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He hurt me. He left me broken and adrift, but he’s mine. She can’t do that. She can’t hit him, because when she does that, she’s threatening me, my life, my love, my world.

And I have a knife. It’s for scraping not stabbing, but the handle is hard in my hand, and she has to get the fuck away from him. She’s a wildcat. He’s trying to grab her wrists.

“Fiona!” he calls.

I don’t know if it’s to help him or to get back, but I’m mid swing. I realize why he called my name, but it’s too late. Snowcone bucks again, making everything nuts. Rachel is pushed away, and the knife finds its way into Deacon’s chest. I yank it out in a reflex. There’s no blood. Not yet. He just looks like a stricken man with a ripped shirt.

He’s not mine. He’s not my world. He just cut me loose to drift into an endless void.

I’m a rush of hormones and endorphins, a slave to my anger and pain. “Fuck you!” I punch his chest. But there’s a knife in my hand.

He deflects. The wound is shallow, but it’s the one made with intention. I scream.

Though Snowcone seems to calm despite everything, and Deacon at first seems bemused and stunned, Rachel is still pure adrenaline. She pushes me down to get out of the claustrophobic paddock.

Then the blood appears. Deacon’s mouth and eyes are open, and they’re filled with me. The knife falls. A door slams. Everything goes black.

I felt as though I was going to die. Not die.

Cease.

As if my existence was about to be snuffed into a tiny dot as big as the universe and black as the sun. Though I usually dove into the obliteration, I didn’t this time. I feared this orgasm as I’d feared no other, until I heard his voice.

“Come, darling. I have you.”

FIONA

H
e’d untied me and put my shoes back on, kneeling before me as I sat on a tree trunk. It seemed as though hours had passed, but it had only been twenty minutes, plus five for him to take me down and another five for me to tell him my memory.

“I’m sorry, again. I’m sorry,” I said.

“You didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

“The second one. I meant that one.”

“Barely a scratch.”

“Deacon—”

He put his fingers on my lips. I needed him to make me suffer, and not within the boundaries of funishment. I needed to writhe from his anger. I needed to feel as though I was dying. That was only fair.

“When I negotiate with the men holding my people, I have to see past their anger,” he said. “I have to see their suffering. If I can’t see the human inside them who saw their fathers killed or maimed, or if I can’t speak to their slow starvation, I can’t get to them. I stay on the outside. In order for me to find them, I need to be inside.” He put his hand on his heart. “When you took that second stab, I was inside you.”

“But those guys, when you negotiate with them, and you find them—”

“They aren’t my reason for living.” He stood and held his hand out to me. “Once my guys are safe, those men are tools for a message.”

I took his hand, and he pulled me up. “So you’re not going to have me dragged into the square?”

“Never.” He put his arm around me, and we walked to the fence. “Your father. She was trying to blackmail him?”

“That’s what Theresa and Margie said.”

“I think she needed one of you to speak against your father. She needed you to break apart to do that.”

“We’d never,” I said.

“Not her, not this time. But you’re only human. All eight of you. One day, you’re going to fall apart. But not because of me. So I didn’t tell anyone about that girl until I had the whole story.”

“I think Jonathan would break if he knew.”

“I won’t tell.”

“I know how you feel about the cops anyway. But she’s dead now. It won’t help anything.”

We walked to the fence, and he pulled it open a little for me. I crawled through as a different person, a cleansed one. I was a woman who, if not sinless, had had her gravest sins washed clean.

The garden was quiet. No one had found us. Mark had kept up his end of the deal. Deacon and I walked back to the garden, then to the front lobby. His time was up.

“Deacon, I have something to say.”

“Say it.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don’t know if this is what I want. What we have. I don’t know. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t string you along if I don’t know.”

He touched my chin with his thumb. “What we have is exactly what you need. Nothing else will work for you. We fix each other’s brokenness.”

“I don’t want to be broken.”

