I shivered. “Me?”
“C’mon, Arden. You’re fucking smart, so use that brain,” he said. “We aren’t stealing cars. We’retraining. He’s weeding out which of us is pretty enough to sell in the courtyard but sly enough to steal from our Buyers.It’ll double his profit, offering a new revenue stream.” His words jabbed into me like knives. He noticed my fear, and his dark look softened. “You had to know you’d be repurposed. You don’t just grow out of being a Doll. Viktor may not want you now that you’re an adult, but others will, and by proving you have the guts to go out and pull off theft for him, you made yourself even more valuable. We’re products. Nothing more.”
I rocketed off the rock. “Are you saying he’s going to sell me? Like he sells Rafe out to Buyers for years at a time?”
“Well,” Thorne said with a confused frown, “yeah.”
The blood drained from my face. I didn’t know what I expected him to say. Maybe that Viktor would kill me, maybe that he’d lock me back in lace and restraints in his bed until I broke. But notthat. Not that every mile I drove, every car I boosted, every second Iprovedmyself as more than a Doll that I was adding another tally to my price tag.
I thought I was freeing myself, but all I did was cage myself further.
I shook my head hard. “No. That’s not what this is. Leah wouldn’t let me join the thieving crew if she thought—”
Thorne cut me off with a stern look. “Leah lost the war against Viktor a long time ago. Probably when he forced her to beat the shit out of you for the first time, making her your Handler.” He leaned back on his hands again, the moon making his scar glow pale. “I'm sorry,” he said, seeing my eyes burn. He swallowed thickly. "You will be sold, Arden. Not unless you choose, tonight, to leave despite your friend."
My throat closed. “I’m not—” My voice broke, thin as paper. I started again, fiercer. “I could never leave Leah, not without knowing I was doing something to get her free, and I’mnota product.”
Thorne’s smile was small and sad. “Neither am I,” he said softly. “But tell me, Arden, when’s the last time we mattered more than what Viktor said we were?”
I folded my arms, turning my back to him and pacing down off the overhang and near the bike. My breath felt trapped in my chest, and I inhaled deeply, trying to make my lungs expand and loosen. I can't remember when I started running, just that Ihadto. I was dizzy,stumbling into the tree-line, barely registering Thorne calling after me. I wanted to scream, to vomit, to claw Viktor Shaw’s name out of the places where he had carved it years ago. I felt so incredibly worthless knowing that, to a man like him, I was wortheverything. His adoration of me would only mean more pain, and I couldn't help but spiral further and further.
“Arden!” Thorne’s voice cracked across the clearing. His boots hit mulch, closing the distance.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I shouted back, but it came out jagged, desperate. My heel caught on a root, and I went down hard, palms biting into damp soil. I stayed there on my hands and knees, chest heaving, unable to breathe past the truth he’d shoved in my face.
Thorne crouched beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. He didn’t touch me, not at first. Then, his hand closed around my arm. “Get up, Arden,” he said. His tone was low, quiet. “I didn’t bring you out here to hurt you. I thought you knew what Viktor had planned for you, for all of us.”
Tears stung in my eyes. “Then why did you bring me out here?” I demanded.
He stood then, hovering over me. He swallowed hard enough that I could make out the bob of his throat in the moonlight. “I thought you’d like a moment to escape,” he managed.
I pushed onto my feet, brushing leaves and dirt from my jeans. “You mean you wanted to fuck me?” I spat, seeing the truth written in his features. That’s always what it was with men. I knew it the moment he plucked that damn cigarette from my mouth, and I still got on his bike. I didn’t know why. I guess part of me craved to be reckless.
Thorne didn’t deny it. His jaw tensed, his green eyes even darker than before. “I think,” he said, measuring his words, “youwant to fuck me, Arden. That’s why I brought you here. Not because I planned to force myself on you or even ask that of you, but because you’ve been eye fucking me for over four years. You keep putting yourself in my orbit, and…I guess I decided to let you stay.”
I stood across from him, the distance between us feeling infinite, and I let his words repeat through my mind. They sunk into me, deeper and deeper.I guess I decided to let you stay. As if he chose me. As if he thoughtI wanted him enough that he would be allowed to want me back. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but the fact was Ihadwatched him for a long time. I’d wanted him in a way that I’d never wanted the men who visited my bedroom. It was something I honestly didn’t know I’d ever feel. I kind of thought the concept of lust and sex was warped and ruined for me forever.
“I’m not,” I start, tripping over my words, trying to find the right thing to say. I test a thousand sentences in my head, but none of them are what I mean to tell him. “I don’t,” I try again, before I curl my fingers into the leather of my sleeves and glare at the ground.
I’ve been fucked since before I had a word for it. I’ve been used as a Doll is meant to be used, and I know that Thorne, too, has been used in a similar but different way. No one in that house was immune to being sold off for sex. It was Viktor’s main play.
But I didn’t know intimacy, not really.
When I looked up from the ground and into Thorne’s eyes, I saw that he, too, was struggling. It occurred to me, just like when he revealed that he had Kane like I had Leah, that he didn’t know what to do with what he was feeling either. He was playingit cool. Trying to be the guy that had it figured out. But he was from my same world, and our world had a very narrow view of what sex was. Hell, what a kiss was.
“Have you ever been with someone that wasn’t a Buyer?” I asked, my voice timid.
The wind rustled through the forest around us.
Thorne hesitated. Then, almost imperceptible in the low light, he shook his head no.
“Me either,” I whispered.
The words hung between us. It felt like an admission and a wound at the same time. His shoulders shifted, as if the honesty sat wrong on his skin, but he didn’t look away. I liked that about him. It made me want to be braver in the way I looked at others, too. I'd always been taught to keep my eyes down, but Thorne showed me I could look freely and he'd match it. I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, realizing how much of me wanted to step closer. I was desperate to see what it felt like to be close to someone when no one else was watching.
Thorne dropped his gaze to the dirt between us, dragging the toe of his boot through the mulch and blowing out a heavy breath. He lookedyounger like that, almost uncertain. Then he lifted his eyes back to mine.
The clearing went still. The kind of still that makes you aware of your own breath, your own pulse. I thought if I lit my lighter right then, the tiny flame might have looked enormous, the only light in a world that had left us with nothing but each other and the ghosts of what we’d lost.
