“I told you,” I said, “I don’t mind sleeping in the car, seriously.”

The rain had turned each lock of my hair into a rope, and a string of dribbling drops hung off each. It was unlike rain back at home – this rain was so much, and the horizon seemed to be constantly crackling and thundering with noise.

“Not gonna happen. This is much safer,” he said, and knocked on the front door again. The woman who opened it did so only halfway, and took her time scanning us from head to toe.

“Disculpe señora, por favor necesitamos su ayuda…” Dean began. His Spanish always was pretty good, but the woman’s eyes stayed stony. Behind her I could just make out the soft sounds of cartoons playing on a TV.

“Necesitamos un lugar para quedarse esta noche, mi esposa está enferma,” he said and gestured gently towards me.

She was a heavy, stern looking woman of around fifty, with terracotta colored skin and dark hair parted straight down the center. She looked at me, then at him, but Dean had already pulled a crisp wad of notes from his pocket, and this seemed to catch her attention. They spoke a little more, but the offer was obvious even to me, who didn’t speak a word of Spanish. Eventually she passed her narrowed eyes along the road behind us and looked up at the sky, now an opaque grey and bucketing down lukewarm water onto our heads.

“Ocultar el coche,” she said at last, and before Dean could say any more she snatched the notes from him and tucked them into her bra, then looked around before dashing out the house into the rain and towards what looked like a garage with a corrugated iron door.

Once she opened this Dean cottoned on and was soon steering the vehicle into the garage and out of sight. The rain formed a white spray as it struck the roof of the car. I tried to take shelter under the narrow ledge around the house and watched as he maneuvered the car into the narrow spot, and they both emerged again. The woman hurried us into her home and for a moment my life felt like the cartoons I saw playing on the TV. A small cross-legged child looked up with interest at us traipsing through his kitchen, then looked away again, as though his mother harboring soaking wet run-aways was nothing too out of the ordinary.

Dean and the woman continued to chatter on quietly in Spanish but I was no longer listening. Instead, I was spellbound by the humble artifacts of the woman’s home. She led us into a small back room furnished with only a foam mattress pressed against the wall and a whole universe of peeling paint shapes on that wall, like giant Rorschach blots. You’ll probably think I’m crazy for saying this, but it was wonderful. The nervous way she looked over her shoulder as she spoke, the vague smell of something fried lingering in the house, the faded Virgin Mary poster pinned to the wall above the bed. Now this felt real. This was four million times more exciting than that stuck-up holiday villa we’d been in a few hours ago.

The slam of the door snapped me from my daydreaming and I saw Dean standing in front of me, and indecipherable expression on his face. He tossed his backpack to the floor and set to work examining the windows again, poring over the place where it sealed shut and opening and closing the handle to test it for strength.

“So how much did you pay her?” I said nonchalantly, and lay myself down on the creaking bed.

“It doesn’t matter. Enough for her. We’ll leave again in the morning.”

The rain outside seemed to grow heavier by the minute, and beat so hard against the glass I briefly wondered whether it could shatter it. We both jumped at the knock on the door and stared wide eyed as the woman came in again and wordlessly placed two plates of foot on the side table: two little pies on one plate and what looked like fat corn cakes and some bean salsa on the other. I was ravenous, seeing as we’d barely eaten since we left home almost a day ago, so as she turned to leave I immediately reached for one of the pies, accidentally knocking my bag from my shoulder and sending the contents spilling to the floor.

The noise made the woman turned around and all three of us froze as we stared at what lay on those bare tiles. The gleaming grey barrel of the gun I had been carrying since we left winked back at us. The woman gave us both a hard look, scowled but turned to leave. Dean immediately launched into some panicked Spanish and before I knew it more notes had appeared from his trousers and then again disappeared into the woman’s bra. Once she had closed the door again, Dean paused, his back still turned to me, head hanging, and I thought I would die if he didn’t turn around and look at me soon. The barrel of the gun was pointed right in my direction, accusing me.

