“Where’s your mortar and pestle?” Sam demanded through the phone.

I dumped the wooden blocks that I’d gathered from my classroom and placed them in the bin where I kept them.

“I don’t have one,” I replied, straightening, one hand on the small of my back.

It was a long day. Longer than I would’ve liked since I’d had to stay late and finish paperwork I’d been neglecting, then tidy up the classroom.

It was after seven and the sky was beginning to darken outside, casting the room in shadow.

“What do you mean you don’t have a mortar and pestle?” Sam gasped in shock.

“I mean I don’t have many things to mortar and pestle, Sam.” I smiled as I walked to my desk to retrieve my bag.

I wasn’t exactly a chef. I usually had Lean Cuisines or a pint of that new three-hundred-calorie ice cream for dinner. Not that I told him that.

“It’s a travesty,” he muttered.

“Why do you need a mortar and pestle?” I asked, suspicious.

“I’m cooking,” he declared.

I stopped at my desk. “But I haven’t replaced the batteries on my smoke detector.”

We ordered in most nights we were together, or I cooked something simple, like the pasta he adored. We didn’t put too much effort into dishes that would take too long, Sam making it very clear that we had better things to do than cook.

He scoffed. “Very funny. Do you take your show on the road?”

“Every August through November,” I deadpanned.

“I’ll mark it on my calendar.” His throaty chuckle warmed my bones. “Do you like Italian?”

It was my turn to chuckle. “Have you seen my ass? Yes, I like Italian.”

“I have seen your ass. And I plan on creating a cult around its worship where severe punishment is given to anyone who alludes to it being anything but fucking fantastic,” he clipped. “Anyone includes you. And the sexual form of punishment is exclusive to you.”

The warmth from his chuckle turned into a wildfire throughout my body. “Well—” I planned on listing some other qualities about my ass I didn’t like, as I had learned that I rather loved his form of punishment.

But a shadow at my door stopped me in my verbal tracks. And my physical ones, since the shadow was not cast by the disappearing light but by a disheveled and manic-looking Simon standing in the doorway.

“Don’t leave me hanging, Thumbelina,” Sam said, unaware of why I’d stopped so abruptly. “I need to plan your punishment, and I know you’re not done yet. I know my little good girl loves being bad.”

“Sam—” I whispered.

“Is that him?” Simon demanded, interrupting me.

I froze at his voice. At the look in his eyes. At the fact that he was not expertly groomed. His hair was messy, greasy looking, dark circles lingered under his eyes, and his jaw was darkened with stubble I didn’t think I’d ever seen.

Sam sensed it in my voice, the fear that chilled me just as desire had set me aflame.

“What?” he growled in my ear, instantly alert. “Are you okay?”

“It’s rude to talk on the phone in the presence of someone else,” Simon snapped, advancing into my room.

I skirted the desk so I could put it between us.

“Gina,” Sam said urgently. “I’ll be there in two minutes. Fuck, why didn’t I bring my fuckin’ gun?” he muttered to himself. “I’m buying you a gun.”

“I’m, uh… I think it’s okay. My ex has just decided to make a rather inappropriate visit to my classroom,” I said, eyes on Simon as he continued to stalk toward me. And that’s what it was. His empty eyes stayed glued to me, dripping with menace. “Despite not wanting to be a damsel in distress, I think I will request your presence, Sam.”

I made sure to speak loudly, purposefully, making sure not to let my voice shake with fear.

“I’m coming for you, babe. Just stay on the—”

Simon decided to stop his measured approach and use the fact that I had nothing but a blackboard behind me to snatch my phone and throw it behind him. It clattered to the floor.

“I hate when I have to tell you things twice,” he seethed. “You know I hate that.”

He clutched my upper arms, shaking me roughly. But I didn’t cry out.

I met his eyes. “Let go of me, Simon. You’re the police officer here, so I’m sure you’re aware of what counts as physical assault.” I tried to keep a reasonable tone in my voice and not give in to the hysteria that was quickly growing.

He laughed. “I’m well aware,” he spat, sudden fury leaching into his previously empty tone. He yanked me forward, so close I could almost taste the booze on his breath.

