I could tell, just from the look on her face, that this was starting to get to her. I thought I had done a decent job keeping her from losing her shit before, but, even in the dim light of this dingy basement, I could see panic flashing in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she told me, for the hundredth time since I had woken up. “I’m so sorry, Jaxon, I had no idea he would do something like this. If I had, I would never have asked you to-“

“You didn’t ask me to do anything,” I reminded her. “I wanted to help you, remember? I wanted to help you, Star. And I still want to help you. Nothing’s changed.”

She shook her head, chin sinking down to her chest. She looked exhausted, with dark rings beneath her eyes, her cheeks wet with tears.

“It should have,” she muttered. “You should want to get out of here, Jaxon. You shouldn’t have been pulled into this, you have nothing to do with this world…”

“I chose to be a part of it when I decided to help you, Star, and that’s still the truth,” I told her fervently. “I still want to help you. I still can. I told you, we have the upper hand right now, he needs you to agree to everything he’s demanding-“

“How can you look at this and feel like we have the upper hand?” she exclaimed, shaking the bindings that were keeping her hands in place. “We’re locked up in this basement, Jaxon. And nobody knows we’re here. Nobody’s going to come looking for us. Oh, God…”

She trailed off into sobs again, and I wished, more than anything, that I could go over there and hold her in my arms, tell her it was going to be okay. I doubted she would have believed me, even if I could have. She had clearly already made up her mind about how this was going to go. Sure, she’d had the strength to turn down her father before, but, here, now? It was different. She was getting up into her head, and that could be a disaster.

I knew why she was spooked. Fuck, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t – when he’d planted that gun to my head, I had felt that rush of fear course through me, but, at the same time, a peace, too. If this was what I had to do to protect Star, then so be it.

When I looked at her, I knew I would do anything to get her out of this in one piece. I knew I would sacrifice myself for her. She had so much strength, so much bravery in her, but she didn’t believe in a single bit of it – she still clearly saw herself as someone who couldn’t be trusted, someone who was going to fall apart at the barest hint of danger. But after what she had been through, wasn’t she starting to believe that she could handle more than that? Wasn’t she starting to see what she was capable of?

“Star, just look at me,” I pleaded with her. She finally managed to gather herself long enough to look me in the eye, though her body was still trembling helplessly.

“You don’t have to give him what he wants,” I told her. “He’s not going to do anything to either of us unless you agree. We’re in more danger if you go along with it than if you don’t-“

She shook her head.

“You don’t know my father like I do,” she muttered, voice hollow. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. You don’t know how short his temper is. He’s not going to give us much more time. I saw how mad he was before, when he comes down again, he’s going to expect me to have made a choice…”

“And have you?” I asked her. I knew I couldn’t decide this for her. This place, after all, had been her home – this life had been hers for a long time, for her whole existence, as long as she could remember. Maybe escaping it had been nothing more than a pipe dream, one that she had to give up on again.

I didn’t know if I had been anything other than a dalliance for her, a chance for her to experience something different – a chance for her to put aside everything she had known for so long, before she went back to it. I could tell she didn’t want to; I could tell that the thought of letting her father sell her off to this Lombardi guy was more than she could take, but it was whether or not she had the strength to resist him that mattered. Whether or not she had the ability to look him in the eye and challenge him – dare him to push this further. That’s what I wanted to see from her. That’s what I needed.

All at once, I heard a noise behind me, and her eyes widened – I knew without even having to glance around that her father had appeared at the top of the stairs again. I heard his footsteps closing the distance between us, and I stared at her, trying to get her to pay attention to me, trying to get her to see that I meant it when I said I would do anything for her.

She was shaking hard when he switched on the light, and stood between us once more, glancing back and forth.

“Hope you two have been enjoying your time together,” he sneered. There was such a coldness to him, it seemed to come off him in waves – this dark, angry energy, like he could hardly believe he didn’t have complete control of everything that was happening in this room right now. He was clearly accustomed to calling the shots exactly as he wanted , and having someone push back against him, having someone dare to defy him, he wasn’t used to it. Didn’t know how to take it.

“Because you don’t have much more of it left,” he finished up. The gun was still strapped to his side, and I eyed it. If I could get my hands free, I could grab it…

He turned to his daughter once more.

“Have you made your mind up, Star?” he asked her. When he spoke to her, I could tell he was used to getting exactly what he wanted from her – he was used to her just folding and giving in at once.

She dropped her eyes to the ground. I could see it, her resolve breaking inside of her, falling to pieces right there in front of me. I silently willed her to hold it together, just a little while longer – to fight him, to show him that he didn’t just get to tell her how all of this was going to go.

“Yes,” she breathed. “I have.”

“And what have you decided, Star?” he asked her. I hated the way he said her name, like it was a joke, like it was funny to him – as though they had given it to her as some sort of mockery. When she was a star – she was a goddamn galaxy, a solar system laid out right in front of me. I needed her to see that. I needed her to hang on to that belief, more than anything, I needed to see her cling to that a little while longer…

She lifted her head to look at him.

“I’ll do it,” she murmured.

“Star, no!” I exclaimed, but she didn’t even look at me. She just gazed up at her father, a look of resignation on her face, as she accepted what was going to happen next.

He grinned down at her.

“Good girl,” he told me. “Now, prove it.”

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