"Your parents," I say flatly. "I read about how they met."
Something flickers across his face. Surprise? Confusion? It's gone too fast to read.
"What about how they met?"
"Don't play dumb, Phoenix. The article. 'Paradise Found: The Crawford Love Story.'" I laugh bitterly. "Your father sent your mother an anonymous check. Paid off all her debts. Flew her to his island paradise. Sound familiar?"
He stares at me. For a long moment, he doesn't say anything.
Then: "What article?"
"The one I found when I Googled your parents. The one that describes exactly what you did to me." My voice is rising now, all the fear and confusion of the past twelve hours spilling out. "Anonymous money. Beautiful estate. Man who takes care of everything. It's the same, Phoenix. It's exactly the same."
"I don't—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "I've never read that article."
"Bullshit."
"I haven't." His voice is harder now, an edge creeping in. "My parents told me they met at a dinner party. Friends of friends. That's what they've always said."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"I don't care what you believe." He closes the distance between us, and suddenly he's right there, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. "But I'm telling you the truth. I didn't know about any check. I didn't know about any of it."
I search his face for the lie. For the tell that will confirm everything Mom warned me about.
I can't find it.
He looks... shaken. Genuinely shaken. Like I've just pulled the ground out from under him.
"You really didn't know?" I ask quietly.
"No." The word is clipped. Angry. But not at me—at something else. Someone else. "I didn't know my father paid off my mother's debts. I didn't know he lured her to Hawaii with money. I didn't know any of that was how they started."
"Then how do you explain what you did to me?"
"I can't." He's not backing down, not softening. If anything, he seems more intense. "I saw you and I wanted you and I did what I had to do to get you here. I didn't think about where the instinct came from. I didn't analyze it. I just acted."
"You just acted," I repeat. "And it never occurred to you that paying off a stranger's debts and flying her across the country might be... unusual?"
"Nothing about wanting you has ever felt unusual to me." His hand comes up, fingers catching my chin, forcing me to look at him. "It's felt inevitable."
My heart is pounding. I should pull away. Should demand more answers, more explanations, more proof that he's not just his father wearing a different face.
But his touch sends electricity through me, same as it always does. My body doesn't care about patterns or warnings or magazine articles from twenty years ago. My body just wants him.
"I don't know if I can trust you," I whisper.
"Then don't trust me." His thumb traces my jawline, slow and deliberate. "Stay anyway."
"That doesn't make sense."
"None of this makes sense." He leans closer, his forehead almost touching mine. "But you're here. And I'm not letting you go."
It's not a request. It's not even a statement. It's a declaration—possessive and absolute and completely uninterested in my permission.
I should be frightened. Some part of me is.
But a larger part of me is something else entirely.
