouldn't answer your phone—"
"Sit down, Todd."
Something in my voice makes him stop mid-sentence. He sits.
I take the chair across from him, and I don't bother with coffee or small talk or easing into this. "Room 2417. Want to tell me about it?"
The color drains from his face. "I don't know what you—"
"Don't." The word comes out sharp. "Don't lie to me. Not now. I know what you did. What you tried to do. So you can either tell me the truth, or I can walk out of here right now and you'll never see me again."
He's sweating. Actually sweating. "It's not what you think."
"Then what is it?"
"I was helping a friend. Marcus, he's a business associate, and he was in town and needed—" He stops, realizing how that sounds.
"Needed what, Todd? Entertainment? A pretty girl to play with for the night?" My voice is calm. Too calm. Like I'm discussing the weather instead of the fact that my boyfriend tried to sell me.
"It wasn't like that." He reaches for my hand. I pull away. "He just wanted to meet you. I thought maybe if he saw how great you were, he could help with your art career. He knows people in publishing."
The lie is so pathetic I almost laugh.
"You sent me to the wrong room number." I lean forward, making sure he hears every word. "2417 instead of 2714. Want to know what happened?"
His face goes even paler. "Sloane—"
"I ended up in someone else's suite. Someone who was very interested to learn that a woman matching my description was expected on that floor that night. For Marcus Veil's entertainment."
"I can explain—"
"You gambled." It's not a question. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he won't quite meet my gaze. "You got in over your head, owed money to the wrong people, and Marcus offered to clear your debt if you delivered me. Am I close?"
"It was supposed to be just drinks." His voice cracks. "Just dinner and drinks. He promised he wouldn't—it wasn't supposed to be—"
"But you knew." That's the part that makes my stomach turn. "You knew exactly what kind of man he is and you sent me anyway. Told me it was you. Told me to come to that room and give myself to someone I thought was my boyfriend."
"I'm sorry." Tears are running down his face now. "I'm so sorry, Sloane. I was desperate. I owed fifty grand and they were threatening to—I didn't know what else to do."
"You could've asked me for help. Told me the truth. Literally anything except using me as currency to pay off your debts."
"Would you have helped?" He's getting defensive now, which would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. "You barely make enough to cover your own rent. What were you going to do, sell some paintings?"
And there it is. The contempt he's been hiding under all those sweet smiles and supportive words. He never believed in my art. Never thought I'd amount to anything.
He just thought I was manageable. Controllable.
Safe.
"We're done." I stand up, and I feel nothing. No heartbreak. No regret. Just the clean, clear certainty that I'm walking away from something toxic that I should've left a long time ago. "Don't call me. Don't text me. Don't come by my apartment. If I see you anywhere near me or my friends, I'll file a restraining order."
"Sloane, please—"
"You don't get to say my name anymore." I grab my bag, ready to leave this whole mess behind. "And Todd? Whatever happens with Marcus and your debt? You deserve every bit of it."
I walk out of the coffee shop and don't look back.
The next three weeks are a blur of work and routine and pretending everything is fine.
I throw myself into the gallery. Take on extra shifts. Stay late organizing inventory and updating the website. Anything to keep my mind busy and my hands moving.
Rhea knows something happened—I told her Todd and I broke up, that he did something unforgivable—but I can't bring myself to tell her the whole story. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
How do you explain that your boyfriend tried to hand you over to a stranger? That you ended up sleeping with someone else entirely? That you can't stop thinking about a man who said you'd never see him again?
Because that's the worst part.
I can't stop thinking about Caspian.
At night, when I should be sleeping, I remember the way he looked at me in the darkness. The weight of his hands. The rough silk of his voice saying my name. The unexpected gentleness when he made me eat soup and gave me his shirt and called me a car like I was something worth protecting.
The security he promised has been there. I've spotted the same black SUV parked on my street every day. Someone watching my building, making sure I'm safe.
He kept his word. Even though he said I'd never see him again, he's still protecting me.
And I don't know what to do with that.
I try dating apps. Rhea sets me up with one of her photographer friends. I go out for drinks with a guy from the gallery who's been asking for months.
But nothing clicks. Nobody makes me feel even a fraction of what I felt that night with Caspian.
Which is ridiculous. I spent a few hours with him. One intense, impossible night that shouldn't mean anything in the grand scheme of my life.
Except it does.
I find myself looking up Thorne Ventures online. Reading articles about him—the boy genius who took over his family's company and turned it into an empire. Looking at photos where he's always in a suit, always controlled, never quite smiling.
Wondering if he ever thinks about me.
Wondering if that night changed anything for him, or if I was just another problem he solved and filed away.
I throw myself into my art. Finish three new illustrations. Submit my portfolio to two publishers. Take a freelance job designing a logo for a local bookstore.
I'm moving forward. Building the life I want.
I'm fine.
Really.
I'm completely—
I'm in the gallery bathroom when I realize.
It's been three weeks since that night. Three weeks since I walked into the wrong room and everything changed.
And I'm late.
Not just a day or two. I'm never late. My cycle has been regular since I was fifteen, clockwork reliable, and I'm never, ever late.
My hands start shaking.
No. No no no.
This can't be happening. We used protection. I remember him—
Actually, I don't remember. It was dark and overwhelming and I was so lost in the feeling of it all that I didn't think about logistics. Didn't ask. Didn't check.
I was supposed to be with Todd. My boyfriend of two years. We'd talked about safety and birth control and being responsible.
But Caspian was a stranger. A beautiful, dangerous stranger who I trusted implicitly in that moment even though I had no reason to trust him at all.
The bathroom walls are closing in.
I need to take a test. Need to know for sure before I spiral completely.
But deep in my gut, in that place where women's intuition lives and breathes and knows things before the body confirms them, I already know.
I'm pregnant.
With Caspian Thorne's baby.
The man who said I'd never see him again.
The man who's still having me watched and protected even though he told me to stay away.
The man whose name I googled three times this week just to see his face.
I slide down the bathroom wall, sitting on the cold tile floor, trying to remember how to breathe.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
Except it is.
And somewhere in the middle of the panic and the fear and the absolute chaos of this realization, there's something else.
Something I don't want to acknowledge but can't ignore.
A tiny, impossible spark of something that might be hope.
Because I'm carrying a piece of that night with me. A piece of him.
And even though everything is about to get infinitely more complicated, even though I have no idea what to do or how to handle this or if I should even tell him—
Part of me isn't sorry.
Part of me is terrified and overwhelmed and completely unprepared.
But part of me is standing on a cliff in the dark, about to jump, and instead of fear—
I feel alive.