Both men watch me expectantly. When I don’t move, Ivan cocks his head. “In.”

In. Just that, a short command. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home,” he says.

That’s what the woman said too.

I don’t really believe him. She drove me back to Harmony Hills, and I know he isn’t taking me there. Even so, hearing the word soothes me. Home.

Because right now I don’t have anywhere to go.

I climb into the back of his car. From the outside it looks like a regular car, except maybe a little more shiny. A little more smooth. From the inside, it’s completely different. Nothing like the gray bus I came here on, with its plastic bucket seats and cracked window. It’s nothing like the car the woman with kind eyes drove either, where she buckled me into the back and gave me a juice box.

This car doesn’t even have seat belts, just incredibly soft seats. It’s like running my hands over a cloud, and I do it again and again until Ivan sits beside me. There are buttons built into the sides of the car and a little panel in front of us with a screen. And a dark glass wall separating the front and the back.

Luca sits in front, and then the car glides forward.

I’m quiet the rest of the trip. So is Ivan.

Maybe he’s thinking about work. But I know he’s thinking about me. I can feel his attention on me even though he faces the front. His profile looks stark and forbidding, shadows stretching over his face, not quite covering him. I try to shrink myself, to become invisible. I hold my body very still. It’s something I have a lot of practice with, like prayer.

Forgive me, for I have sinned…

*     *     *

We reach Ivan’s house too quickly. I’m not ready to face what will happen to me here. Not ready to face that I’ve ended up in this position, at another man’s mercy. Wasn’t I supposed to get free? Isn’t that why Mama risked everything?

Except a hundred dollars in cash and a brochure from the bus company didn’t get me very far.

Deep inside, where I don’t usually let myself feel, something sharp and hot burns. Frustration. Anger? Mama would know how to survive in the city. She had lived in one before she went to Harmony Hills. Why didn’t she teach me what I would need to know?

Why didn’t she tell me about men like Ivan?

It doesn’t matter now, because Luca opens the car door. I have no choice but to step outside and look up, up at the never-ending glass and concrete. It doesn’t look like a house. It looks like a sculpture.

It looks like a church.

“No calls tonight,” Ivan says, and Luca nods, wordless.

Luca holds the door open for Ivan and then myself. Lights are set in the wall, high up, so the whole room is bathed in a pale light when we first arrive. Ivan touches a switch, and they grow brighter.

“This way,” he says, leaving me behind.

I almost run to catch up, afraid to be left in this cold land of silver and white. It’s winter, but not made by nature. Made by man. I don’t know why anyone would make something so cold, but maybe Ivan wanted to see his reflection. Maybe he wanted to freeze.

He stops before I can, and I bump into him, the front of my body flush against his hard, unyielding back. I gasp and jump away. “Sorry.”

Beyond a raised eyebrow, he ignores that. “There are clothes in the dresser,” he says, gesturing to an open door. “And toiletries in the bathroom. Don’t—”

I stand there, waiting to hear what I can’t do. Don’t think sinful thoughts. Don’t talk back.

Don’t run away and take a bus to a strange city.

I’m used to being told what not to do, and for most of my life, I obeyed.

“Don’t wander,” he says finally. “It might not be safe.”

Might not be safe from what?

“I won’t,” I say softly. I’m too tired to wander. Too lost to even try. There’s nowhere else to go.

“Get ready for bed,” he says.

His words ring in my head while I go into the room and shut the door. They ring while I find the clothes in the dresser, a random assortment of feminine clothes, T-shirts and dresses, different sizes and colors. They ring while I shower under the hot spray, water burning away the smell of the city.

Get ready for bed.

Almost as if I’m to wait for him. As if he’ll be joining me somehow.

The bed is the largest one I’ve ever seen, but somehow too small for two people. Too small if one of the people is Ivan. He’s physically large and, more than that, terrifying. What will he do to me? I can’t fight him. God, I’m not sure I want to try. Home.

In the end I push back the heavy blankets, almost as thick as my sleeping pallet back in Harmony Hills, and climb onto the bed. The pillow is perfectly soft, so clean, and I let myself drift away. I’m floating on a cloud, plush and high up.

I dream in those moments. I dream about color and light. I dream about the sky.

There is a deep voice from above and all around me, telling me to get on my knees. Commanding me to pray. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever skipped bedtime prayers. The first time I haven’t begged for salvation. I’m not going to beg, not ever again.

The hand on my face doesn’t feel angry. It isn’t a slap for my insolence. It strokes down my temple and cups my cheek. My eyes flutter open. Ivan.

His hand falls away.

“Candace,” he says in the same deep voice of my dream.

And there’s a look in his eyes, the same look Leader Allen gives Mama. The same look he started giving me. That look is the reason Mama sent me away.

“You’ll stay here,” he says softly. “I can’t let you dance, but you can stay.”

The allure of it beats through me, a heart of its own, thumping away to a dream that isn’t mine. Safety. Home. I want those things, but I want freedom more. I want the flash of lights and of skin. I want the power those women had onstage.

Ivan wants to put me in a cage, but what I really want is to fly.

“Okay,” I lie, because one sin becomes many. Leader Allen taught me that, and he was right.

“Good girl.”

The praise washes over me, undeserved and darkly pleasurable, a stroke along my spine. It feels good, but I know what it is. A trap. A chain around my ankle to keep me on the ground. In this moment, it locks me so tight that I’d accept anything he did to me. If he were to touch me the way the woman with the kind eyes meant. The way Leader Allen touches Mama during prayer.

Ivan leans down, and I hold my breath. Large hands take hold of the blanket, lift slightly. I feel everything between us—anticipation and denial, lust and fear corded together. We feel them together, breathe them in through the air, pulse them with each beat of our hearts. It’s a kind of knowledge, this feeling, connecting a thousand nerve points to the core of my body. This is what he meant by teaching me. This and so much more.

Then he pulls the blanket higher, tucking it around me. “Good night,” he says, eyes glittering in the dark.

He is color and light, made even brighter by the silver slate of this house. It’s strange, the disappointment I feel that he isn’t going to touch me. He isn’t going to teach me. Not tonight. “Good night,” I whisper back.

Then he’s gone, shutting the door against the dark, locking me in. And I slide away into sleep, without dreams, without color, with only the shameless black of contentedness, knowing I am safe for the night.

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THANK YOU

Thank you for reading Even Better! I hope you enjoyed the conclusion of Blue and Lola’s story. If you missed their first book, you can read Better When It Hurts now. Or if you’d like to start at the beginning of the Stripped series, Tough Love is the free prequel novella.