“I feel like I just don’t understand you anymore,” he whispered at last. With the rain hammering down outside, it was difficult to hear him. I was nailed to my spot, unable to kneel and pick it up, to address the deception that was literally sitting between us right now. He turned, went to sit on the bed and rubbed his face with his hands, but still he wouldn’t look at me. Instead he stared at the floor, or at some place underneath it.

“Why do we keep landing up here, Nora?” he said at last. My whole face burned up in prickles of shame.

Why had I bought it? What had I hoped to achieve by bringing it with us now? I couldn’t say. I had nothing to offer in my defense. So I stood there with a million unsaid words going stale on my tongue and the rain was the only thing that flowed freely.

“I feel like I’ve tried. I’ve done everything for you. The trial. Making sure you had a job at the foundation. I defended you Nora. And when you needed… when you needed me to…”

“Dean, I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Do you want to play this game now? Because I don’t like this role you’ve shoved me in. And you being a liar is seriously not a good look for you either. What the fuck is going on with us, Nora? You’ve been miserable for weeks now.”

I went to sit on the bed next to him, but our bodies didn’t touch. I stared with him at the spot on the floor.

“Did you feel like I couldn’t protect you? Because that’s what it looks like. It looks like you don’t trust me.”

“Dean, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have told you.” But he was right, I wasn’t good playing this role. Even as the words left my lips I knew that we were still not really speaking, still not being honest with each other.

He leaned forward, picked up the gun and plopped it back into my bag before tossing it off to the side, irritated.

“There was a time I felt like you and I were always in sync, you know? Like we were 100% on each other’s wavelength. I know you, Nora. And I know something is not right. I don’t know when it happened, but you’ve pulled away from me, and I fucking hate it.”

A clap of thunder briefly had me imagining that the entire house would wrench free from the earth and float away in the looming floods. I squashed my toes into the cool tiles underfoot and tried to think straight, but all I could think about was how tired he sounded, and how scared it made me to hear him like that.

“After Tilly was born, and with me just trying to get my head straight, it’s just an adjustment and…”

“No,” he snapped.

He had never used that tone with me before. Well, he had used it plenty of times before, but this was different. We weren’t play acting now, weren’t pretending to be a couple having a passionate quarrel before some kinky make-up sex. In fact, sitting beside him like this, our bodies not touching, my life had a scary end-of-the-world feeling to it, and for the first time since I met Dean, I entertained the idea that we could have a fight so horrible it could end it all.

“No. That’s not it. See, you’re not being honest again. Tilly’s fine. You’re fine with Tilly. It’s something else… something you’re keeping from me.”

“I’m not keeping anything from you.”

“Like you weren’t keeping the fact that you bought a fucking gun from me?”

I sighed.

“Fair comment.”

“It stops here, Nora. We either carry on from here, together, or not at all.”

“Dean, what are you—”

“You know what I’m saying. And I mean it. I’ve given you my entire life, Nora. And that’s not a fucking exaggeration. It was nothing for me, either. If I had ten more lives you could have had all of them. Everything we did together, I did it willingly. I have no regrets. But I won’t do …this. I won’t be lied to by a woman I’ve shown nothing but respect and love since day one.”

Once the first burning drops made their way down through my lower lashes and onto my cheeks, the rest fell freely, and they felt hot and embarrassing there, with me unable to stop them but too ashamed to lift my hand to wipe them away. So I watched as they fell one by one into my lap and darkened the fabric of my skirt.

He was right.

He was always right.

“You have a beautiful home. You have a husband who loves you, you have a daughter…”

“I know.”

“You have everything. I don’t understand—”

“Well, maybe that’s just it.”

I was too afraid to turn my gaze to see if he was looking at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… maybe I liked when I didn’t have everything. Maybe I liked the mess. Maybe life was more fun with us when there was something standing in our way the whole time, you know?”

“So what are you telling me, it’s my fault? I’ve fucked up by treating you too well? Jesus. I guess this is what you get for marrying a … a…”

“A what? Say it.”

“Well, you. This is what I get for marrying you. Face it Nora, you’re pretty screwed in the head.”

