Prescott

When night falls, our guards go up.

It didn’t surprise us that Seb arrived at the club clad in a dapper, checkered gray and red suit, accompanied by two bodyguards.

Sebastian may believe we’re dead, but he knows there’s still a chance we’re after him. And him? He’s after young boys. Sex is a drive just as powerful as revenge. Tonight, he is going to find that out.

We sit low inside a white Tacoma Nate broke into earlier tonight. He said Seb might recognize the Beatmobile and besides, he missed Stella. We made a stop in West Oakland, where he strode into an alley, yanked an antenna from one of the parked cars, wedged a space in the door and effortlessly hit the unlock button.

“Looks like you’re an expert when it comes to breaking into cars,” I said in hushed disdain when he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t look out of your element yourself when you broke into your apartment.” Touché.

We watch Sebastian breeze through the doors of Think Pink, a gay nightclub just on the curve of Mission Street, without even coming face to face with the bouncer. I recognize the two muscle men who plucked me out of that Oakland alley the night he found me and handed me to Nate.

I don’t feel too bad about hurting his soldiers—they didn’t shed a tear when they handed me over to death row—but I hope Seb doesn’t come out of here with an innocent, unsuspecting one-night stand. That would be a complication we don’t need right now.

Beside me, Nate is flicking a Zippo lighter absentmindedly, moving his jaw from side to side while chewing on his peachy gum. The fire engulfed by his huge palms is dancing on his irises, revealing the complete peace behind them.

He doesn’t look like boyfriend-material right now, despite his good looks.

He doesn’t even look like Beat, the scary masked man who takes violently but with consent.

He looks. . .like a killer.

And Godfrey told him about my child. He knows.

“How come you’re not nervous?” I ask, shifting with discomfort that has nothing to do with the small space we’re sharing and eyeing the entrance to the club religiously. We can’t afford to lose Seb. With little means and barely any intel, tonight is our only clear shot.

Nate shrugs, rolling his gum with his tongue. So serene. So sickeningly serene.

“He rapes young men. He took a piece of my girl’s soul. He’s a bad guy and he deserves to die.”

“Are we good people?” I swallow visibly, ignoring his remark about me being his girl. I can’t allow myself to drown in fantasies right now.

“We’re better than good,” he flashes a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We’re fair.”

Three hours after he walked in, Sebastian leaves the nightclub with his two bodyguards in tow, sans an innocent male companion. My palms are sweaty. I’ve been constantly wiping them over my bare thighs. Who the hell shows up in a dress to kill someone, anyway? I bet there’s a sensible dress code for these kinds of occasions. Well, at least it’s red, so I got the bloodstains part covered.

Seb and his men disappear into a flashy silver Cadillac and head out of the city and into the playground where everything, both bad and good, happens. The East Bay.

We follow them silently, careful to have at least two cars between us at all times. Nate is wearing his hoodie and I’m wearing a Raiders cap. Luckily, it’s Saturday night and the roads are pretty busy, despite the late hour.

The Cadillac stops outside a glitzy apartment building in Dublin, not too different from the one I was living in just a few weeks ago. Seb steps out of the car, and it’s almost too good to be true—I’m literally rubbing my eyes in astonishment—when I see him saluting a curt goodbye to his bodyguards before disappearing through the reception doors.

Jesus Christ, they’re not even guarding his apartment from inside. He’s just leaving them there, on the street, sitting in their car, in the unlikely case we show up. The driver folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes, while the guy in the passenger seat takes out an iPhone, playing a game, the glowing screen highlighting his broken nose and a jaw the shape of a rock.

My gaze meets Nate’s, and he’s already grinning from ear to ear. A lucky break that fell from the sky and right into our laps.

We wait for a few more minutes, looking up, watching the light on the second floor of the building as it switches on. Nate slides the car past the crosswalk, making sure there’s an easy getaway route in case we need to make a move quickly, and once the engine is off, he turns to me, grabbing my shoulders so that I’m facing him.

“Sure you wanna do this? I won’t hold it against you if you pussy out. No shame in changing your mind, Baby-Cakes.”

I snort, shaking my head. These men are going down. I appreciate him giving me an opening to back away, but I wanted to kill them before he, and his golden dick, marched into my life.

“I’m good,” I say.

He angles forward, grabbing me by the back of my neck and placing a kiss on top of my head. “You’re not good, you’re the fucking best.”