Images of Wayne’s rancid breath and his brutality rushed into my mind.

I began to shake.

“What? You and your pathetic buddy play out of the same hideous misogynistic book? I’ll tell you now, this is the end of your job,” I threatened, my own anger exploding into my tone. It helped me to not be paralyzed by fear.

“What fucking job?” he hissed. “Your vagrant boyfriend already took care of that.”

The statement confused me somewhat, but I didn’t have time to contemplate it.

Simon turned us quickly, roughly, and my hip slammed into the edge of my desk. I bit my lip hard in an attempt not to cry out in pain. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth.

“What? That hurt?” Simon scoffed. “I would think there’s more than enough padding there to soften the blow.”

He squeezed my hip cruelly and painfully.

“What are you giving him, eh?” he asked, leaning forward so his breath was hot on the side of my face.

I flinched away the best I could, the back of the desk hampering any kind of escape. And the way Simon had tangled his legs in mine made it impossible for me to lift my leg and sterilize him with my knee as I so yearned to do.

“You fuckin’ him dirty?” he asked, pinching my nipple. “’Cause you didn’t do shit with me. If I knew you liked dirty, I wouldn’t have let you break up with me. You save that for the rich ones?”

I struggled. Hard. As soon as it became apparent that he didn’t just want to scare me, that he had an intention, a depraved one that would follow through on that sick look the night we’d broken up.

Simon’s eyes brightened, a telltale hardness against my throbbing hip telling me my struggles were exciting him in the most sickening of ways.

“Get off me now, Simon,” I demanded. “Before you do something you can’t take back.”

He glared at me, hand going from my nipple to the center of my chest. “Oh, I intend on taking something.”

He started to push me backward with one hand as the other yanked at the skirt of my maxi dress.

I struggled more then, a lot more. He was stronger than me, that much was apparent, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him rape me.

Terror made me strong too.

I managed to yank my leg free, making contact with his shin. It was a lot lower than my preferred target, but he grunted in pain regardless, slackening his grip slightly so I could get the space I needed to yank myself from his grasp and away from the desk.

Strong and comprehensive pain erupted in my scalp as he snatched my ponytail, yanking me backward.

He and Wayne really do work out of the same playbook, I thought distractedly.

My back roughly impacted with his front, his breath hot on my ear, his arousal jabbing into my back.

I did my best not to throw up.

“The more you fight, the more I know you want it,” he murmured.

“You are fucking delusional,” I hissed through the pain.

Simon still had purchase on my hair and gave it another painful yank. “You know how much I hate women who swear,” he warned.

“And you know how much I hate assholes who attack and try to rape their ex-girlfriends,” I screamed. I lifted my foot, bringing it down as hard as I could onto his boot.

It didn’t do much, considering I was wearing flat sandals. It would’ve been a lot more successful if I’d been wearing heels, but that wasn’t the appropriate footwear when you were running around after toddlers all day.

Though it wasn’t as forceful as I wanted, and the motion sent a lance of pain from the base of my foot up my ankle, it made him let go of my hair and give me another chance at escape. I’d made it about two paces when a figure filled the doorway I’d been aiming for.

My entire body, pulsing from adrenaline and fear, relaxed.

Sam froze for one second. Less than that. Then he charged forward, yanking me by the hips forcefully but somehow not painfully. Well, it wouldn’t have been painful if I hadn’t already been injured there. But he didn’t know that.

When I was safely deposited behind him, Sam advanced on Simon.

“What are you going to do, pretty boy?” Simon sneered, though his eyes flared with fear.

Sam didn’t say a word. Not one word. He usually had them for any situation, but not this one. He just stalked forward, fury flickering behind him like a cape, advancing on the retreating Simon.

Simon knew, just like that day on my doorstep, that he was in front of the stronger predator. And now Sam was going to prove it.

And he did.

And it was terrifying.

Perhaps the most terrifying part was the grim satisfaction I got from every thump of flesh against flesh, every grunt of pain coming from Simon’s body until no sound came when he lost consciousness.

The sound of nothingness rang in my ears for the longest of moments, until the world rushed back in.

