I had this social worker once who tried to get me to draw a picture of what it was like inside my head. He tried to get me to draw pictures of what being angry felt like. What getting into fights felt like.

And every picture, every single one was monster. Green with black spots and teeth that dripped blood and claws that ripped people apart. They thought I felt like a monster. That’s what I was telling them with my picture.

My anger made me feel like a monster.

Those pictures caused me so many fucking problems. More doctor’s appointments. Prescriptions. Labels. Special classes for kids with behavior disorders… It was a shit show for a number of years.

But then one day, drugged to fuck and back, my brain feeling like mush, my body like air, when the doctor asked me to draw what my anger felt like, I drew a big black circle. Over and over again, until the crayon left shiny black wax on the paper a quarter-inch thick.

That’s what my anger felt like. A big black hole. No monster, an…empty space. And that was suddenly the right answer. The doctor perked right the fuck up. Black hole, yes! Black hole good!

Monster bad.

But the thing they didn’t know—and I didn’t know how to explain because I was a fucking kid who’d been left alone in an apartment for a week after my mother overdosed—

The monster wasn’t me.

The monster was my anger.

And the monster kept me safe.

And now, standing in this apartment, I couldn’t hold on to the black hole. And the monster was and always had been there.

“I swear to God, Beth,” I growled, my body coiled. I tried looking away. Pretending she wasn’t there. I tried to get the black hole back.

But then she touched me. Her fingers against my arm. They were cold and they were shaking and she touched the inside of my elbow and the skin there that no one touched. That rarely saw sun.

Hidden skin and she touched it like she knew.

Like it was hers.

And I couldn’t even argue with that. I was entirely hers. Completely hers. That skin on my arm and the memories in my head and the green monster of my anger.

Every part of me was hers, and I didn’t know how to live that truth and the truth of her lying at the same time.

And I turned, grabbing her arms, and her eyes were wide and I was sure I was scaring her—I was scaring myself—but I couldn’t open my mouth to say I wouldn’t hurt her.

Because I didn’t know if that was true.

I had her in the corner between the door and the dresser and she was panting and I was panting. And the air tasted like her and felt like fire.

“Tommy,” she breathed, her face full of freckles and a kind of hesitant joy. A careful happiness. Like this was going to be okay. Because I was touching her. Because if she said yes, I was going to fuck her and make her come so hard she’d never be the same.

But I would still hurt her.

“You want me?” I asked, growled really, keeping our bodies separate. Even though she was pushing against my arms, her body arching toward me like she knew if she could just touch me, the dam would break and we’d be awash again.

So fucking hot for each other it was the only thing that mattered. Not the lies. Or the secrets. Or the past.

Nothing would matter but her. Touching her.

“Yes, Tommy. Yes. I want you. I always want you. We can do this. We can—”

“Put your hair up,” I whispered, and she blinked at me, her eyes wide, her hair long and loose around her shoulders.

“What?” she breathed, not catching on, but she would. I’d make sure of it.

The monster protecting me would make sure of it.

“Put your hair up,” I said, glancing down at the black elastic she always had around her wrist. She usually had like ten of them. A sleeve of elastics. I made my voice hard. My face harder.

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Because I would fuck her as Beth. This last time. And then I was walking away.

“You’re still going to leave,” she breathed.

I nodded. “Now or later depends on you putting your hair up.”

She blinked, her eyes filling with tears. I was hurting her, and maybe it was inevitable this whole time. It probably was. Maybe I was the fucking monster and the black hole all in one fucked-up package.

“Why are you being so mean?” she asked.

Because I didn’t know what else to be, I thought. I had nothing left. And fuck, why was I being so mean? To Beth. She’d sliced me to ribbons, but she hadn’t meant to. I mean, I got it, in the end. She did it, but she didn’t mean to.

She couldn’t help it. But I could. I would.

I started to let her go. To let myself go. To get us both out of here. Away from each other, because we just couldn’t stop hurting each other.

But the second I let go of her, she grabbed at me.

“No. No, stay. Just…” She pulled that black band from her wrist and pulled her hair up into the messy bun I’d gotten used to. The grown-up version of her teenage hairdo that had made me so wild. With the nape of her neck and the freckles revealed by the part of her hair.

And it was almost too much. I almost turned her around to face the wall. I almost walked out.

