“Do you know what ‘Griselda’ means?” he asked her, stroking the hair from her forehead, as they lay tangled together.

“No,” she said, smoothing her hand over his chest and breathing deeply. The small room smelled like sex, and she wanted to memorize the smell of her body belonging to his.

“It has two meanings. One is ‘dark battle’ and the other is ‘gray fighting maid.’”

Kissing the warm skin between his pecs, she rested her lips on the tiny foot of the angel inked there.

“You’re both,” he continued, his fingers making leisurely runs from her temple to the ends of her hair, then back again. “You won the dark battle because you’re a fighter.”

Griselda took a deep breath and thought about his words. “I don’t feel like much of a fighter.”

“Why not? You’re the strongest woman I ever met, Gris. Ever.”

She rested her arms on his chest, her cheek on her forearm, gazing up at him. “My life . . . it doesn’t look so good.”

“Hey,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together as he slipped his hands under her arms and dragged her up his body. “D-don’t say that.”

She gave him a small smile. “I admit, it’s improved quite a lot in the last few days, but . . .”

“But what?”

She tilted her head to the side, her smile fading. “I was in a shitty relationship with a pretty awful person. I have no ambition, no future, no education, no prospects. I have one real friend, and she doesn’t even know . . .”

“…what happened to us?”

Griselda shook her head. “People know what they read. ‘A girl escaped her abductor after being held captive for three years. The boy she was with is still missing.’ After I escaped, they took me back to D.C., but other than giving them the approximate location of Caleb Foster’s farm, I didn’t tell them much about our time there. They sent me to a therapist, but I just . . . I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to relive it all. And then when they came and told me you were gone without a trace? I never opened my mouth about it again. To anyone.”

“Why not? Might have been good for you to talk about it.”

“I left you, Holden. I left you there. I left you with a monster, and I ran away.”

“I told you to run. I’m glad you ran, Gris.” Holden paused for a moment. “He shot at you, didn’t he?”

Griselda’s eyes welled as she remembered. “I told him he was going to hell. He said, ‘You first, Ruth.’ I was screaming at him that you weren’t Seth and I wasn’t Ruth, but he raised that gun and fired . . . and I ran.”

“You didn’t run when I told you to run?”

She shook her head. “No. Not right away.”

“J-Jesus, Gris! He c-could have—”

“I’ve thought about it a million times, Holden. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think he wanted to kill me. He shouldn’t have missed the shots he took, but he did. I just think he had this crazy notion that he could save you from me, and needed me out of the way.”

Holden took a deep breath and sighed. “I figured it all out, you know.”

“Seth and Ruth?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I put it all together. He talked about it a lot, but it wasn’t as crazy as when we were at his place. Not as much Leviticus,” he said, laughing softly and bitterly. “More just . . . his memories. All mixed up, though, thinking I was really Seth.”

“They were his brother and sister, right?”

“Yeah,” said Holden. “Several years younger than him. Twins. When we left, he brought this old box of pictures with him. I looked through them a lot, piecing it all together.

“The pictures were square with muted colors, and old. They were stamped with dates from the seventies. An older brother standing beside two younger siblings, you know, like headed to church on Easter or something. The three of them in a backyard. On the porch of that house. Caleb was the oldest and tallest, and then Seth and Ruth would stand beside him, always holding hands.

“I noticed something, Gris. In every picture with the three of them, there was a small gap of space between the twins and Caleb, like a boundary. And in every picture, Seth stood in the middle beside Caleb, never Ruth. There were several pictures of Caleb and Seth together, and in those pictures, Caleb looked like a totally different person . . . like, resting his elbow on his little brother’s head, or his arm around Seth’s scrawny neck, smiling down at his little brother with, like, pride and love. And you know, Seth looked happy too. Not joyful, and maybe a little wary, but okay.

“But, Gris, in the pictures of Seth and Ruth? Seth glowed with happiness, his eyes soft with secrets, or with adoration or something, when he stood beside Ruth. Their hands were always bound together, and nine times out of ten, Seth smiled at Ruth while Ruth smiled for the camera. She was real cute. Like you. Full of life and hope with big wide eyes. He was . . . crazy about her.”

Holden paused as Griselda wrapped her head around this information. “Do you think they . . .”

“Yeah,” Holden breathed. “I think they were in love with each other. I’m sure of it.”

Griselda winced as she digested this. A brother and sister in love with each other? It was unnatural. Wrong. How had it happened? Or was that a mystery that would never be solved for her and Holden?

“C-Caleb caught them.”

“What?” she gasped, her mouth dropping open as her eyes cut back to his.

Holden nodded. “He caught them having sex. I don’t know how old they were . . . teenagers, I guess. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. They were a churchy family, very devout, strict parents. From what I could gather, I’m pretty sure he kept it a secret for Seth. And I think it destroyed something inside Caleb. Seeing them together. Knowing about it.”