* * *

“Stop struggling,” I demanded sharply, yanking Sam’s hands back into my own.

“You shouldn’t be the one taking care of me,” he clipped as I carefully dabbed at his bleeding knuckles.

“I’m not the one bleeding,” I argued, wiping at the evidence of the night. “You’re lucky you didn’t break anything,” I muttered to myself. “Simon’s head is hard since it’s full of rocks instead of brains. I never would’ve forgiven myself if you’d broken your hand on it and couldn’t play.”

The thought made me shudder. Weirdly, it made me shudder more than the memory of almost being raped tonight. But that’s because I was purposefully focusing on every part of the night but that. I sensed that if I didn’t, my throat might close up and I’d have trouble breathing.

So I focused on the task at hand.

Sam’s hands.

Sam’s bleeding hands.

He sucked in a breath. Not at the hydrogen peroxide making contact with his exposed skin. No, I’d been doing that for a while and he hadn’t so much as grimaced. It was at my words. “You would never forgive yourself?” he repeated.

I nodded. “I’m the reason why you’re even here, neglecting your album, and I almost could’ve stopped the situation from even being created.”

Sam yanked his hands from mine, and that time I couldn’t snatch them back since they were fastened around my neck. Not firmly, of course. Sam had been constantly touching me throughout the entire evening. Throughout all the statements, the interviews, the paramedic check he’d demanded they do—twice. That was despite me being fine apart from a throbbing scalp and a bruised hip. I had yet to show him that though. I’d swallowed a couple of Advil that were doing the job, dulling the niggling pain.

His touch throughout the night had been constant but light. Barely there type of light. Before, Sam had always been firm, bordering on painful. But now he touched me as if I was full of cracks, as if he expected me to shatter at his feet.

“You need to listen. Now,” he growled. “This isn’t your fault. Evil fucking actions from evil fucking minds are no fault of the pure and good ones they attempt to defile. None at all. You’re not to spew any sort of shit implying you’re somehow inconveniencing my life. Because that’s just bullshit,” he seethed. “Even if my hands did break, they would’ve healed. I would’ve fuckin’ snapped them myself if it meant you didn’t have to live a second of this night. But you did. And you’ll have to live it again and again in your mind.” His eyes were black. “I hate that for you, baby.”

His voice was soft, defeated toward the end. It broke me down more than anything else that happened tonight could have.

“I’m okay, Sam,” I said firmly. “I’m okay. I stopped him from getting to me a long time ago. He didn’t know that, until he saw it. And it was his weak mind that couldn’t handle it when he saw he didn’t break me. That he couldn’t break me again. Not like before. So he tried to do it another way.” I stroked his face. “He couldn’t do that either. Because of you.”

Sam flinched, eyes roaming over me as if to catalogue my face, as if he was sure there was a bruise or bump or bleeding wound he’d missed in the chaos.

“Sam,” I demanded, sucking in a breath. “I need you.”

His gaze met mine. “You’ve got me, Thumbelina,” he whispered.

I pressed my body forward so it touched every inch of his. “No, Sam. I need you. I need you to erase every single bit of tonight. I just need… you.”

He immediately stepped back. “No, baby. You’re hurt,” he protested gently.

I didn’t go to him, just stood there in the middle of the living room shaking my head. “No, I’m not. I was, before. When I gave him the power to hurt me. He doesn’t have that anymore. Not now that I’m stronger. Not now that I have you.” I whispered the last part.

But he heard it. I knew he heard it.

He stared at me and I resisted the urge to squirm. You’d think after everything we’d been through, I’d have some coping mechanism for his stare. Maybe gotten used to it.

But you didn’t get used to Sam Kennedy staring at you.

Not because he was Sam Kennedy the rock star, famed and known throughout the globe.

No, it was because he was Sam. And he looked at me like time had stopped. Like everything stopped the moment our eyes met. Like the way every single woman on the planet wished someone, anyone, would look at them. Most of us wouldn’t admit that, that the simple thing we all wanted was to be adored, looked at like that. For me, it was somewhat more precious, because to see someone you loved look at you under normal circumstances was good, great, amazing. But it was something entirely different when you’d watched someone you love look at you with a cold and cruel emptiness designed to hurt you. When you’d watched someone take everything you gave them and crumple it up in their hands just for their own sick satisfaction, or so they could control you. You forgot that there were actually people in the world who would take that power to destroy you and use it. Not to destroy, not even to create, but to repair whatever had been broken so deeply, so utterly that you’d been convinced it would never be repaired.

