I draw my hand back from Travis as if I’ve been burned by dry ice. After what we just shared, how could we be anything but close? Why would he freeze up like this?

I search for something to say, but then he skims his fingertips over my stomach and I thaw. It’s almost as if he’s apologizing for his momentary lack of warmth. Everything is okay between us after all. He lays his palm flat on me, as if claiming me as his territory, and I am.

I’m every bit his.

“Is this your way of letting me know that I did okay?” I ask.

“You were wonderful.”

When he kisses my neck then sits up, I know he’s leaving again.

A sense of anger and astonishment forces me to tightly say, “You have a hot date or something, Mr. Star?”

He glances at me, and with his hair ruffled by my fingers, he seems fleetingly boyish, even lost. Then he reaches up and combs through his hair, back to the cocky billionaire.

Back to reality.

“As a matter of fact,” he says, “I have a conference call with some people who’re trying to get a store of mine opened in Beijing. It’s ten in the morning there.”

And it’s round-the-clock awkward in here.

I sit up, and ignoring the stickiness that his cum has left between my legs, I bend my knees to the side away from him, then cross my arms over my chest. I can’t sit here buck naked with him already getting out of bed as if the mattress is on fire. As I watch him walk away, he’s seems totally unmindful that he has nothing on. His muscles ripple, and his ass… God, it’s rock-hard and gorgeous and I wish I’d had the time to explore his body as much as he’s explored mine.

He walks to the bathroom, and I hear the splash of water. When he returns to the side of the bed with a washcloth and towel, he seems so casual that I actually wonder if we’ve shared anything together tonight, and a stab of mortification and confusion wounds me.

“Come over here,” he whispers.

I hesitate, and he crooks his finger at me. My heart does a spiraling flip, sending me in motion. I gradually go to him, and once I’ve settled again, he smooths the washcloth down the inside of my thigh, wiping away the cum as well as what I discover to be a trace of blood near my sex. I look back at the bedspread to find a little bit there, too.

“Easily taken care of,” he says, dismissing the stain.

After he cleans the other thigh, he rubs the cloth over my pussy, just as he did earlier when he was stimulating me, but this time, he’s all business. He hands me the towel and walks away again. Silently he dresses while I dry myself off then spread the towel over my lap, covering myself. But he doesn’t look back as he finishes putting on his clothes. When he moves toward the door, I reach around to the back of my neck to unclasp the net of diamonds that he hung around me as if I were his own personal model in a magazine fashion layout.

“Wait,” I say.

He turns around, and I hold the necklace out to him.

“You forgot something,” I say.

He stares at the diamonds a moment, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he locks gazes with me.

“I don’t forget anything, Nova.”

As he leaves me holding the gems, I wonder if this is the closest he can come to thanking me for giving up a special part of myself, or if he didn’t mean anything at all by leaving me with what I think might be just another piece of jewelry to him.

Whatever he did mean, I don’t see Travis again for three days.

* * *

The necklace is staying where I left it when Travis was last here—on an antique table in the entry vestibule. I want it to be the first thing he sees if he ever comes back again, but why would he when he got what he wanted out of me?

Something he told me the other night haunts me. There’s no one out there who does anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Remember that, Beautiful…

Was he warning me when he’d said that? I hadn’t been sure then, but I’ve got a pained suspicion that I should’ve known better. I’m just something else for him to buy, and looking back on our night together confirms that. He washed me as if I was a thing that had to be in perfect condition before he had his way with me. He hung that necklace on me as if I were a velvet jewelry display in one of his showrooms

As I sit in front of the TV, I’ve given up waiting for him to visit.

Three days without him.

I can watch as many Netflix series and comedy movies as I want to in order to cheer myself up, but the dialogue only bounces off the many walls of this apartment. I can take only so many lonely bubble baths before my skin begins to pucker. I can pass the time with as many massages and facials from Travis’s personal professional as I want until I’m left alone again to wander the library. I don’t even have much of an appetite for any of the delicious food that he bought for me.

My sadness and loneliness get worse every day. I haven’t even been looking at my phone, because Travis doesn’t call—he would knock if he wanted me. What’s pathetic is that, sometimes, I think I do hear him knocking, but my mind has started playing tricks on me.

I’m that miserable.

Today, as I dress in another peignoir—I am definitely not going to get all dolled up with nowhere to go—I see my poor, bereft phone on a night table where I’d left it a few days ago. It only attracts my attention now because it’s buzzing, the screen flashing a number.

Damn me, but my heart jumps as I dart over to it, hoping…

But it’s not him. It’s my mom, and guilt swallows me whole. The call goes to voicemail, and I plop down onto the bed, where the spread was indeed replaced with a new one.