“And he killed them.”

“I don’t know.” Holden shrugged. “The box with the pictures had an old clipping about it. That barn we did the canning in? That was rebuilt after the original barn burned down. They found a bracelet of Ruth’s in the ashes. ‘They were burned in the fiery pits of hell.’”

Griselda shivered as Holden’s eyes held a faraway look for several more seconds before coming back to earth and focusing on her.

“Holden . . . you sounded just like him.”

“He said it all the time,” said Holden dismissively.

“He killed them,” she said. “I know he did.” She rested her cheek on his chest, just below his neck, and wrapped her arms around his chest. “We were next.”

“Maybe. Probably. Which is why I’m so glad you ran, Gris.” He leaned down, pressing his lips to her head. “I’m so fucking g-grateful you got away.”

Griselda took a deep, shaky breath as she closed her eyes. “He killed them. He killed his own brother and sister, and he would’ve killed us too.”

***

As she settled back down on his chest, Holden resumed stroking her hair, and soon her breathing was deep and even, and he knew she was asleep.

The warmth of her skin pressed against his made him want her again, but he didn’t want to wake her up. She needed sleep and he needed to let her sleep because he intended to have her over and over again until he was so far under her skin that she wouldn’t be able to leave him at the end of a month. That was his plan anyway.

Making love to her had rocked his world, shifting it on its axis, and making his life without her wither away like an untended garden. She was his light and water—his sustenance and hope, and he wanted to forget the years that came after the Shenandoah and before yesterday. He ached from so much lost time when he could have been with her. Glancing at his arm, he winced, imagining the tally marks magically floating off his skin and dispersing into the wind like dust, until only one remained—the only one that would ever matter.

He hated that he’d shared that experience with so many before her, and yet, in a strange and twisted way, he’d always shared it with her. Because she was whom he wanted, dreamed of, longed for. He’d always dreamed of her at the moment he fell apart. And now the dream had come true. It was her hot sweetness surrounding him, her lips moving under his, her soft breasts crushed under his chest. She was real, and she was his.

She moaned in her sleep, and his hand, which had stilled, moved quickly to her crown, smoothing her amber hair lovingly, and she snuggled closer to him, knees bent against his hip and breath fanning his chest.

He loved her.

God in heaven, how he loved her.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to love anymore, as he’d feared. It was that he didn’t have anyone to love until Gris reappeared in his life. And now that she had, his only wish was to never be parted from her.

Sighing deeply, he thought about their conversation, zeroing in her words—He killed them, I know he did—and hating it that his mind felt so conflicted about her conclusion. It confused Holden that he couldn’t immediately jump on that bandwagon. Caleb deserved accusations and hate—his behavior to them had proven him capable of atrocity—and yet Holden wasn’t actually sure that Caleb had killed his siblings, or if their accidental death had pitched him into a madness wherein he believed they’d gotten their just desserts for engaging in incest. Had he engineered the fire? Or had the twins been sleeping in the barn and died accidentally when a lamp got kicked over? Had Caleb murdered them willfully? Or had he been plagued with guilt for keeping the secret that killed them? Holden wasn’t sure. He never had been.

He’d thought about saying as much to Griselda, but she would never understand that his feelings about Caleb were less cut-and-dried than hers. He hated Caleb, of course, but he also felt a deeply unwanted protectiveness toward Caleb that he was ashamed of—that made him feel perverted and twisted and weak. Further, he felt a sympathy for Caleb that he couldn’t completely abandon either. It was deep-seated, maddening but constant. He felt guilty that he didn’t hate Caleb as much as he should. He felt sick with himself that he felt compassion for someone who was very likely a murderer and definitely a kidnapper. He felt disgusted that any part of him should feel protective of the man who claimed to have killed Griselda.

But Caleb had also kept him alive.

And once they left West Virginia—once Caleb perceived that Holden had been “saved” —he hadn’t been cruel to Holden anymore.

Caleb was a monster, yes, but he was a principled monster in his own way, which made it difficult for Holden to hate him with Gris’s blind fury. He wished he could because eventually she’d sense the conflict in him. She was already upset by his admission that he’d stayed with Caleb until his death. That wasn’t even the worst of it, because she’d probably decided that he was somehow coerced. He hadn’t been. He’d stayed because he had nowhere else to go, and because his life with Caleb hadn’t been as bad as it could have been.

Holden dropped a hand to his heart. He’d have to figure out a way to help her understand because if he couldn’t, surely he would lose her.

Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes, concentrating on the warmth of the beloved woman draped over his chest, and praying that when the time came, he’d be able to make her understand.

***

“Seth, you gonna call me?”

He finished zipping his jeans and looked up at her, trying to remember her name. Fuck. His dick was still slick, and he had no fucking clue what her name was.

“Uh, sure.”