Taking out the syringes from the Walgreens bag and the tin with the drugs, I mix a deadly cocktail of cocaine and nail polish remover, shaking it together into something that’ll leave his bodyguards begging for their deaths. I know this powdered crack, and it’s full of the worst ingredients the market has to offer. If the ammonia and rat poison straight to the veins don’t kill them—the nail polish remover will finish the job.

All I need to do is make sure I hit the right spot. But years of dealing with junkies who resorted to sticking needles in their feet and genitals made me somewhat of an expert on human anatomy when it comes to where to stick a needle—even in battlefield situations.

Sliding out of the car first, Nate—clad in his mask and hoodie—walks in the direction of their car, hands shoved in his pockets. When he stops in front of the driver’s window, he taps it with his gloved knuckles. I watch from the Tacoma as the window rolls down and a meaty hand darts in his direction, trying to stab him in the stomach with a sharp object. He dodges the knife elegantly and twists the guy’s arm out of the window, breaking it against the door with a popping sound that makes me swallow back a lump of puke. The arm dangles limply. Nate’s mask lifts and his eyes zero in on me. It’s my cue. I open my door and run in his direction, clutching the syringes in a death grip. He nods toward the broken armed man, and I jam a needle into a nice, blue vein in his neck. Nate is already dealing with the Candy Crush guy, who had time to round the car with a gun at his waist, a gun he is clutching on to but doesn’t pull out. Shooting someone on Main Street is not a stellar idea. Even he knows it.

“Put the gun down.” I hear Nate’s low growl dripping authority and immediately come to the depressing realization that I needed someone like him all this time. If he were by my side when I first tried to take my enemies down, they’d be long gone by now. “The chick behind me has two Magnums, and she won’t hesitate to make Swiss cheese out of your saggy ass if you point that shit at me. Pull your sleeve up and gimme your arm.”

“And why the hell would I do that?” The muscle man panics, waving the gun in the air but not at anyone in particular. “Whaddaya’ need my arm for?”

“Baby-Cakes,” Nate signals for me to come closer. The broken armed guy foams out of his mouth, gagging as my lethal cocktail fills his blood stream with pure venom, but Candy Crush can’t see it, since his friend’s upper body is spilling out of the window in the opposite direction. I eat up the space to Nate and the armed muscle guy. “Tell the man why you need his arm.”

“So I can poison you,” I smirk. The guy turns around and tries to bolt for the apartment building, but Nate hooks his fingers into the back of his collar and swings him effortlessly into a back alley behind a local restaurant. Muscle Man is slammed against a trash dumpster and crashes to the ground. Nate picks up his gun and unloads the revolver, throwing the weapon into the trash.

We could have used that gun.

I know he says guns are for pussies, but what the hell does he think I have between my legs, an In-N-Out Burger?

“Give me the keys to his apartment,” Nate barks at Seb’s bodyguard, his voice uncharacteristically loud.

“I don’t have them.”

Kick to the stomach. Muscle Guy rolls into the fetal position, wincing and hugging his middle. Nate picks him up, opens the heavy lid to the dumpster and shoves his face into it. The guy’s limbs are flailing. He can’t breathe. Lifting the lid, Nate yanks him up by his hair, and the guy gasps, gulping oxygen.

“Keys, asshole. Don’t make me fondle you.”

“I don’t have keys to his place!”

Another kick, this time straight to the face. Blood. Blood and dust everywhere. The scent of his life seeping away makes me gag and shiver, but on the outside, I’m leaning a shoulder against the wall, crossing my arms and snickering.

This guy didn’t flinch when Seb kidnapped me from that Oakland Street.

“Do you want to know what it feels like when your organs explode from the inside? It’s about to happen.”

“I told you! I. Don’t. Have. . .”

Another kick, this one to his back, but he doesn’t scream and writhe this time, which makes me put a hand on Nate’s lower back. Peace can be violent. I’ve learned that from my short time with him.

“Baby, time is wasting. He’s not worth killing. Let’s go.”

My lover squats down and looks through the guy’s jeans to see if he has the key. He doesn’t. I think the man is either out or dead, but we don’t bother checking as we make our way back to the main street.

We wait patiently behind a giant plant decorating the entrance of the building, and once a drunken man in a suit uses the touch-screen keypad and pushes the front door open, we muscle our way in, shoving him deeper inside. We bustle into a lobby that’s probably wired with countless cameras. Doesn’t matter, as our faces are covered down to our necks. My Frankenstein mask is anything but sexy, but it does the job.