I couldn’t contain a dry, sarcastic laugh.

“And you’re the one in love with someone screwed up in the head, so? You said you didn’t want to do this, you said you wanted to talk about being honest, well then let’s not start hurling insults around.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said. “I take that back.”

“Don’t take it back. I deserved that.”

“Whatever happens with us, Nora, I refuse to …I don’t know. Can we at least fight properly? You’re better than that. We’re better than that. I married you because you’re smart Nora. Because you’re never afraid to push yourself, and you’re brave. I never wanted a stay at home wife. I never wanted some sad woman to give up a damn thing for me. And yet…”

I sighed loudly and put my hands to my eyes.

Reader, have you ever been here before? Not the raw, juicy fights of a new couple. Not the heated arguments from people who are just learning about one another, but the hard, dry, tired arguments of people who really know one another? My faults and his lay there on the cold floor in front of us, and we stared at them together, too exhausted to know where to go from there.

I sighed again and spoke, voice now shaking.

“Let’s do it then,” I said. “Let’s not fight like all the other couples. Let’s be 100% honest, right now.”

“Good.”

“No bullshit.”

“No bullshit.”

“I think there’s something badly wrong with me, Dean.”

He turned to look at me.

“Go on.”

The rain outside came in relentless sheets, like the sky was an upside down ocean and this little house was at the shore, getting beaten over and over by its thick waves.

“Before we met, I was dead inside. Like a ghost. Being Mistress Morgan suited me well, though. I liked that none of it was actually real. I always told myself I wasn’t even into BDSM, but I liked getting to be in charge, liked watching other people humiliate themselves, you know? And I could stand outside that, safe.”

“Safe from what?”

I chose my next words carefully.

I know, dear reader, that I must be looking particularly guilty at this part of the story, but you have to believe me when I say I desperately wanted to be honest with him right then. The threat of ever losing his trust felt like suffocating to me.

“From… from myself. Maybe I’m more into BDSM than I thought.”

“But we do all that shit though. We can do those dark things, it’s never been a problem. I tie you up. Fuck, you tie me up, Nora. I can’t even imagine how much kinkier you’d need things to be…”

“It’s not that. It’s not kinky I need. It’s just… I needed it to be more real.”

The room went quiet as we both thought about what I had just said. Speaking to him like this felt like I was not only being honest with him for the first time, but with myself.

“Tell me what that means. Tell me what you want and we’ll find a way to make it happen,” he said eventually.

Wonderful Dean.

Smart, decent, problem-solving Dean.

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t want it to be pretend anymore. I want things to …to hurt for real. I’ve done something terrible Dean. Something…”

“Tell me. Right now.”

I gulped and squeezed my eyes shut. I was still aching somewhere inside, and my knees were still sore from being rammed into the metal of the car when he bent me over and fucked me only a few hours ago.

“I never intended to. It was just something I did, like I couldn’t control it. I love Tilly, you know that. I would never do something to harm her. But something in me was dying slowly. I needed to take action and now I’ve done something…”

“Nora so help me god if you don’t spit it out.”

“It’s my fault.”

Silence.

“I’ve been in contact with him.”

For a few seconds even the rain outside seemed to gasp and retreat a little before resuming its vicious treatment of the roof. In the silence I could feel Dean trying to compose himself. Could feel him trying to think it through, trying to reign in his anger.

“You’ve been in contact with him,” he simply said, and I could hear whole worlds of rage coiled up in his tone.

“He messaged me. He’s crazy. But instead of telling anyone about it I… I responded to him. I couldn’t help myself. Before I could stop myself I just did it, and then I had already lied, and before I knew it I was keeping it from you, and I couldn’t go back.”

“You led him to us. He’s followed us here.”

“Yes.”

I could hear the muscles and tendons in his neck crunch as he stretched them out, side to side. But I steadied myself for a fight. Ready to defend myself.

Why had he been attracted to me in the first place? Because I scared him. Because I was wild and different and a little naughty, that’s why. No way was I going to let him act surprised now that I was all those things. He loved me because I offered him a way out, a way to something else in life. I waited for him to tell me that I was a mother now, that I had responsibilities, that I needed to grow up and behave myself already. I braced for myself for the reprimand I knew I deserved.