She pulled up her panties and straightened her dress, crawling to the edge of the pickup and holding out her arms like she wanted him to help her down. He turned away from her, and after a minute, she got down on her own.

“Junior prom is next week. You taking someone?” she asked.

Fuck no.

“I’ll, uh, t-take you home,” he answered, ignoring her question.

She’d smiled at him over the Cheetos when he stopped in at the Super-7 Gas ’n’ Sip for a pack of Camels twenty minutes ago. All it had taken was a lift of his eyebrows in invitation, and she’d joined him in his truck, where they snacked on Cheetos and she told him her life story before he boned her senseless in the back.

“Maybe I don’t wanna go home yet,” she whined. “Where you from anyway?”

He got into the driver’s seat, opening the pack of cigarettes and shaking one out. Holding it between his lips, it took him two shitty convenience store matches to light it, and he sat back, giving her a couple of minutes to decide whether or not she wanted a ride.

He’d taken the truck from the parking lot of Grady’s, Caleb’s watering hole of choice, and he intended to have it back there by eleven, when Caleb generally started for home. Maybe tonight Caleb’d kill himself on the bridge as he made his way back to the double-wide they shared at a mobile home park just out of town.

Whatever-her-name-was decided she wanted the ride, and as she opened the passenger door, Seth looked away, taking a long drag on his cigarette. No matter how many girls spent time in this truck with him, only one had ever mattered: the first girl who ever sat next to him in the front seat. Blue eyes flashed in front of his face, and Seth winced, burying them.

“You gotta pick up your brother later at Grady’s?” When he didn’t answer, she decided to get mean. “My daddy says he’s real strange.”

Holden turned over the ignition.

Fuck her.

And fuck Caleb.

“You don’t say much,” she sighed as they pulled out of the lot behind the Super-7. “Go left up here. But you fuck real nice.”

Seth drove in silence for several minutes, hoping she’d shut up for the rest of the ride. He felt dirty and disgusted, and the hole inside of him was bigger than ever.

“’N-n-nother l-left?” he asked, stopping at a stop sign and waiting for her to tell him how to get to her house.

“You wanna fuck me again sometime?” she asked, running a finger down his arm.

Honestly? He couldn’t care less. It would be her or someone else, and whoever it was, she wouldn’t matter.

He shrugged.

“Left,” she said, a pissed-off tone creeping into her voice. “You know, I’m just trying to be friendly. You show up here outta nowhere in the middle of junior year acting real quiet and a little retarded, and living with a brother who looks like your grandpa. You might try being a little nicer. Just sayin’.” She huffed softly when he didn’t reply, crossing her arms over her chest. “Up there. Second house on the right.”

Seth pulled up in front of a crappy little house, with three cars out front and a Christmas reindeer on the scrubby front lawn, even though it was May. His mother had always taken their decorations down by New Year’s, he recalled, clenching his jaw, and pushing the image of her pretty freckled face from his mind.

The girl turned to him, her eyes narrow. “You know what? I take it back. You don’t fuck nice. You fuck too hard, and your dick’s too big. Freak.”

Then she flounced out of the truck and slammed the door.

And Seth, who didn’t have much more than a big dick going for him, peeled out of her driveway, hating her, hating Caleb, hating himself, hating this disgusting fucking joke of a life.

He laid on the gas, going faster, though the little roads were small and curvy in this neighborhood. He blew past a stop sign and onto a main road, pressing harder on the gas and watching the speedometer move to 75 . . . 80 . . . 85 . . . He’d never driven so fast in his life, and a smile curved the edges of his mouth. Woods whooshed past him on both sides, and he rolled down the window to let the wet, cold Oregon air into the cab, taking a drag of his cigarette before tossing it out the window.

The speedometer needle kept moving . . . 90 . . . 95 . . . 100 . . . Out of the corner of his eye, he saw massive trees. Trees that had been there for a thousand years. Trees that would wreck a truck on impact if it was going a hundred miles an hour, and kill whatever sorry thing was breathing inside it.

He channeled every bit of strength in his sixteen-year-old body and pushed so hard on the gas pedal that his foot ached. The needle rose to 110. He took his hands off the wheel and closed his eyes, a dreamy, ethereal feeling coming over him. He was going to go home. In a minute, he’d be with her again. With her, and his mother, and his father, and his grandmother. He’d be with all of them again. He could see her face as clear as day, feel her fingers woven through his, hear her voice in his ears . . .

Holden, are you whole or broken?

Stone to stone. I jump, you jump.

Keep your fingers over the letters.

The loud blare of a semi horn roused him from his daze. His eyes shot open, and he blinked at the oncoming headlights, slamming on the brake. The truck bucked and shuddered as it slowed down, skidding on the damp road, out of control until the last second, when Holden jerked the wheel and managed to get out of the way of the oncoming sixteen-wheeler. He was drenched with sweat and crying like a baby as he pulled over on the side of the road.