“What the. . .?” The young, suited man stumbles his way past the plush sofas and toward the elevators, and we follow him, Nate holding the middle of his dress shirt like he’s a dog on a leash, jabbing the elevator button with his gloved finger.

“Good evening, Sir.” Nate’s voice is as cheery as his Guy Fawkes mask. “Had a good time tonight?”

The guy stares at him with eyes like two, shiny moons and nods his head slowly, not paying me any attention. Despite my scary mask, you can still see that I’m small, curvy and a woman.

The silver doors slide open and the three of us walk into the elevator, Nate still holding the poor guy by his shirt.

“Floor?” he asks politely.

“Two.” The guy’s throat bobs, and our masks turn toward one another in a silent celebration.

“That’s exactly where we’re heading. What apartment does Sebastian Goddard live in?”

The guy’s lips are pursed. He’s looking at Beat’s mask with fear, watered down by suspicion. “Look,” he starts. “I don’t want any trouble. . .”

The elevator pings again, and Nate thrusts him into the hallway of the second floor in a firm shove. “I believe you. Which is why you should start singing right about now. Apartment number?”

“But. . .”

“Number, kiddo.”

“I don’t know,” the guy exhales. He’s lying. It’s that little twitch in his lips that gives him away. The building complex is small, and there are no more than ten apartments on every floor.

“Let’s try again.” Nate throws the guy’s back into the wall, hard enough to break a bone or two. “This time, we’ll use a little thing called honesty, okay? Keep in mind that it’s late, and my companion has a curfew. She should be in my bed in approximately forty minutes, and every minute I’m here, talking to you instead of fucking her, is a terrible inconvenience for us both.”

I flush red and my thighs clutch together.

“Show me to Sebastian Goddard’s door. Now.”

This time Nate speckles his request with a fist to the guy’s nose, and his head finds a glassed painting behind him. The frame shatters, raining glass on the guy’s face. Nate has to yank him back out by pulling on his short, damp hair.

“Okay. Okay. Fine! It’s apartment 34. Now please, just please, let me go.”

“Happily. We’ll even escort you to your place.”

The guy looks between me and Nate like this is some kind of a terrible conspiracy. Nevertheless, Nate herds him to the far corner of the hallway, hurrying past apartment 34. When I notice the number, my heart thumps so hard against my chest, it a hurts my ribs. The guy looks between us and his door, sighs, and takes out his keys, pushing his door ajar. Nate walks into his apartment, and I follow suit.

What’s he doing?

Where is he taking this?

We already have Seb’s apartment number, why is he still harassing the poor guy?

Nate walks around the living room, his fist still clutching the fabric of this guy’s collar. “Nice place.” He pushes the guy to sit on the floor under his kitchen sink and jams his wrists against one of the cabinet handles. Next thing he does is take the black cloth he used to cuff me with out of his back pocket and wrap the guy’s arms tightly against the doors. So tight, in fact, that the guy grimaces and jerks his head from side to side, fighting tears.

“Oh, shit, oh, no,” the guy curses, and Nate shakes his head and throws me a glance from behind his shoulder.

“Just for the record, it was so much more fun to handcuff you, Baby-Cakes.”

I flip Nate the bird and he laughs. I love this guy so much, the need to be around him overwhelms me. So perfect. So flawed. Ironically, in very similar ways.

Nate squats down, shoves his hand into the guy’s pocket and takes out his cell phone, tossing it aside. It lands on the floor on the opposite side of the living room in a bang.

“Sorry, bud. It ain’t personal. You look like an all right kid, but see, we can’t chance you calling the cops on us. Thank you for your cooperation and have a wonderful weekend. And let me just spare you the guilt trip—we would’ve found him with or without your help. So don’t spend a minute thinking you were responsible for Mr. Goddard’s death.” He slaps Suit’s cheek endearingly. “Sleep tight.”

Nate stands up, hooks his arm around my shoulder and guides me out of the apartment. We close the door silently and pour back into the hallway. When we get to Sebastian’s door, holding hands, our bodies draw deep breaths in perfect harmony.

It’s happening. I’m getting that piece of my soul back.

“He’s mine,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.

“He’s yours,” Nate whispers back. “So am I. So is everything in this fucking world, as long as I’m by your side. I love you, Storm.”

