I wanted to go home, but when I pulled up to the corner, my car didn’t turn right, toward the modest gray house in the suburbs where I kept my things. It turned left, toward the Masquerade. Hans was my home now, and I had to find him. I had to tell him that I didn’t care. That it didn’t matter if someone else had touched his body. My body. One day, our bodies would burn, just like all the others before them, and our souls would hold hands and dance around the fire.

When the Masquerade came into view at the bottom of the hill, my heart leaped into my throat. Baker’s white panel van was still parked in the loading dock. My foot flattened the clutch as I prepared to pull in, and my sweaty palm slid off the gearshift when I yanked it down into second. I turned left onto the access road that ran beside the old factory and then left again into the gravel loading area behind the building.

My headlights illuminated everything from the fire escape to the half-wall, but the guys were nowhere to be seen. I cut the engine and got out of the car, but I didn’t hear them either. All I heard was the repetitive electronic pulses coming from the bottom floor of the building.

Hell.

I left my car parked there and ran around to the front entrance. Flashing my wristband yet again at the door guy, I blew past and dashed up the stairs to Heaven. The crowd had dissipated. The bars were vacated. And the stage contained nothing but some speakers, a few mic stands, and a blow-up sex doll, probably tossed onstage by an enthusiastic fan. Dashing up the stairs to the elevated platform, I peeked into the curtained backstage area and found a couple of guys wearing CREW T-shirts, smoking a joint.

“Hey,” I panted, “do you guys know where Phantom Limb went? Are they still here?”

The curly-haired one took a big hit and held the smoke in his lungs as he squeaked out, “Yeah…I saw Trip down in Hell not too long ago.” He exhaled and coughed.

His long-haired friend added, “Dude, I want whatever that motherfucker’s on.”

“I know, right?” Curly passed the joint with another small cough. “Little dude’s on fire tonight.”

“Thanks!” I chirped, hauling ass back down the rickety metal staircase.

I passed through the layer of smoke that clung to Purgatory, the world’s saddest blues bar, and turned left at the bottom of the stairs, into a huge warehouse-style rave. The black lights and strobe lights and disco balls were in full effect. Everyone was wearing fluorescent clothing and day-glow body paint. You could practically smell the ecstasy being sweated out by the writhing, grinding, glow-stick-waving, pacifier-sucking ravers on the dance floor. The concrete vibrated under my feet to the unce-unce-unce of the DJ’s house beat. And standing on the bar, spraying a bottle of champagne on the crowd below, was Triple X.

I pushed my way over to the bar, sidling up next to Baker and Louis, who were being loved on by a couple of girls in sexy Rainbow Brite costumes, but I didn’t see Hans anywhere.

Not wanting to interrupt Louis’s and Baker’s little flirt session, I tugged furiously on Trip’s too-baggy vinyl pants. “Trip! Trip!”

He glanced down at me with foggy, smiling eyes and slurred, “Hey, errrybody! Look who d’cided to grace us with her presence!”

“Where’s Hans?”

Trip wobbled on his feet, then sat on the bar, dangling his legs over the edge. The bartenders kept serving drinks to the fluorescent ravers on either side of him, as if he wasn’t even there.

“You missed it, baby cakes!” he shouted in my ear. “That scout came, the one from Violent Violent. Violet Violent. Vi—you know what I mean. That muhrfucker came. And he said he wants us…to play a show…in Times Square…on New Year’s Eve.”

“Oh my God, Trip! That’s amazing!”

“Yeah.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Go tell that to your boy.”

“Where is he?”

“Prolly cryin’ in his beer like a lil’ bitch with all the other sad bastards.”

Purgatory.

“Thanks, Trip! Congratulations!” I hugged Trip around the neck and got the fuck out of there.

Purgatory was worse than I’d expected. I’d never been in there before, and I could see why. Purgatory had nothing to offer but jukebox blues, overflowing ashtrays, and plenty of dark corners to wallow in.

I spotted Hans immediately. He was sitting at the bar in the center of the room, staring into the heavy glass beer stein cupped between his palms. His black hair flopped over one eye. His broad shoulders were hunched. And every frightening face on his right arm stared at me in disapproval. He didn’t look like a guy who’d just been asked to play a concert in Times Square by a record-label scout.

He looked like a guy whose girlfriend had run off in the middle of his show.

I walked up behind him, unnoticed, and wrapped my arms around his torso. His black wifebeater was still damp with sweat, but I pressed my cheek against it anyway, relieved to have him back in my arms.

Hans flinched in surprise, then relaxed and hugged my arms where they crisscrossed over his taut stomach.

“Hey,” I said, kissing the tan skin on his shoulder blade.

“Hey,” he echoed, tipping his head back to rest it on top of mine.

I don’t think either of us knew where to begin. Or maybe we didn’t want to begin at all. Maybe we just wanted to let our feelings and our body language have the conversation for us.