But this was what I needed, this kind of pain.

I had to do to myself what the Pastor had always tried and couldn’t—stop myself from loving her.

The starvation and the beatings hadn’t worked—maybe this would.

“Just…” Her breath caught. “Don’t be mean.”

I put my hands on the wall beside her head and leaned in to kiss her neck, the tendons so tense against her skin. She was holding herself so still, like if she moved, I’d leave.

I kissed her neck, the warm, soft shell of her ear, visiting all my favorite places on her body in a farewell tour. Neck, ear, collarbone. Jawline. Nose.

The freckle at the corner of her mouth.

Her lips. Her fucking beautiful lips. I kissed them and sucked at them. I raked them with my teeth, licked them with my tongue. And when I was done, I turned her around so she faced the wall, my hands rough. My intent rougher.

“Tommy,” she moaned, her hands slapping against the wall. Her body still rigid like she was scared to feel this.

“Lift your arms,” I said, and she did. I pulled off the pale shirt she wore and threw it behind me. God, her back. Her delicate spine. The arch of it. The narrow span of her shoulders with all those freckles. All those gorgeous fucking freckles. I put my hands against hers on the wall and, keeping my body apart because this needed to last, I kissed each of those freckles. Connected them with my attention, the warmth of my breath. She had a cluster on her shoulders, and I put them together as a star. I made a heart out of a set near her armpit, the smell of her skin and her sweat making me crazy.

But still I touched her with nothing but my mouth.

She moaned and arched her ass into my hips, but I shifted away, and when she tried to follow, I pushed her away.

I kissed my way down her spine, the dimples at the top of her ass.

She was freckled there, too.

I reached around her body, and she moaned, shuddering a little. Her head tilting back until I felt the messy bun on the top of her head touch my shoulder.

It was like being brushed by electric filaments. I felt every inch of that hair like it was coiling around my dick. I unbuttoned her shorts, the denim cutoffs that were bleached nearly white from so many washes, that hugged her ass and showed off her legs. The button fly dipped low on her tummy, the skin above the button a warm curve that filled my palm.

She sighed again, putting her hand over mine. Pressing me harder against her like she needed more already.

“No,” I said. Not sure why, only that this had to be carefully done. Carefully orchestrated. We were a bomb I couldn’t have go off too soon.

“I can’t touch you?” she whispered.

“No. You can’t.”

She put her hand against the wall again, and I was staring at the chipped green polish on her nails.

Remember, I thought. I need to remember. All of this. Every inch of her. Every moment of good-bye.

I pushed her pants off her body; the silk scrap of navy underwear she wore, rolled down the curve of her ass. She reached back as if to pull it up, to cover herself with it, but I put her hand back on the wall.

I liked her like this. Undone. Not quite naked. Her ass was suddenly and without exception my favorite thing in the world. I ran my calloused hand over the tender skin, palming the cheek in one hand.

When I squeezed, she moaned. When my fingers traced the crease, she dropped her head against the wall.

“Spread your legs,” I whispered.

“Tommy—”

“Do it.”

Her feet shifted against the hard wood floors, and with my fingers I made my way down the seam to the wet, hot heart of her. I put my lips to her neck, biting her…just a little.

I remembered all those nature shows I watched when the memories and the nightmares seemed to blend and sleep was a dangerous endeavour. All those animals that mated like this, front to back with the male biting the female’s neck to keep her still.

Horrible. Not sexy at all.

Except…it was right now.

I felt the animal in me rising up. My cock pounding between my legs.

I found her clit through her slippery folds, and she moaned when I traced it with the calloused pad of my fingers. She was up on her tiptoes like it might be too much, but right now she wasn’t deciding that.

I was.

I sucked on her neck and she cried out, bouncing back against me, and then, like she remembered my command, she arched forward, pressing herself to the wall. My hand caught between her heat and the wood.

Yes. I thought.

Fucking perfect.

Her underwear skewed half off her body, the lace cutting into my hand, I worked her clit just the way she liked. Slow and steady, harder, faster until she was shaking against the wall. Her face pressed sideways, her eyes closed so hard, like she was chasing down the feeling.

I kissed her cheek, slipped a finger inside of her until I was drenched in her. Covered in her. And then I pressed that finger to her asshole.