“I love you, Peace.” My heart collapses with excitement, flowing in dangerous waves. It’s like feeling an emotional orgasm, and I blink away my tears. By the time I open my eyes, Nate releases his hold on my hand, takes a step back, gaining momentum, and kicks the door down with a loud bang that fills the hallway with noise and my gut with fear.

“Surprise, motherfucker,” Beat’s mask announces into the thin, cold air of Sebastian Goddard’s apartment. “Guess what? We’re alive, well, and fucking pissed.”

It’s show time.

Sebastian’s living room looks like a psychiatric ward. The walls are heavily padded, due to his inability to stand the sound of life. Furniture, couch, paintings, and even the TV is white. Everything is hollow, empty and bleached. Arranged neatly and obsessively in straight lines. Nothing is misplaced and everything has a purpose.

Nate moves smoothly toward the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Again, I find myself following, kicking myself mentally for thinking I could have done this on my own.

Nate kicks Seb’s bedroom door open to find him already up on his feet, reaching for his gun and loading it with bullets. His quivering fingers fail him. He’s wearing boxer briefs and a plain white dress shirt. He was going to sleep good tonight, thinking he’s safe. It makes me hate him even more.

I haven’t slept well in years. Not since what they did to me.

Beat rushes to his side and sends an uppercut right to his jaw, stunning him with the impact of his strength. Sebastian stumbles back and lands with his back against the bedframe, his ass hitting the carpeted floor. The gun drops to his feet and I hurry to pick it up and fill the revolver with kisses I’d like to plant on his skin, just like the one he left on my forehead before we said our goodbyes the last time we saw each other.

“How did you—” he starts, not quite sure what’s going on.

“Seek, and you shall find,” Nate explains. “We found, motherfucker.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he whispers.

“Yeah, well,” I say with a shrug, “killing you sounded better.”

My idea of fun is killing everyone.

“Remember what we said, Baby-Cakes. Guns are for pussies. Only Seb, Godfrey and the likes of them use ‘em,” Nate reminds me, casually picking Seb up in a chokehold. Sebastian roars in pain, in the same way I held myself back from doing when he hurt me less than a month ago. The man I love leads him out of his bedroom with his grip.

“Yell, and I’m cutting off your balls and letting you bleed out while you’re gagged. Shut up, and I let my girl decide how she wants to finish you,” Nate singsongs.

“Your girl,” Seb spits. “Oh, Diabla. Always fucking your way to more drama.”

“And you love watching,” I say, still holding his gun close to my thigh. We all stumble to the padded living room, where noise is swallowed from the inside and out.

“Ah, men and their love for dangerous pussy,” Seb huffs. “No wonder I prefer dick. Less hassle.”

Beat thrusts Sebastian’s face into the nearest framed picture, and the blow is so intense, Seb almost crashes back against the opposite wall. His face is now full of little shards of glass poking out of his skin.

“Oops. At least you didn’t yell like a bitch this time. Good dog.”

Nate throws Sebastian on the sofa and kneels down, so that he is at eye-level with him behind his mask.

“You know, Seb? Out of all the things you did in prison, out of all the boys you raped, the people you conned, the murders you plotted, there’s one thing that sticks out for me.” His voice is so calm. So light. He’s my peace, and having him around right now ensures that I won’t get dragged into a tempest of fear and pain. “You watched my girl being raped,” Nate finished. “And you got off on it.”

Seb’s small, gleaming eyes travel up to meet mine. When our gazes lock, he uses whatever strength he has left to pull a satisfied smirk. “It was bloody fantastic. Watching them tossing her around like a football. Father and son. Pass after pass after pass. Kick after kick after kick.”

My stomach turns and rolls. I sway lightly, feeling woozy with humiliation. “There’s nothing more erotic than watching a little soul break.” His dreamy grin conceals his physical state. “You know? Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m a homosexual. Maybe I’m not. If they’re not young and unwilling, I lose interest. But she. . .” His eyes roam over me in a way that makes me want to hug myself. “She was a weak girl when she got to us, and look at her now. A monster. Diabla. I’m proud.”

Nate’s fist lands on Seb’s face, nailing him to the back of the sofa with a thud. The shards dig deeper into his flesh.

“Asshole!”

Seb’s face swings back with a bloody smile. “I think the best part was when she bled. Out of her pussy. Out of her arse. Out of her mouth. God, it was beautiful to watch. The rich and entitled became poor and broken.”

