Love and the Limits of Possessiveness

Love and the Limits of Possessiveness is a central ethical distinction in the novel, tested through relationships in which devotion is used either to support another person or to claim authority over them. Colleen Sherman’s captivity under Oskar Latu and Corey Baxter’s campaign against Willa Ashford show how possessive people recast coercion and violence as love. Against those claims, Colleen names the harm plainly, and Willa refuses to accept blame for another person’s choices.

Care and Protection

Colt Fontaine offers a contrasting form of attachment when Willa is distressed because he has been shot. He draws her onto his lap, reassures her that the shooting was not her fault, and says that he, Luca Russo, and Anja Johansen are trained to protect her and the others. Willa responds not simply with relief but with concern that Colt or anyone else might be put in danger. Colt asks her to concentrate on training and the tournament while he handles the threat. His protective impulse is intense, and he kisses her before pulling back; the scene nevertheless presents his care as reassurance and shared concern rather than a claim that Willa belongs to him or must abandon her own aims.

That exchange establishes a useful contrast with the men who invoke affection to control others. Colt’s promise to take responsibility for security does not erase Willa’s concern or turn it into disobedience. The scene keeps both of their vulnerabilities visible: she fears for him, while he wants to shield her. Possessiveness, by contrast, appears when one person’s desire is treated as sufficient reason to overrule another’s safety and freedom.

Colleen Sherman and Oskar Latu

Colleen’s account makes clear that her affair with Oskar began in a relationship where she was already uncertain about marrying Corey. She acknowledges that the affair was wrong and does not present her uncertainty as an excuse. Oskar courted her, charmed her, and swept her up in an intense relationship. But when she tried to end it and return to Corey, he would not accept her decision. Her regret over the affair and her wish to confess to Corey do not diminish her right to end the relationship.

Colleen describes the abduction as the consequence of Oskar refusing that boundary. While she was sailing with Corey, intending to disclose the affair, an attacker emerged from the boat’s storage compartment and struck Corey. A second boat arrived, and its occupants abducted Colleen. Oskar had a private plane ready to take her out of the country. He then kept her captive for two years, arranging for her to coach his daughter, Pua Latu, through an intermediary so Pua did not know Colleen was her instructor.

Oskar’s own reasoning sharpens the contradiction between luxury and freedom. He points to Colleen’s well-furnished suite, fine meals, clothes, jewels, and computer, while withholding internet access and refusing to release her because she could have him arrested. He treats material comfort as evidence that she has been treated well, but the decisive fact is that she cannot leave. His attachment to Colleen is inseparable from his refusal to recognize her decision, and his effort to make her serve Pua’s Olympic ambitions extends his control into her work and identity.

The False Confession and the Actual Crimes

Drew Black’s apparent confession initially presents possessiveness through a different story. The note claims that Drew attacked Willa because he loved Colleen and believed Willa’s success with a new partner would cause Colleen’s memory to be forgotten. It portrays violence as an attempt to preserve Colleen’s legacy, even as it admits to threats, attacks, and murders. Colt questions the note’s moral logic: its writer professes unbearable guilt over believing he had shot Willa while describing other deaths with strikingly little remorse.

The later confrontation overturns that account. Corey admits that the confession was his, that he killed Drew, and that he framed his former friend. Drew had discovered the photograph Oskar sent Corey and was going to expose the danger to Colleen. The note therefore did more than conceal a killer: it used the language of love and remembrance to assign Drew a motive that Corey himself was acting on. The narrative’s reversal exposes how easily a possessive explanation can masquerade as an intimate confession while obscuring who actually chose the violence.

Corey tells Colleen that Oskar threatened to kill her unless Corey got rid of Willa, and promised to release her if he did. Corey presents the prospect of being together again as the reason he had to comply. He admits trying to stop Willa from competing, escalating from attempts to frighten her into quitting to shooting her and setting fire to a house. He also killed Drew and claimed that Drew would have endangered Colleen by telling the truth. His language makes Colleen the supposed purpose of every act, but it cannot make her responsible for them. Oskar’s threat and Corey’s attachment explain the pressure Corey invokes; they do not transform murder into care.

Rejection, Responsibility, and the Boundary of Love

Colleen’s response directly rejects Corey’s definition of their relationship. She says there is no future for them and condemns him for trying to kill Willa, who is both her best friend and Corey’s. She does not treat his promise of reunion as a justification or allow his claim that he acted for her freedom to speak in her place. Her rejection restores the distinction his reasoning erases: love cannot be established by destroying the people someone loves or by deciding what another person should want.

Willa, meanwhile, resists Corey’s effort to shift blame onto her for refusing to quit volleyball. After the confrontation, she recognizes that he tried to make her feel responsible for the harm, but holds him accountable for his own acts. Colleen agrees that she had not imagined Corey could become a killer, yet neither of them accepts his claim that love blinded him into doing what was right. The closing exchange also leaves room for Willa’s continuing attachment to Colt: she acknowledges her feelings for him while Colleen is still grieving and worried. The contrast is not between love and emotional intensity, but between care that leaves another person a self and possession that treats that person’s freedom as an obstacle. Through Colleen’s captivity, Corey’s crimes, and Willa’s refusal of shame, the novel makes that boundary a matter of life, agency, and responsibility.