“Nothing stopped me from loving you except you,” Cass says. “What did you think? That I would see it and feel sorry for you? That I would suddenly realize your dick was the magic one for me? And that if I did, I would forgive you for exposing me like that?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” Ryan is talking softly now, low and coaxing, but Lulu can still hear him, which means she’s gotten too close. She knows this. She should go back to the car. This is private. This isn’t hers to hear.

But she can’t make herself move. Lulu almost—almost—feels bad for him. He sounds so totally, helplessly lost. She’s felt that kind of lost. She knows what it is to wonder if you know how to love anyone, and if anyone else wants to love you.

That doesn’t mean it gives him license to hurt her, though. Or to hurt Cass.

She pulls out her phone, pulls up the voice notes app, and hits RECORD.

“I can’t explain it,” Ryan is saying. “It just felt like—like you’d forced me into a corner. It was the only thing I could do. I was losing you. I was desperate. I was desperate to keep you, Cass.”

“To trap me, you mean. To keep a record of me, whether I wanted to be recorded or not.”

“It was our project,” Ryan says. “We made it up together. We talked and talked. We had so many ideas. And then she came along and it was let’s just chill, Ry, we can do other stuff every now and again, are these photos really going to be that great anyway. So yeah, I figured out a way to get content. Because I don’t abandon shit that matters to me.”

“Don’t say ‘get content’ like that. You didn’t get content. You took it. You took me and turned me into content.”

This is it. This is it this is it this is it. Lulu’s hands are shaking. This is the clearest admission of guilt she’ll ever get from him.

This is how she reminds him that other people can see him too.

“Sure,” Ryan says. “It wasn’t, like, ethical. I should have told you about the cameras, especially in the rooms. I should have told you about the pictures before I showed them. But really, Cass, look at who you’re dating. You think she’s not gonna do something like this to you, someday? You think Lulu Shapiro is going to keep your secrets?”

“Don’t talk about her. This isn’t about her.”

“You’re fucking stupid to trust her. She’s not even interesting, Cass. She’s not who you think she is.”

“I don’t forgive you,” Cass says. “I never will.”

Lulu’s thumb presses down once, hard, on the END RECORD button.