Her eyes opened wide, startled and shocked.

“Shhhh,” I whispered against her ear, our sweat gathering and mixing at her hairline.

I was going to make a mess of her. And she would make a mess of me.

Our end was just beginning.

“Let me in,” I whispered. I felt her pull in air, the rise of her back against my chest, and she blew it out slowly and I slipped inside.

“Oh my God,” she groaned, her head falling forward. “Oh my God.”

I felt the tension in her. The way she bounced suddenly on her toes, and because I was never in this life such a good student except when it came to her, I knew she was close.

With my other hand I ran featherlight touches over her clit, hard and harder until she was crying out and swearing. Her legs bent, and suddenly, she was one large contraction. One large, wild beat of pressure and then, I could feel her airborne against me.

I eased up my touch on her clit but didn’t stop touching her. Never stopped touching her.

“Tommy,” she moaned when she was back to her self. Back in her body.

“Again,” I said, my finger still buried in her ass. I fucked her with it, a long, slow out and then in, and she pushed herself against me as if chasing me down.

“What?”

“Come again.”

“What…what about you?”

“Come again.”

I’d worry about me later. I’d worry about me when I’d wrung everything out of her I needed. Everything that would sustain me for what was left of my life without her.

I put my shoulder against the wall so I was facing her. Her blissed-out, wild eyes were gorgeous, but I wanted more.

“You’re going to come again,” I said, pushing one finger into her pussy and then another. I could feel my finger in her ass, and I knew she could too. She opened her mouth to pull in air.

“What…” she breathed. “What kind of virgin are you?”

I smiled at her, kissed her nose. Her lips. “One who has dreamed about doing this to you for the last seven years.”

It took some hand contortion, but I got my thumb back on her clit and she sobbed, sagging against the wall. Her hand clutched at my shoulder.

“Let me,” she whispered like she knew I would deny her that. “Let me touch you. I feel… I feel like I’m going to float away.”

I made some growling, menacing sound of consent, and I worked her over with my fingers until I felt her again, the strung-up tension of her body like she was gathering herself, pulling herself together for some unknown trip. Some internal explosion that would pull her to pieces if she wasn’t careful.

Her nails bit into my shoulder, and I grunted with the pain of it. My hands were so wet, up to the wrists with her. The muscles of her legs were shaking so hard.

“Beth,” I said. Her name, just like that, and her eyes sprung open like she’d been waiting for that. “Beth,” I said again; now that her name was in my mouth, I couldn’t get it out.

“Come on, Beth,” I said. “I want to feel you come again.”

Her ass squeezed me so tight I thought she might break my finger. She jerked forward, locking my other hand against her body and the wall, and she rode my fingers so hard I worried she might get hurt.

But she came and she came, sobbing and shaking. Every internal spasm locked in my memory. My fingers ached with the pleasure of having brought her to this shattering moment again.

Slowly I pulled my fingers away, and she flinched and moaned.

“You okay?” I asked.

“You always ask that,” she whispered, staggering like she had newfound legs.

“You always flinch.”

“It’s hard having you leave me,” she said. “It hurts when you leave.”

I put my arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet and carrying her to the bed.

“Beat it, Pest,” I muttered, shooing the sleeping dog off the blankets where she’d been curled up. She scrambled away from me like we were about to play a game, and I picked her up and put her in the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. She barked once in puny protest and then was silent.

Beth sat up when I turned, her hair still up in a bun. Her underwear still half off her body. She looked fucking delicious, and I decided I needed her to come one more time.

“Come here,” she whispered and I did, but as she reached for my belt, my rock-hard cock straining at the button and zipper of my jeans, desperate to feel her touch, I fell to my knees between her legs.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“One more.”

“I don’t… I can’t.”

I spread her legs wider, the scent of her saturated pussy making me crazy. Her thighs were shiny and the flesh between her legs so pink, so swollen.

She put her hand over herself. But it was only sexier. More beautiful. This half-hearted demure thing. This “oh no, I couldn’t” act.

She could. And she would.

I licked her fingertips, the green nail polish, half chipped off. I licked those fingers and tasted her beneath it. Felt the slick swollen tissue. Oh God, she was gorgeous like this. So juicy and perfect. Swollen and sensitive.

“Move your hand,” I said against her fingers.

