The door pushes gently against my back, and I step away to let it open.
Will steps inside and closes the door behind him. He doesn't move any closer, just stands there with his back against the door, giving me the entire room to myself.
"Gemma." His voice is low, steady. "Whatever you're thinking right now, stop. You don't have anything to be ashamed of."
The air goes out of me, and I have to look away, have to stare at the boxes stacked against the wall because meeting his eyes feels impossible.
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"I can guess." He stays where he is, hands loose at his sides. "You found out about The Forge. You're smart enough to figure out what kind of place it is. And now you're standing in here convinced that I'm going to think less of you for being curious."
I can't find words to respond.
"I'm not," he says simply. "And I won't."
"It's not about The Forge." The words tear out of me, unplanned and desperate. "It's about everything. It's about who I am and what I want and how badly I let someone use that against me. I spent last night trying to understand what happened to me. Why it was wrong. Why I couldn't see it." I gesture vaguely at the door, at everything beyond it. "And I realized that none of what I had was what it was supposed to be. None of it. Craig took everything I wanted and he made it into a weapon, and I let him, because I thought that was what I deserved."
Will doesn't respond right away. He just watches me, his face unreadable, and the silence stretches until I can't stand it anymore.
"I don't know who I am." My voice cracks on the admission. "I thought I did. I thought I knew what I wanted and who I wasand what kind of life I was building. But Craig hollowed all of that out, and now I'm just this empty shell trying to figure out which parts of me were real and which parts were just things he made me believe."
Still he doesn't move. Doesn't try to close the distance between us, doesn't offer platitudes or solutions or any of the things people usually say when someone falls apart in front of them.
He just stays. Lets me break without trying to fix it.
"The parts that survived are real," he says finally. "The rest of it, the stuff he built, that'll fall away eventually. But the core of you, the part that got in a car and drove hundreds of miles to start over, that's not hollow. That's steel."
Tears spill down my cheeks, and I don't bother wiping them away. There's no point in pretending I have control over anything right now.
"How do you know?" The question comes out small, desperate. "How do you know which parts are real?"
"You don't. Not at first." He shifts his weight against the door, and his expression softens. "You just keep going. Keep making choices. Eventually you look back and realize you've been building something new the whole time, something that's yours. Not his. Not the person he tried to turn you into. Just you."
His words don't fix anything. They don't make the shame disappear or the memories hurt less. But they give me something to grip while the ground shifts.
"Will." My voice is barely above a whisper. "What is The Forge?"
He's quiet for a long moment, and I can see him weighing how to answer. How much to reveal. How much I'm ready to hear.
"It's a private club," he says slowly. "For people who want to explore certain kinds of relationships and experiences. Power exchange. Dominance and submission. Other things that require trust and communication and very clear boundaries."
My heart pounds against my ribs. "And you...?"
"I'm one of the founders. I've been part of that world for a long time." His eyes hold mine, steady and unflinching. "The kind of place Craig made you believe didn't exist? It exists. It exists right here, in this building, and it operates on principles he would have told you were impossible. Consent. Negotiation. Respect. The understanding that what happens between people is a gift, not a right."
The words land somewhere I didn't know was still raw.
"I'm not telling you this because I think you should join," he continues. "I'm telling you because you deserve to know that what you want isn't wrong. It isn't shameful. And there are people in this world who would never dream of using it against you."
I want to believe him. I want it so badly that my chest aches with it.
"And you?" The question escapes before I can think better of it. "Are you one of those people?"
The silence stretches tight between us. Will's jaw tightens, and for the first time since he walked into this room, I see his careful control slip for just a moment.
"Yes," he says quietly. "I am."
We stand there in the flickering light of the stockroom, surrounded by boxes of napkins and cases of beer, and something passes between us that wasn't there before. Not a resolution, not even a beginning, just an acknowledgment that we're both standing at the edge of something neither of us expected.