My phone dings with a message alert, and from the looks of my home screen, there’re three texts and three phone messages I’ve managed to miss while I’ve been blocking out the world.

Panic hits me, and I check them. They’re all from my mom.

My blood chills. Sometimes Gary would make us call each other so he could sit in the same room and keep tabs on us, and I wonder if that’s the trick he’s pulling now, making Mom track me down so he doesn’t have to do it. But we all came up with a code phrase—Life is wonderful—so we would know when he was monitoring us. If Mom utters those words on this latest message, I’ll know he’s there right now.

But what if that’s not the case and something’s happened to her? Damn me and my stupid pity wallowing…

I quickly call her, and she picks up right away.

“Nova! My god, there you are. Are you okay?”

“Yes, are you?”

“If you’re actually asking me if your dad’s here listening in, then no, he isn’t. I don’t need to use our code today.”

Oh, thank god. But that just means I’m a jerk for not checking my messages to see that my mom was trying to get a hold of me. “Mom, I left you that note so you wouldn’t worry about me. I really am fine. How are you doing?”

She hesitates, then laughs. It’s a nervous one, and I stand up from the bed.

“I’m as well as can be expected,” she says.

“What do you mean? What were those texts and voicemails you left all about?”

She sighs. “Honey, I was only checking up on you after that note. Mothers do worry about their children, you know.”

I put the phone on speaker and cross one of my arms over my chest. I really am the worst for placing my own concerns above everything else. It won’t happen again.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, “but I had to get out of there. I had to do something to get us all out of there.”

“Where are you?”

“I’ll tell you about it after I contact you next week.” Right. I need to start thinking of a good cover story for how I’m earning this money now. “But like I said, I’m safe.” I almost add, I’m happy, but that isn’t true. Not anymore.

“Nova…”

“Mom, I’ve left home for good.”

Another hesitation, then she lets out what sounds like a relieved breath. “I’m glad to hear that. Since you’ve been away, your dad has been…”

I squeeze shut my eyes and brace myself. Don’t say anything bad, Mom. Please don’t.

“He’s been what?” I ask.

Dead air.

“Mom?” I open my eyes.

“Honey, things have gotten more difficult in your absence.”

More difficult? I walk to the window, needing to do something. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you know how we depended on the money you were earning to support us. Your father has been blowing through cash quicker than ever, buying more guns and another locker, and now he’s demanding that Tate and I earn more to make up the difference.”

Bastard. “He’s punishing you for what I did.”

“Not yet. He’s angry at you, and Tate and I are able to mollify him.”

“For now.”

She ignores that. “I just wanted to warn you that he’s become more threatening. His behavior is more stressed and erratic since you escaped.”

“My god, Mom.” My heart pistons, and I move toward my closet, as if to start packing. I’m not thinking straight. “I need to come back.”

“No, Nova. I told you—he’ll take his temper out on you.”

“But you need to get out, too!”

“Right now we’re fine, and you know he wouldn’t let us get far anyway.”

It’s always the same excuses year after year, threat after threat. In the past, Mom swore that Gary could change, but he only got more delusional and meaner. There was a point somewhere along the line that we found ourselves in a cage we couldn’t get out of. Now I’ve escaped, and I’m going to break my mom and brother out, too.

“You’re lucky he hasn’t started to look for you,” Mom finally says.

“Please listen to me.” I pace back to my bed and get to my knees, leaning on it, resting my forehand in my free hand. My belly has the shivers, and not the good kind. “I’m working on a job right now that’ll give us money. Lots of it. I’m going to try and get it to you as soon as possible so you can use it to…”

The words choke in my throat, and tears gather in my eyes. They don’t fall just yet. “Mom, just hold on, okay? We’ll figure out something. You’ll be able to buy plane tickets for you and Tate to get far, far away from him, and I’ll arrange the rest. Can you hang on for a little longer?”

“I’ve been doing it for years, Nova.”

She sounds so weary that the tears do fall from my eyes. We say goodbye, but she hangs up before I do. I stare at my phone for a while afterward, my vision blurred.

What the hell am I going to do? I can’t ask Travis for my fee yet because the arrangement went through the website. But I do have the few hundred dollars he gave me the first night.

I stumble to my feet, thinking that I should dig it out of the drawer where I stashed it, but then I hear the front door shut.

Please, I pray, have it be the maid or Travis’s assistant Clarice… I don’t want to see Travis right now, not while I’m still teary.

But just as I swipe away the moisture from my face, the man of the house appears in my bedroom doorway, dressed in his perfectly creased designer suit, looking as if he has a permanent place on top of the world.

In spite of how much I’ve told myself that I shouldn’t miss him, I do, I have, and my chest aches as I try to once again act my part as his sweet little carefree mistress.

Even so, the tears gather as I hold in a threatening sob.