He shook his head. “You don’t get to choose that. You can choose to let me protect you, and I will Fiona. If you stay with me, I’ll stand between you and anything that comes at you. I’ll be your guardian and avenging angel.”

When he left, I watched him roll away in his black car from the upstairs window, wondering if I could make it without him. He didn’t fix me. He didn’t make me whole. He took my broken pieces and gave the cracks between them a purpose. Who was I without that? I shuddered with fear at the thought. I’d be adrift without him, a dinghy in an ocean, but until I faced that lonely expanse, I’d never find land.

FIONA

T
he lights went out.

My arms ached from being tied, and the abrasions from the shoelaces throbbed a little. I didn’t want to touch myself. My clit had rolled over and gone to sleep finally.

I’d left the bathroom door open a crack. I thought I should close it or the whoosh of the pipes would keep me up. I’d forgotten to take the Halcion. I thought I should get up and take it. I was meeting with Elliot in the morning to talk about whether or not I was ready to be released, and I wanted to be rested. I closed my eyes and thought about the stables, about Jonathan’s girlfriend, about kissing and fingering a woman I’d never met knowing that she belonged to him.

That was the old me.

The new me wouldn’t do stuff like that anymore.

Someone somewhere flushed a toilet. The pipes whooshed. I considered getting up and closing the bathroom door, but I was asleep before I could.

ELLIOT

S
he looked rested. Her eyes were lit with awareness, and her face was alert and reactive. That was the effect Deacon had on her. Much as I wanted to hate him for touching her the way he did or get angry that he had what I wanted, the change in her demeanor could not be ignored.

“I saw you go into the trees,” I said. “You were supposed to stay in sight.”

She swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you ring an alarm or something?”

“It would achieve nothing.”

“But isn’t that what it’s always been?” she said. “People keeping me from the consequences of my actions?”

“Do you want to know the consequences of your actions yesterday?”

“I’d have to stay.”

“No. You’d get kicked out.”

She laughed to herself and shifted in her seat.

I continued, “It was clear to me, after I met Deacon, that he wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t think he’d put himself in a position again where you could hurt him.”

Which was partly dishonest. I knew no one was going to get hurt. But I was jealous. Seething. If I’d sent someone after them, it would have been nothing but a reaction to my jealousy. I couldn’t let that happen. I was still her therapist.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You didn’t hurt him, and he didn’t hurt you. So keeping you here to keep you away from Deacon isn’t enough reason. You’re sane and stable enough to face questioning. I don’t think we can hold you anymore.” I should have been relieved or at least happy, but I was confused.

“When am I going?”

“I have to do some paperwork, but probably in a day.”

I gauged her reaction, and it was surprise, not fear. That was good.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I think so.”

“You look a little shell-shocked.”

“I’m scared to go out there. I’m scared of the cameras, and my family, and honestly, I’m scared of myself. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I have to decide whether to go back to Maundy or not. Right now, I think no. I have to get control of my life, and Deacon was a crutch. When he was gone, then this place became a crutch. I get, right now, why people want to stay in here.”

“You should probably continue some sort of therapy,” I said.

“Yeah. But I don’t live in Compton.”

“I can’t be your therapist anymore.”

“Why not?” She sat straighter, and her voice went up an octave. She was hurt.

I hadn’t intended to hurt her. “Because I don’t have a private practice.”

Because I can’t look at you.

Because all I want to do is touch you.

Because I want to hunt and kill everyone who ever hurt you.

Because healing you is personal to me.

Because I’m going to fall in love with you.

“I don’t want to talk to anyone else,” she said.

“I’ll recommend someone you’d like.” I stood, buttoning my jacket. “Give yourself some time after you leave before you decide how to proceed with therapy. But not too much.”

“Sure,” she said, standing.

We went to the door together, and I put my hand on the knob. We did that every time, but this was the last time, and I was slow to open the door. She came close to me.

“Fiona.” I said her name as if I was entering another place, another state where words were warmer, and the things I felt didn’t have to be locked away.

“Yeah?”

