My shoulders rise, then fall. His hand moves until it floats above like a benediction that hasn’t landed. When it does, it’s gentle, thumb smoothing over skin. His touch, seemingly innocent enough, completely unnerves me. I know the game Bradley is playing. This is who he pretends to be when eyes are watching. And although we are the only ones in the dressing room, the door to the busy corridor is open wide enough for him to keep his mask in place. Anyone could walk in at any point, and if they did, they’d never guess that the lingering brush across my skin is a mark of ownership, not affection.
Demanding my gaze through the reflection, his features harden as he drops his voice to a low, unsettling grit. “Do you remember where you started?” A smugness lights his beady stare, poised perfectly to burrow under my skin. “Dive bars, neon beer signs, and bad soundboards.” Bile rises to the base of my throat, and I swallow it down, unwilling to let him see how much he rattles me. “Look at you now.”
I hear what he doesn’t say aloud.All this. Everything you are. I. Gave. You.I don’t know why I stayed long enough to be trapped in a life without escape. To him, I am a pawn—incremental, barely visible.
“Tonight is about us. When they call your name, you smile. Not that scrunched thing you do either, the other one—the practiced one.” His free hand grips my chin, marking the corners of my mouth. “You thank the right people. Starting with your future husband.” His reflection tilts as he adjusts the angle of my head, and the air gets thinner as I fight to keep my breathing even. “Follow the fucking script Annabel wrote for you.”
Forcing me to maintain eye contact in the mirror, the pressure on my jaw tightens. “Don’t cry on camera.” His menacing tone deepens through gritted teeth. “Don’t cry at all.”
The taste of copper rises as the memory of the last time he put his hands on me bleeds through my nervoussystem. The room goes a click quieter; the world narrows to the circle of his touch burning my skin.
He leans closer, his mouth near my ear. “You steer the conversation to the wedding, and how you’re having so much fun planning our big day. Sell the illusion, Noah.” The breath on my skin cools in warning. “You tell them I take good care of you.”
He sweeps my long tresses off my shoulder with a tenderness that could read as affection. The ends whisper against my skin, and I hate myself for shivering. He sees that too. He always does. I sit straighter, like a child in church.
“Phone.” He opens his other hand, palm up, patient.
“It’s—”
His brow lifts once, enough to show the flash of steel behind his gaze. In response, I reach into the side pocket of my dress and place the phone in his palm. “Nobody needs your attention but me until the end of the night. Now, smile.” He waits. I deliver the right one this time, teeth and gloss, the shape he coached into me like choreography. He watches it settle into place. Pride slicks through his eyes, bright and obscene.
He doesn’t move for a moment. He just exists in the space behind me, a heat source my body detects despite every instruction to ignore him. The mirror fills with the two of us—his dark suit framing my smallness, his handscalm, mine folded in my lap like a girl who knows her lines.
“I hope you enjoyed your final trip home.” His gaze skims the turquoise rings stacked on my fingers, the spurs, the choker’s pointed tip.
Heat punches the base of my skull. I keep my smile firmly in place, even though it aches to do so. He lowers his mouth, punctuating his next words with a warning. “Whatever you thought you were looking for in that Podunk town—leave it there.” A hiss accompanies the threat. “There’s nothing for you in Black River. Your future is here. With me. Convince yourself if you need to.”
My spine straightens as I shift in my seat, hiding the fear that laces my veins. Bradley’s obsession is becoming more and more unbearable. It’s like seeing the photos of me with Rhett drove him past sanity. I was never afraid of him, but this past week has me fucking terrified. As hard as I try, the glass tightens around my image until the room shrinks to the mirror’s frame. A tear escapes my painted lashes, sliding down my cheek.
In the corridor beyond, a door clicks, voices rising and falling, laughter slicing by. He measures the distance to that sound. Then he leans, the pressure of his fingers changing under my jaw, still delicate, still so control-clean it might not exist from any angle but mine. “No more tears, Noah.” A ghost of amusement. “Do you knowhow you look when you cry? All the artistry leaks right off. Not very pretty. Not very professional.”
He softens his mouth the way he does when he’s about to ask for a favor he’s going to use against me. “Don’t be selfish tonight.”
My throat closes around every word I want to say, so instead I nod once—fake smile still in place. He releases my jaw in a gesture that looks like affection, the pad of his thumb grazing my chin as if blessing my compliance. Bradley steps back enough, allowing me to breathe. “Stand up, honey. It’s almost showtime.”
My knees listen to him before my brain does. The fringe of my dress kisses my thighs when I rise. The room tilts, then rights. He watches me find my balance like he’s grading it.
He circles, not touching, orbiting. His gaze inventories what he owns. A micro-adjustment to the strap of my dress. A smoothing of the leather that doesn’t need smoothing. He plucks a stray glint of glitter from my collarbone and holds it up to the light.
“You know what happens if you improvise.” He flicks the glitter into the bin. “You ramble. You get sincere.” The smile is back, TV-ready again. “Sincerity is cheap. We don’t do cheap.”
My nails bite crescents into my palms where no one will look. I open my hands and let the half-moons disappear.
He angles toward the door, then stops. “One more thing.” The pause ripples the room. I freeze inside it. “When they ask who you want beside you for the photo, you won’t stumble.” A tiny beat. “You won’t look around like you’re lost.” His eyes sharpen. “You won’t look for anyone who isn’t me.” The words land in my stomach and curdle. He extends his arm like a gentleman in old movies. The posture is freedom; the reality is leash. I put my hand in the crook of his elbow because this is a world where I have to. His muscles are loose steel under the fabric, his skin warm, his pulse steady. Mine hammers, a small animal trying to break out of bone.
We take a step, and I obey, rotating around Bradley’s axis. At the threshold, he pauses, turns us back a fraction so we face the mirror for one more appraisal. We look like a success story, and his lips curve with satisfaction. “Good girl.”
My insides shudder at his unwanted praise, but I choke down the ick and respond with what he wants to hear. “I’m ready.”
He laughs once, low, brief, and delighted with my lack of defiance. His knuckles skim the inside of my wrist where my pulse reveals how unsettled he makes me. “Lock it away, Noah.”
He pivots toward the corridor. Light slams into us—bright and blinding, the kind that flattens everyone into printable versions of themselves. People populate thehallway in flashes: stagehands with headsets, a makeup artist carrying a brush belt, a producer checking a list, two presenters gossiping in sequins. Heads lift. Smiles bloom toward him first, then me. We are a brand gliding past. We are proof that fairy tales can be real. Only what they don’t know is that ours is managed by money and fear.
His stride is effortless. Mine is one fraction shorter, calibrated to his pace, my boot heels catching rhythm on the polished floor. His arm cages my hand. It may look romantic, but it’s anything but. He leans without turning his head, a whisper born inside the smile he’s presenting to the corridor. “One breath every eight steps. You’re doing six. Fix it.”
I adjust. I don’t think about how long he’s been counting my breaths, because the reality of that truth would scare me more than I let on.
We pass a cluster of cameras. He loosens his elbow just enough to slide his hand down my forearm, fingers closing over my wrist in a hold that reads proprietary and photographs as protective. The pressure tightens for a single beat—just enough to make my bones remember the order of themselves—then releases to a more elegant grip. He laughs at something a producer says. I don’t get the joke. My hearing has gone narrow, tuned to the frequency of him.