“Ok,” he said after an eternity.

“Ok?”

He turned to look at me and this time I found it in myself to meet his gaze.

“You’re not in love with him. I know for a fact you hate the guy. So why would a woman do such a thing? Why would she attract the attention of a convicted murderer knowing he wanted to kill her? Tell me Nora, do you want to die?”

“No.”

“Of course you don’t. I know that. So why do it? Why are we out here in the middle of nowhere, on the run again? It makes sense now,” he said, like he was slowly piecing together the pieces of a whodunit. He seemed scarily calm. The secret I had carried for the last few days had not only failed to disgust him, but he seemed more ready to look at the cold facts than even I had been till now.

“That time in the atrium,” he said, “after you chased Charlie away.”

A tight knot between my legs twitched painfully at the memory.

“I had just found out that he had escaped,” I said, feeling like a sinner in a confession box, like a naughty Catholic schoolgirl unburdening herself and trusting that the man before her knew just what medicine she needed to absolve her.

“That time in the jet, under the blankets,” he continued.

“I had been reading over the texts he sent me. The threats.”

“And just now, out there, when I put you up against the car and fucked you.”

“Yes,” was all I could say.

Silence again.

This was infinitely more exposing, more frightening than the trial we had been through together. Here there was no jury, no rule of law. Just him and me and the shit we’d either get through together, or not get through.

“I actually thought that all that shit with my father, that he had stressed you out. That he was the one thing standing in our way. But in a sick way you liked it.”

That was certainly one way to put it.

“I know that you hate the guy. Fuck, I saw it, I saw with my own eyes how frightened you were of him.”

“I still am frightened,” I said. And it was the truth.

“But you can’t help yourself.”

“I guess it was always a fantasy for me… I liked to imagine that you and I were always in a little danger, always on the edge, always doing something just a little dark and twisted.”

“But it’s not a fantasy anymore, Nora. You made it real. There’s a real murderer hunting us down as we speak.”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes. I’m so mad at you I could fucking kill you. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t be angry forever. I told you I wanted you to be honest, and you have been.”

I reached my hand over and touched him, unable to bear the space between us. He left my hand there but didn’t respond to it.

“When we first met, I had to almost fight you to get to admit to me what you really wanted. And now I’m going to ask you again.”

“I want you, Dean. I want us to be happy again, I want—”

“Liar,” he snapped. “Try again.”

My ears rung.

“I want…” I paused to find my breath. To find my nerve. “I never want to be ordinary, Dean. I want an exciting life. I want to be thrilled. I want to do so many bad things with your body, things I haven’t been able to admit to you or anyone. I want to keep pushing that boundary, to go further and further and see how far I can go… and I don’t want to pretend. I want you to really hurt me. I want bad things, Dean. Dirty things. I want people to be shocked. I want to shock myself and see if I can handle it,” I said all at once, the words tumbling from my lips.

“Good. Don’t stop.”

“I never want to fucking settle down. Ever,” I said, feeling a shred of anger begin to edge my voice. “I don’t care about money or prestige or having brunches with the fucking moms from the neighborhood. I want to be an explorer, and go find new places in my mind, and in yours, and I don’t care if they’re dangerous.”

“Yes…”

“I led him to us because some part of me – no, not some part, fucking all of me – wants what that means. I want the fear and the danger and the darkness. I hate that man’s guts and I can’t explain it, but that hate makes me feel alive. What I want doesn’t fit in the civilized world. What I want is illegal. There are some boundaries I’m not allowed to cross, but my God, Dean, there isn’t a day I don’t wake up and fantasize about…”

He reached over, grabbed my hand and pinned his gaze on me.

“You’re still not saying it, Nora. You’re still not admitting everything. Say it. Fucking just say what you want.”

