Just enough to see inside to the masculine, expensive space beyond.
I should walk past.
Should go back to the library or my room or anywhere else.
Should mind my own business and respect boundaries and not snoop, but something pulls me forward.
That same curiosity that got me into this mess in the first place.
The need to know, to understand, to see what's hidden.
I push the door open wider and step inside.
The office is exactly what I'd expect from Vaughn.
Masculine. Expensive. Controlled.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line two walls, filled with leather-bound volumes and business texts and?—
I move closer, reading the spines.
Books on sexuality.
On trauma recovery.
On religious deprogramming.
On helping purity culture survivors reclaim their sexuality.
The spines are well-worn, like he's read them multiple times.
Bookmarks stick out from various pages.
Notes in the margins in handwriting I recognize as his.
Research.
He researched how to do this to me.
How to break down my walls.
How to make me want him.
How to turn my own body against me.
How to help me, maybe, in his own twisted way.
The thought should make me angry.
Should feel like violation, like manipulation, like proof that this was all calculated from the beginning.
Instead, it just makes me sad.
Because some part of me—some stupid, naive part—wanted to believe he was different.
That this was about more than control or ownership or training me to be his perfect acquisition.
That maybe he actually cared about me as a person, not just as property.