Another blow follows, and this time I hear Seb’s nose crack. He yells, then groans, then swings back up, looking dizzy and disorientated, yet eerily happy. He looks up to me, his head tilting sideways, seemingly unfazed by the thick pool of blood spreading on his white carpet. I can’t stop the tears from falling. I’d give up anything to make him shut up.

“Does he know you fell pregnant?” Seb asks, and my vision clouds with thick black mist. “What we had to do to terminate your pregnancy so that we wouldn’t have any more whores to look after?”

My knees turn to sand and I feel Nate’s gaze slowly revolving in my direction. I lift the hand that holds Seb’s gun to his face, but I’m shaking. Shaking so badly, I’m afraid it’ll be Nate I end up shooting.

“Pea?” I hear his voice, and for the first time, it’s not so peaceful. It’s scary. Edgy. It’s a nightmare. I shake my head, taking comfort in the fact that the tears are invisible under my Frankenstein mask.

“Move away,” I order. He does as he’s told, still looking at me. I know he said guns are for pussies, but maybe I am a pussy. Seb took it too far. No. I didn’t tell Nate that I fell pregnant when one of these assholes—hell knows if it was Godfrey or his son—knocked me up. Because the way they aborted the baby. . .I shoved it so deep into the back of my head, sometimes I’m not even sure it happened at all.

The gun is swaying in my trembling hand, a dance of fire and hate.

“You didn’t know.” Seb licks his swollen lips on a smile. His whole face is disfigured and purple from Nate’s beatings. “Gutted like a fish, thrown in the shower like a whore. She actually wanted to keep that baby,” he says with a cackle. “The stupid little cunt.”

I shoot Sebastian James Goddard three times.

Three bullets.

One in the chest, one in the face and one ends up eating a hole in his sleek ex-white vinyl couch. I stand there for long seconds after, letting it sink in.

I killed a man.

I killed a man who abused me.

I killed a man who killed my baby.

I killed a man who doesn’t look human anymore.

Still rooted to the floor, my feet immobile, I can’t stop staring at Sebastian’s face. Or what’s left of it. There’s a hole where his nose used to be, and dark red blood, slimy clots and other inner waste is pouring from it. It kind of looks like the inside of a minced meat lasagna after you tripped and it spilled all over the floor. What have I done? What has he done?

My baby.

Sebastian’s blood against the contrasting white of everything else in the room is beautiful. Almost picturesque. A calm smile starts making its way to my mouth. But I’m not happy. I’m in shock. Nate’s hand finds mine. He’s dragging me out the door, taking the stairs, and when he realizes how out of it I really am, he yanks me up and tucks me under his armpit, like I’m an envelope he needs to deliver, and paces down hurriedly. When we get to the truck, he buckles me up but stays outside.

“We need to run,” I mouth urgently.

“Padded walls,” Nate grunts. “No one heard. Be back in a second.”

Then he disappears between the building’s doors once again.

I hate that he is not next to me, paranoid by the prospect of being taken by Godfrey’s men again, snatched in the middle of the night, nothing more than a daily newspaper your neighbor can grab from your front porch. My fears, however, don’t materialize. A few minutes later, Nate jumps into the driver’s seat and speeds away from the crime scene after tossing something into the trunk. The gun is still clutched in my hand. I release it slowly, without even realizing that it drops to the floor of the car, still deep in trauma.

He drives to an office block I don’t recognize, but the minute I see the name Royal Realty glittering in gold over a big sign next to the names of the other corporations, I throw up on my knees. The Archers’ company. Why’s he doing this?

“Shit,” Nate mutters, and I hurry to clean my mess with paper towels I grab from my backpack. “You okay, Baby-Cakes?”

I nod, but it’s only so I won’t have to utter a lie. I’m not okay. I killed a man, and I’m not Nate. I’m angrier and more vocal about my hatred—I’m madness driven by revenge—but I’m not like him. He’s a dark, quiet killer. A peace. His abnormally beautiful face was given to him, and not by accident. It’s to disguise all the ugly things he is capable of doing without batting a pretty eyelash.

He’s not a bad man, but he is fair. Even when justice means doing something terrible. He turns to look at me, and my heart swells before shattering in my chest. I’m not going to survive parting ways with this guy, but do I really have a choice? Can he accept and love something so broken?

“I don’t think you should see what happens next. But if you do, wear your mask. This place is wired like the fucking Pentagon.”

He kisses the corner of my lips softly before slapping on his Guy Fawkes mask and jumping out, opening the trunk and taking something dark and round with him. I sit and watch him disappear into the underground parking lot of the building, jogging down the wide concrete road and sliding under the automatic barrier.

