The air in the room felt like it had been sucked out, replaced by a suffocating, coldness. I looked at Jason—really looked at him—and realized that the man who had proposed to me in that garden in Paris was a fiction. A character he had played until he successfully "acquired" me. Now, the mask was off, and the transaction was all that remained.
But as I stared at him, a strange, numb calm settled over my panic. If this is all I have to do, I thought, my mind retreating to a cold, dark corner, then I can do it. I could survive this. I could pretend. I could close my eyes and conjure the ghost of the man I thought I married—the one who was kind, the one who didn't lock doors.
I moved with a deliberate, slow grace, crawling down the length of the silk duvet toward him. I felt like an actres