“What?” I asked, unable to stand that look of adoration and reverence. It was almost as hard to exist under as Simon’s hate-filled look of contempt.

Funny how we let ourselves feel more comfortable under a stare designed to hurt us than one we convince ourselves we don’t deserve.

He stepped forward, not so he was pressed against me like before but so he could stroke my cheek. “Someone who was treated the way you were, the way no one in this fucking world should be treated” —his hand moved down my neck, ghosting over the tee shirt I was wearing, his tee shirt—“they should be jaded. They should be locked down so tight that no one could ever get in there. Ever.”

His eyes darkened as he pushed the tee up, sliding his fingers downward so they slipped into my panties and then into me.

“But I’m in there,” he rasped at the same time I let out a strangled moan. He rubbed his cheek against the side of my face so his stubble scratched against my smooth skin, creating delightful friction.

His fingers moved in a smooth rhythm. “And I don’t just mean here,” he continued, kissing up my neck, massaging my insides to make his point. “I mean everywhere. Even before I knew that shit, I considered myself fucking lucky because I know you had every right to stay locked the fuck down after everything I put you through. But you let me in. And I’d thought it was a marvel before. But now….” He shifted so he could watch me react to the way his fingers moved inside me.

I was having trouble breathing, let alone concentrating on his words, but I managed as he stoked the fire within me.

“Why, baby? How?” he whispered.

My breath hitched and I made a little sound of disappointment when he stopped moving in order to elicit a response.

He smiled wickedly at me.

“Be-because,” I stuttered. “I had two choices. I could’ve done that. Become emotional cardboard and hated the world and everything it told you about life and love because it was all a load of bullshit. I was like that, for a little while.” I paused, shifting so I could get the friction I needed. Sam’s other hand fastened on my uninjured hip, pressing down enough so I couldn’t move the way I wanted.

“This is cruel,” I whined.

“Sometimes cruel is good, Thumbelina,” he whispered. “Gonna teach you that, erase all manner of memories relating to that. To him.” He kissed my nose. “Now….” He nodded to prompt me.

I glared at him, but it fizzled out fairly quickly. It was rather hard to glare at someone you loved, especially when his deft fingers held you on the precipice of orgasm.

And when he was just so darn pretty.

“I realized that would be letting him win. Letting him control beyond what was one of the worst years of my life, in retrospect,” I said, my voice rough. “He would not only be controlling my future but my past, when I had faith in the world, even when I had a shitty pair of parents who should’ve trampled my romantic notions. They didn’t. I may have had my head buried in books, in another world, saw things, wished for things that didn’t exist. And he made me feel stupid and ignorant for that belief for a while. But then I realized that was his sad view. He was cursed to live in this wretched world for the rest of his life. Maybe the way he saw it, the way he made me see it, was the truth. Who knows. But if it was, if it is, I’m happy in my own world. If I’m going to let someone create worlds for me, it’s going to be Martin, Tolkien, Rowling. Not a fucking douchebag with a rotten heart.” The words tumbled out of me quickly because then maybe I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable saying them. I was also intending on rushing them so I could get back to the fun part of this exchange.

Sam just looked at me after I’d spoken with somewhat of the same expression as before, except there was more to it.

“I love you, Gina,” he said simply. “Fuck, do I love you.”

Of all the things for him to say to me in that moment, that was the last thing I expected.

The words, the three I never, ever thought I’d hear out of Sam’s mouth—in real life, at least—struck me dumb. Actually dumb. I forgot how to speak.

“Now you’re gonna say it’s too soon or I don’t know you well enough or whatever to convince yourself that it’s not the truth. But it is.”

He began to move his finger once more and I sucked in a rough breath.

“And I’ll prove it to you tonight. And for every night after that.”

He did.

For that night, at least.

There were a lot of complicated and painful ones after that.