“But I don’t know if they’re mine,” she said. “I think some must be mine, but I can’t separate those urges out anymore. I don’t know which are mine and which are his. The violent ones are mine, I know that, but the underlying—I don’t know. Kaveh, I . . .”

He just stared at her, flipping through his Rolodex of potential responses and coming up short. What to say? He had asked the question unaware of what a potent trigger it was for him. She must have seen that in his eyes, because panic rose in hers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. I’ll do anything you want, anything in the world. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did,” he said, incredulous. “Don’t lie to me.”

She was obviously going through her own mental Rolodex, trying to figure out how to unsay the words she had obviously spoken in truth. He’d asked her to share something incredibly vulnerable, and he’d gotten upset when she gave him the honesty he’d asked for. Fuck me, I’m doing it again, he thought.

Kaveh looked out over his domain—his nice-ass pool, the hot tub that flowed into it, and behind that the vista of all of Orange County in its hazy polluted glory. And it was in this moment he really understood how much power he had in the situation relative to her. Not just age, not just career, not just wealth, but in almost every way imaginable. Shelter, emotional support, and above all, access to the thing she cared most about in this world.

Ampersand.

She was twisting herself into pretzels based on what he wanted to see—no, based on what she thought he wanted to see. He had never asked for her to hide herself, to be out of his sight unless it was for sex, but he could no longer ignore that that was what was happening. Her behavior had changed so radically since Pershing Square, and it had been easy for him to just assign the change to the trauma of that day.

“Just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll do anything you ask, just please don’t make me leave.”

He looked at her, equal parts guilty and hurt over this realization. He imagined asking, Do you even like me? But stopped himself. Don’t say that. Now is not the time. Besides, why be offended at the idea she might not be in this for love or pleasure? That was never the deal. Why was that wrong?