I had to press my lips between my teeth before I said something stupid. I released them when something sane was ready to come out. “I liked working with you.”

“You know how I feel,” she said.

In her voice… did I hear that same warm place? If I did, was it even valid? “I guess I do, I just…”
Shut up.

Her hand flicked to the ends of her red hair. As it fell back down, a reflex came straight from my lizard brain.

I caught it.

What the fuck are you doing?

Her fingers rested on mine, and with my thumb…

Don’t.

…I brushed the tops of them.

You’re breaking a sacred trust.

I looked from the hands to her face. Her eyes flicked back and forth, her lips parted. She was motionless as I leaned closer, like a ship keening on the sea. If I kissed her now…

Your career is over.

She’d open her mouth, and our tongues would touch. I’d taste her. I’d feel her warmth. I wanted to. I wanted her more than I wanted my career. My nose ran astride hers, and I tasted her breath. She was there for it. She wanted me to.

She’s probably going back to Deacon.

I closed my mouth and tilted my head to put my lips, and the kiss, out of reach. “I’m sorry.” I dropped her hand.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“The other day, when you told me all the words to use to describe myself, you forgot one.”

“Really? What?”

“Irresistible.”

FIONA

I
 ran as fast as I could in those stupid shoes. I was getting out, and even as scared as I was, my joy at my freedom wasn’t easily contained.

And there was Elliot. It had been a moment. His thumb on my fingers. His mouth so close to mine a twitch would have brought our lips together.

He wouldn’t have me. He wouldn’t come near me again, not if his life depended on it. I knew that. But I also knew that a normal man with normal desires who wanted a normal life could, in the short run at least, find someone like me attractive. And in that, a crack opened, and a stream of possibilities poured in.

I barely stopped in front of Karen’s room. Discovering she wasn’t there, I checked the upstairs rec room. Jonathan was playing ping pong with Warren as if it was a full-contact, high-stakes sport.

“Jon! I’m out tomorrow!”

“Thank god,” he said with a
thup crack thup.
“I’m sick of looking at you.”

I was about to go down to the cafeteria when I saw the ambulance outside. “What happened? There are paramedics in the driveway?”

Warren didn’t lose a beat. “Karen had a heart attack.”

Jonathan caught the ball midair. “What? How?”

Warren shrugged, but I knew god damn well what had happened. She’d taken Warren Pharma’s uppers to kill her appetite, and her heart gave out. I stared Warren down, and he smirked and shrugged. Jonathan joined me at the window.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

I ran downstairs. A crowd stood outside the cafeteria doors, but having clubbed my whole life, they were a permeable barrier, as long as I didn’t care who I pissed off.

Mark stopped me. “Hold on. If you’re not an EMT, you’re on this side of the line.”

Past him, six paramedics lifted Karen onto a gurney.

I pushed Mark out of the way and ran to her. “Karen!”

I didn’t know if she’d heard me. Tubes were sticking out of her face and arm, and her head was held still by a white contraption. Hands grabbed me. I shook them off until I got to her, and she saw me. Her eyes were half-closed but alert.

“We’re friends outside this place. You got it?”

She blinked. She’d heard me. Mark came behind me and wrestled my arms behind my back.

“Okay, okay!” I shouted. “We’re good. I’m going.”

I stood with my hands up, perfectly still, and Mark stepped back to let me pass.

ELLIOT

H
ome. The house I’d bought in a flurry of financial optimism during an economic downturn. The last bit of luck I’d ever had.

The lights were off, but Jana was home. Her car was in the drive, and I saw the dim flickering of the fireplace through the front curtains. I’d almost kissed Fiona Drazen in my office. So much went through my head, the churning excuses, the feeling of autonomy, the crushing guilt.

I dropped my bag at the door and walked into the living room. Jana stood in front of the fireplace, her short silk nightgown falling over her breasts like light pink syrup over a vanilla sundae. Her hands were at her sides, fingertips tight against each other. Her big toes lay right over left.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine. Yours?”