Eventually, Hans broke the silence. “Why’d you leave?” The hurt in his voice drove a spike of guilt into my heart.

If I had just stayed, none of this would have happened.

“I felt like I was gonna throw up, so I went outside to get some fresh air. But when I came back in, I saw you kissing that girl from the grocery store, and I…I freaked out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”

Hans pulled my arms around him tighter. “No, baby. I’m sorry. I didn’t kiss her back, I swear. She just…attacked me.”

Somebody attacked me tonight, too.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay if it hurts you.”

Hans let go of my arms and turned around on his barstool to face me. Pulling me to stand between his legs, Hans glanced up at my face, and I watched as all the color drained out of his.

“Oh my God!” Hans lifted both hands and swiped his thumbs across my cheeks. I didn’t flinch when he did it. I closed my eyes and relished his touch. “That’s it. I’m telling Trip we can’t do the kiss contest anymore.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Seriously. It’s fine. The crowd loves it.”

“Fuck the crowd! Look at you!”

I opened my eyes and tried to imagine what Hans must have seen. Black makeup streaked down my face. Wild hair. Puffy eyes. I hadn’t planned on telling him about Knight, but I couldn’t let him think he’d done all that to me. That guilt didn’t belong to him.

“Knight was waiting for me at my car,” I blurted, dropping my eyes to the floor. My heart pounded against my ribs as I debated on how much more to say, waited for the questions that would inevitably come. I could feel Hans’s entire body tense and heat up. I could sense his eyes scanning me from head to toe.

“What did he do?”

I couldn’t say it. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t even sure I knew what had happened myself. Something bad. Something that I didn’t want. Something that could change everything. Right then, I just needed Hans’s love. Not his sympathy, not his judgment, not his anger or his hurt. I needed him to hold me and tell me it would all be okay.

“Baby?”

His sweet voice was almost enough to break me, but I kept my eyes on the ground. “I don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”

“Hey…what happened? You can tell me.”

I shook my head.

“Did he touch you?”

“Hans…”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Please…”

“He put his fucking hands on you, didn’t he?” The anger in his voice had me squeezing my eyes to keep the tears from falling out.

I didn’t need more male aggression. I needed somebody to fucking hold me.

“Where is he? Tell me where the fuck he is!”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”

Hans slumped back against the bar and stared at me, shell-shocked. “This is my fault. If it wasn’t for that kiss, you wouldn’t have gone up there alone.”

It was the exact reaction I’d hoped to avoid. He wasn’t comforting me. He was looking at me the way you would look at your favorite lamp after a careless elbow had sent it crashing to the ground. Like I was broken. Like I was a situation that required cleaning up.

“Stop looking at me like that!” I cried far louder than I’d intended. “Just tell me it doesn’t matter! Please?” I could hear my voice cracking, feel my chin trembling, but I was too far gone to care. “Tell me you don’t care what happened. Tell me we’re gonna be okay. Just…tell me you still love me!”

Hans sat up and pulled me into his arms right as the dam burst. Running one hand down my back—firm, not gentle—he shushed my sobs and kissed my head. “Of course I still love you. Why would you even say that? You’re my fucking soul mate. I’ve loved you since the moment I met you. Not loving you isn’t even an option. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what this is?”

I nodded against his chest and wrapped my arms tighter around his waist.

“What is it then?”

I sniffled. “What?”

“This. Us. What is it to you? Because I know what it is for me, and if you think I can just fall out of love with you because of something you had no control over, then maybe you don’t feel what I feel.”

This was it. The moment of truth. The very thing I’d come back for.

I looked up at Hans’s gorgeous, angry, determined face and answered him quietly, “True love?”

With those words, the light was flipped back on. The one that illuminated Hans’s villainous features from within, making them appear warmer somehow.

Hans grinned down at me. Then he gave me a dramatic, confused look and mouthed, What? I couldn’t hear you.

An unexpected laugh burst from my lungs.

I replied silently, a ridiculous smile splitting my face, and exaggerated every syllable, I said, true love.

Blue glove? Hans smirked, holding up one hand to model where a glove would go.

Standing up so that we were eye-to-eye, I cupped my hands around my mouth, took a deep breath, then silently shouted, TRUUUUE LOOOO—

Before I could finish my pantomimic declaration, Hans leaned in and kissed my open mouth.

His touch was so different from Knight’s. He didn’t take from me; he gave. He gave, and he gave until I was so full of love that it leaked out of my eyes. I think that’s why I cried so much whenever he was around. Because I was overflowing.

Wrapping my arms around Hans’s neck, I kissed him back. Relief and gratitude flooded every cell in my body, making them all tingle at once.

How was this man actually mine? How had I gotten so lucky?

I didn’t deserve him. The events of that night proved it, but I was going to keep him anyway.

“True love, huh?” Hans whispered against my lips.

“Mmhmm,” I whispered back. “Something like that.”