7. Charlotte

7

CHARLOTTE

F rom the moment I saw you at Masquerade, I knew ? —

The words slam into me with the weight of a punch. It takes me a moment to fully grasp what he's saying, the awful truth of what he's let slip. And with everything else that's happened since I first woke up this morning, the force of it nearly sends me to my knees.

"You were the man at Masquerade." The words sound broken as I whisper them, the full extent of how deeply Ivan has lied to me sinking in. "You—god, you didn't even use your real voice?"

"That's the point of that place, isn't it?" Ivan runs a hand through his hair. "Anonymity. I always wore gloves there, so no one could pick me out by the tattoos on my hands. The mask. A fake accent, so no one knew I was Russian. All of it to keep my identity secret, the way that place is meant to?—"

"Which just means you're a fucking hypocrite!" I spit out, an inch from slapping him again. The only reason that I don't is the memory of this morning, the fear that if I touch him, somehow all this anger will transmute into desire, and we'll end up in bed again. There are sparks flying between us, hot and angry, but I learned this morning how quickly those sparks can turn into a different kind, when there's what there is between Ivan and me. "That is the point of that place! Fucking secrecy! I was promised that my identity would be safe, and you—what? Got it somehow?"

Ivan lets out a heavy sigh, and just as he looked younger this morning, when I saw him sleeping as I came out of the shower, he looks older in this moment. As if the weight of all his lies crashing down is aging him. "I'm a hacker, Charlotte," he says tiredly. "An exceptionally good one. I've used those skills for my father for years, but I also use them for myself."

"To stalk women?" I spit out angrily, and he shakes his head wearily.

"No. To bolster my finances, so I could work on setting aside money that had no ties to my father. Money I could use to get away, eventually, that was hidden from him. I have plenty of things I've hidden over the years. A house, for one." He chuckles grimly. "And I also, in more recent months, have used those skills for the FBI to try to help bring down my father's trafficking business."

"And to stalk me, then. Just me?" I look at him disbelievingly. "Your stories are all over the place, Ivan. You're a criminal, but I guess sex trafficking is too far, so you're double-crossing your father on that. But stalking a woman you ate out at a secret sex club one night isn't too far, so that was fine?—"

"It's not!" Ivan interrupts me, his voice cracking in the space between us, raw and angry. "No, it's not, Charlotte. It's not fine, and I knew it wasn't fine. Is that what you want to hear? I knew I was wrong, from the moment I hacked into those records and looked you up. All of it was wrong. Finding you, tracking your phone?—"

"You're Venom, too, aren't you?" I stare at him, the rest of the puzzle pieces clicking into place, and I feel those cracks in my heart spreading. "You said you were tracking me. Bradley said you were tracking me. You found me on that site. You got me to tell you all those things—" My face burns red at that thought, and I press my hands over my face, feeling tears sting the corners of my eyes. I don't want to cry in front of him, but the weight of this betrayal, added to the rest, feels like too much.

I feel so ashamed of myself, of everything I told him, of everything I've let him do to me. Ivan sees it, I think, when I drop my hands away from my face, because he crosses the space between us in one quick step, cupping my face in his hands as he tilts it up.

"Nothing about what you told me, or anything we did together, has anything to do with this," he whispers. "You don't need to be ashamed of it, Charlotte—just because you wanted those things, maybe still want them?—"

"Not with you!" I wrench away from him, tears hot on my lashes. "You lied to me about everything !"

"Not everything?—"

"You didn't save me from Venom. You were—are— him!" I shake my head, backing up, away from Ivan. "You stalked me, and tricked me, and trapped me. You were in my apartment that night. You knocked me out. You lied to me again this morning, when you said that you showed up?—"

"I did show up to talk to you. To get you out of there, because I knew my brothers were coming for you. But I knew if I showed up as myself, there would be too much explanation. You would have questions—understandably—and you would argue, and they might have gotten to you, to us, before?—"

"So you grabbed me and knocked me out?" My voice rises to a shriek, but I don't care. I don't care that I sound hysterical, or like I'm losing my mind. I think I might be. This is all too much to take in, too fast.

"I needed to get you safe, Charlotte. And then I could explain?—"

"Would you have ever told me the truth? All of it?" I stare at him, fighting back tears. "If Bradley hadn't spilled that you were tracking me, would you have ever told me about that? Or Masquerade? Or Venom?"

Ivan goes silent, and I know he doesn't have an answer for that. Not one that either of us will be satisfied with.

"You lied about everything to get into my life." Every word sounds cracked, broken, as I feel my heart shattering. I'd insisted that we weren't exclusive, insisted that I needed time—but I'd felt myself falling for Ivan, or at least, the version of him that he showed me before all of this. I'd thought that we might have a future, that I might have been lucky enough to find a man who wanted me exactly as I was, who would love all the parts of me that others found boring, and at the same time encourage me to try to find adventure. But all of it was a lie.

"Charlotte, it wasn't everything?—"

"If I'd known all of it," I whisper, "we never would have gotten past that first night. I never would have seen you again."

Ivan's shoulders slump, and the expression on his face is as hurt as if I'd hit him. He sinks back into the chair he was sitting in, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair.

"I know," he says finally, miserably. "I always knew that. And I always knew it would end up like this, eventually. I knew I couldn't keep it from you forever. I couldn't lie to you forever. You're too smart, and I—" He breaks off, his teeth sinking into his lip as he looks away from me. Whatever he was about to say, he forces it back, his elbows on his knees as he drops his head into his hands for a moment before looking up at me again.

"I thought I'd get over you, after a while," he says softly. "I thought there couldn't be a woman in the world who could hold onto me like you have. I never knew there could be anyone like you, Charlotte. I thought I'd show you the things you wanted to experience, and I'd get to enjoy you for a little while, and I told myself it wasn't selfish because there were things you wanted that you'd get out of it too, even if I knew you'd never have done it if you knew the truth about me. But I don't think I'll ever get over you. I was going to ruin you for other men, make you mine and then leave, like an asshole, but—" he shakes his head, swallowing hard. "You ruined me , Charlotte. I'm never going to find another woman like you. And I want to tell you I'm sorry, but I can't even do that. Because the best moments of my life so far have been the ones I've spent with you. Even right now, with you pissed at me, ready to claw my face off if I say another word wrong, I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else. And that's the truth, Charlotte."

I stare at him as he speaks, every word battering my already broken and bruised heart. I can feel tears of disbelief and shock welling up in my eyes, and I try not to listen, but he's making sure that I have to at least hear this. And what he's saying?—

No one has ever said anything like that to me before. No one has even come close. Nothing any boyfriend has ever said to me, any declaration of love—nothing has ever been like that. What Ivan is saying is the kind of thing that I'd always shrugged off as fiction. As the kind of emotion that no real person ever really has.

I want to believe him. But all the lies that came before that are too much, and too many. And what's facing me now, because of those lies, is too overwhelming.

"Even if I wanted to believe you," I say softly, "how would I even begin to know you're telling me the truth?"

And then, as he looks at me with that same wrecked, miserable expression on his face, I turn and walk out of the door of the hotel room, into the cold night outside.