After an hour of useless sobbing, he returned the truck to Grady’s and stepped into the tattoo parlor next door.

And that night, for the first time in years, he fell asleep with his fingers over the letters once again.

***

His eyes opened slowly, and then he gasped, because, oh my God, his dick was surrounded by heat and wet, and, holy shit, nothing had ever felt so good.

Looking down, he saw Griselda’s hair spread over his abdomen, golden and gleaming in the afternoon sun streaming through the window. Her lips held him tightly as her tongue worked his tip, and he clenched his eyes shut, thrusting his head back on the pillow.

“Gris,” he groaned.

Her mouth stilled, and when he looked down, she’d moved her hair to the side and was grinning up at him, his fat dick still in her mouth.

“Relax,” she said, before sucking purposefully as her hand held his shaft in place.

He tried to. He truly did. Because normally a blow job from a beautiful woman was something he’d just lie back and enjoy, but as good as it felt, what he really wanted was to be inside her again.

“Wait,” he panted. “Wait . . . can we . . .?”

She slid her mouth off of him, her face a little confused as she caught his eyes. She ran the back of her hand over her glistening lips. “You don’t want me to?”

“I do,” he said quickly. “Definitely. But I miss you. I want to feel you. I want to hold you.”

She’d been kneeling between his legs, but now she scooted up, straddling him with her knees on either side of his hips. Her full breasts swung lightly with the movement, and he stared at them, his mouth watering to taste them again.

“You want me . . . here?” she teased, still holding his rock hard dick by the base, her hand moving ever so slightly, pumping him, driving him crazy.

“I want to be inside you,” he told her, keeping his eyes open, though they threatened to roll back in his head.

She leaned up on her haunches, positioning his erection beneath her, then sank down, impaling herself fully with a combination sigh and moan that rose from the back of her throat.

“I’ll do anything for you,” he pledged, blinking his eyes as he reached for her hips.

Griselda leaned forward and kissed him, her breasts flattening against his chest as she slipped her tongue into his mouth. He clutched her against him, lifting his hips to pump into her as their tongues tangled, tasting each other, swallowing each other’s sighs. When she leaned back, Holden reached forward to palm her breasts, watching her eyes flutter closed as he pinched her nipples, driving up into her faster and faster, loving the way her breath hitched and panted, coming out faster and more jagged.

Feeling the pressure build deep in his pelvis, he jackknifed suddenly, wrapping his arms around her as she locked her ankles around his waist. Leaning down, he took her nipple in his mouth and sucked hard enough that she screamed his name, her sex flooding and convulsing around him, pulling him higher, sucking him deeper. He bellowed her name into the sweet, damp skin of her neck, holding her tightly as he climaxed, pulsing in waves, emptying himself.

“Gris . . . Gris . . . Gris . . .,” he murmured, kissing her neck as her limp body sagged against him. “I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“I did,” she said, leaning into him, her wrists crossed at the back of his neck.

He rested his forehead against her chest, his arms like iron bands around her body. “I love you,” he said, the words passing through his lips like a blessing, like a benediction.

“I know,” she whispered in a breaking voice. “I love you too.”

He clenched his eyes shut, overwhelmed by the simple sweetness of her words, the truth in them, the comfort of them, the rightness of them in his ears, the eternal yes of them.

Shifting them carefully back down on the bed without breaking their connection, he stayed deeply embedded in her as he stroked her hair from her face.

“I’ve always loved you, Gris.”

“Me too,” she said, softly but certainly, a little smile touching her eyes. “Always.”

“You won’t leave me?” he asked.

“Never.”

“We’ll stay together,” he said.

“We will.”

“And get married.”

She nodded.

“And have babies.”

A tear snaked down her cheek as she nodded again.

“You want babies?” she asked, giggling and crying at the same time.

“I want yours. I want our kids to be safe. I don’t want anybody to ever hurt them. I’ll keep an eagle eye on them, Gris. I’ll make sure they have somewhere to go if anything ever happens to us. I’ll love them just as much as I love you. I’ll take care of them. I p-promise.”

“I believe you,” she said. “Holden?”

“Hmmm?” he asked, a contentedness and security he’d never known making him warm and drowsy.

“I’m hungry.”

“Pretty sure my woman made some fried chicken earlier,” he said, kissing her lips tenderly.

“Yes, she did.”

She pulled away from him, and he missed her warmth immediately as she rolled to the edge of the bed, sitting with her back to him.

He felt her uncertainty suddenly and wanted to reassure her. “We’ll be okay, Gris. We’re together again, like we always should have been. W-we’ll be okay now.”

Looking at him over her shoulder, she smiled sadly. “I hope so, Holden.”

Then she stood up, grabbed her jeans off the floor, and left the room.