I think back to the first time I saw Beat’s Guy Fawkes mask. He said he chose it because it was the easiest mask to find, but I know the truth. Guy Fawkes represents chaos, anarchy, and dark deeds that are done behind closed doors.

He represents the part of our relationship I didn’t even know I craved before, but awakened a part of me that I didn’t know existed.

I can be a ruthless. I can kill. I can take from those who deserve to be punished.

The strength in knowing that, in some ways, he’s already fixed my soul is what makes me slide my mask on and push my door open. I walk into the parking lot. My small feet make very little sound, but this is Nate. He’s aware of my presence.

There’s something cinematic about the vision of his huge, muscular back as his fist clutches Sebastian’s short hair. I don’t know when he had time to decapitate my archenemy, but his pasty skin transformed from white to bluish in the short time he’s been dead. Blood drips from what’s left of his throat, but it’s more of an annoying trickle, like a broken faucet that drip, drip, drips.

The sound of Nate’s steps in his army boots echo off the walls of the empty parking lot. When he gets to a parking space that’s painted with Royal Realty’s title, he drops the head, letting it fall to the ground. Going down on one knee, he produces something small from his back pocket and arranges it neatly next to Seb’s head. I take a few breathless steps forward to see what he’s done.

It’s a small hourglass. Something he must’ve bought when we were in Los Angeles, while he was getting us some food.

Time.

Godfrey Archer is running out of it.

I open my mouth for the first time since I killed Sebastian.

“I’m sorry I used the gun. I know guns are for pussies.”

Not sparing me a glance, his back still to me, he shakes his head.

“You’re brave. Too brave. You did what you had to do, and I respect the shit out of you. Got it?”

The need for him to tell me that he still loves me is devastating and sucks the oxygen right out of me. Sebastian’s death is the least of my worries right now. It’s what’s been revealed in this visit that makes tears chase each other down my cheeks.

I had a violent abortion at the hands of Sebastian and Godfrey when they found out about the thing.

“My world ended that day.” My voice is small and sad.

“I know. But you’re building a better one. A stronger one. You’ve got this, Baby-Cakes.”

Nate marshals me into another dingy motel room—all of them are starting to mold into one another in my head—while I stumble to keep up with him.

The thing about trauma is, you don’t really know the extent of it when you’re looking from the inside. On the outside, though, Nate must see something incredibly alarming, because he pulls me into his arms and hugs me so hard my bones scream in pain.

“I loved it,” I say quietly into Nate’s chest. His heart beats against my ear in a slow, steady rhythm. He’s got the heartbeat of an athlete. Just one more thing that makes him my peace. He exhales hot, peachy air into my hair.

“Promise me you won’t break. You did so well today. So well.”

“I’ve got no more strength.” I’m quivering so violently, I bump into parts of his body without even noticing. “I don’t have any more fight in me.”

He cups my face in his hands, so that I can’t escape his penetrating gaze. “Then I’ll give you some of mine.”

Shaking my head, I suddenly feel hot. So hot. Too hot. I hate this place. This room. This life. I worm out of his touch.

“They’re monsters, but they’re going to pay for what they did to you, all of them. One day when this is all over, one day, sometime in the future, you’ll have it all. I promise. A big swollen belly from the man you love.”

You, I want to shout. You’re the man I love. Only we promised each other we’d say goodbye. Knowing I’m way too screwed up right now to face rejection, I still put myself in the most fragile situation I’ve ever been in. Rejection might kill me, but I have no choice.

I lift my eyes to meet his and my lips flatten.

“I want to come with you. Forget Iowa. Forget my stupid dreams. Can I come with you, Christopher Delaware?”

His gorgeous face pulls into a badass smirk and my heart stutters in my chest.

“Why, Miss Cockburn, I thought you’d never ask.”

I’m too exhausted, shocked and irritated to smile. But he picks me up honeymoon style and carries me to the dirty bed. We’re holding each other’s stares like neither of us believes we’re good enough for the other person to stick around. Somewhere underneath the painful reminder of my pregnancy. . .I’m at peace. I have a home now, and that’s with Nate.

We fall asleep like two dead people sometime after the sun breaks over the skyline. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad in my entire life. But also happy, and confused. Hopeful and hopeless. I’m a mess. I’m his mess. And that’s something.

That’s a lot.

And as I drift off to sleep I wonder. . .could it possibly be everything?