What had begun as butterflies in my stomach now felt like great hulking pterodactyls. I had never spoken any of this out loud, never even allowed myself to think these things, and yet here we was, pressing me on, pressing me to confess to the parts of me that were so dark I had pretended my whole life that they weren’t there. I tried to speak but my voice was choking with the threat of tears.

“Say it.”

“I want to kill him,” I whispered, and once I spoke those words an indescribable relief washed through me. I was stunned to hear those words spoken, outside of me now, and how simple they seemed after everything, after all the twisted ways they had haunted me for so long.

“I want to see him suffer. I want revenge. I want to rub it in his big stupid face and every time I think of it, of how he murdered his own wife in cold blood, it scares me to death but there’s just… there’s something else there. Something I need to do. It’s not that I’m turned on by any of it, it’s more complicated than that.”

“What if you are turned on by it?” he said. I shot him a hard look.

“Nora, look, I get it. I understand more than you think. You’re the sweetest, warmest person I know. No question. But you’re also dark. Very dark.”

“What’s wrong with me, Dean?” I whispered. “Is it some crazy death wish?”

“No. I just think you got a taste of something strange and now you can never go back again. There were a million women in the world who would have done anything for the life you have now – luxury, safety – but maybe I chose you because I knew that none of that was really what you were after.”

“So what am I after?”

“Fuck, Nora, I don’t know. I’m no shrink. But you’re my wife. In sickness and in health, right? And as sick as this gets, I’m here for you,” he said and gave me a wry smile.

“We’re so fucked up,” I groaned and gave him a playful slap on the knee.

“Who’s we?” he said and I couldn’t resist a smile. Even my worst self, even my craziest, most secretive, most inexcusable self had barely made a dent to that warmth in his eyes as he looked at me.

“I love you, Dean”

He squeezed my knee.

“I have more questions, though.”

“Fire away.”

“Do you want to end this relationship?”

“Never.”

“Do you want to kill me?” he said, and I giggled and slapped him again.

“Be serious.”

“I am.”

“Of course not. Well, maybe if you keep asking me questions like that.”

“Have you ever lied to me about anything else?”

My cheeks burned.

“Yes. One time… we made love once and I—”

“Don’t worry about that. I already know,” he said, cutting me off.

I stared slack jawed at him.

“Well then, I guess that’s that. My whole secret shame, laid bare,” I said, taken aback by how surreal the moment felt.

“Are you kidding? That’s tame. You should see some of the men I do business with,” he said and gave me a cautious smile. “Now, let’s focus here. We’re in the middle of nowhere, again, and my father is after us, again, but this time we’re not running anymore. Jeff Cane is a formidable enemy, Nora, I don’t have to explain that to you.”

“It would be self-defense,” I said simply.

Our eyes met.

I was feeling stronger already.

“Nora. You really want to go ahead with this?”

My throat was dry. I nodded.

He pursed his lips and stared out the window.

“Ok. Then we need to leave. I’m not willing to put these innocent people’s lives at risk. You have a plan?”

“I’m beginning to think so,” I said, feeling like my voice belonged to someone else.

“Good. We should leave. This storm will make it harder for him to follow. I take it you still want the thrill of the chase, right?” he said and lifted an eyebrow at me.

“Naturally.”

Mistress Morgan was emerging again, but this time it was no act. I needed no props anymore, no scripts. This time I really felt it, really fucking felt in the marrow of my bones that I was a dark, supremely powerful woman hell-bent on perfect domination, on the complete subjugation of her enemies, on a game of annihilation to end all games. The fantasies that had crawled hidden in the darkness of my mind for years melted and morphed into one sinewy beast, one giant thing that now grabbed my safe, sane little life in its teeth and mauled it. The lines blurred and scattered away. The story and the storyteller became one. Something dangerous and delicious inside me clicked, like an awful limb popping back into its socket.

I stared out the window, which was still being pummeled by the rain outside. In my mind, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain blared at high volume; in my fingertips, the feeling of electricity; on my lips, something like a half smile, half snarl.

“Nora. My love. It’s time to go,” he said and reached out to stroke the back of his knuckles against my cheek.

“Not yet,” I said, took his hand and placed it between my legs.