“It’s not fair,” she said, and I smiled because I knew it was an act. “Come here, let me make you feel good.”

“This makes me feel good,” I said against her flesh, and she flinched and squirmed and I spread her legs out wider, my cheeks wet from rubbing against her thighs. Her come would be in my hair, and I loved it.

I sucked one of her fingers into my mouth, pulling on it hard, and she moaned, falling back on one hand braced against the bed, the other hand caught between my mouth and her pussy.

I sucked all her fingers one by one, tasting her pleasure and her sweat, and when I was done, I moved that hand out of the way and licked her. I licked her and sucked her until she was trembling. Shaking.

“I don’t know if I can,” she gasped.

“You can,” I said and slipped my fingers back inside of her, pushing through the swollen tissue. She moaned and practically vibrated off the bed. I found the spot she liked the best, the spot that made her go so still. I did everything she liked the best, and it took a while, come running down her legs, sweat pouring off both of us.

She was moaning and sobbing and crying my name, but finally she came, her hands clutching at my head, pushing me into her so tight I could barely breathe. I didn’t need to breathe. Not at all.

Who needed air when I had Beth Renshaw coming against me with such power? Like a force of nature.

She let go of me, her body relaxing boneless against the bed, her legs splayed, her hands falling to the blankets. Her skin was pink, and her freckles were nearly white against them; as I watched, they went back to brown, her skin back to its usual shade. Her face, though, stayed flushed and sweaty, her eyes on mine over the landscape of her body.

I stood up, my knee popping. I hadn’t come. It was a fucking miracle. I realized how I’d turned my body off in a way. Listening instead, completely, to her body, I’d tuned mine out.

But it was coming back with a roar.

My guts hurt with the need to come. My chest and legs. My teeth ached.

“Come to me,” she murmured, her voice barely over a gasp. She couldn’t sit up, much less blow me. Jack me off. I stepped back, because something felt not right about fucking a woman who could barely move. Whose body had been momentarily broken by pleasure.

“Please, Tommy,” she said, because of course she knew what I was thinking. She always knew what I was thinking. “I need you.”

Fuck it. Fuck. It. I was going to hell for any number of reasons, the least of which could be fucking Beth when I’d given her so much pleasure she was practically comatose.

It would be my very favorite sin.

I stepped back to the bed, found a condom in the little table by her side of the bed… her side of the bed.

That had happened fast; her side, my side.

But I pushed the thought away as I undid my pants and rolled the condom over me. Sucking in air through my teeth because it hurt so good. Just my own hand, rough and clumsy.

Her pleasure-swollen flesh would kill me.

“Hurry,” she said like I needed more convincing.

I bent and slipped my arm around her waist, lifting her and pushing her back on the bed, I split her legs open wider with my own and then, with my teeth gritted, I pushed the head of my cock into her.

“Oh fuck, baby,” I groaned, putting my head down on her breast. “Fuck, you’re so tight.”

She sighed, lifting her hips just barely off the mattress. Her hands were still at her sides, too tired even to hold on to me. I held my breath pushing into her, inch by inch.

I groaned and swore, sweat running off my body onto hers. Until finally I was inside her. Squeezed so hard I could barely move. I barely needed to. I pulled back, lifting my hips, and I felt the orgasm coming—all those demands of my body that I’d been ignoring as I’d been seeing to the demands of hers, they came roaring at me. I saw sparks behind my closed eyelids, my hands were numb, the bottoms of my feet super hot; it was as if I was being rewired, completely changed, from the inside out.

“Yes,” she was saying over and over again. Permission or something, I wasn’t sure. But I moved my body in hers, thrusting and retreating, inch by inch, clinging to what I knew and who I was until it was all gone and it was just my body and her body and a pleasure that unspooled in my chest.

I came in great spurts. Giant waves. I came in storms and earthquakes.

I was matter and particle and electrons and air. I was the very base of myself, blind and dumb to everything but her.

I was heaving over her, jerking and gasping for air. She didn’t come, but she was stroking my shoulders, whispering in my ears, words I couldn’t hear past the pounding of my heart.

“So good,” she was saying. “So good.”

I blew out a breath, only to suck one in, unable to catch it. Unable to regulate anything. For a second I thought I might cry. Might actually sob.

But I managed to stop myself, pushing up onto my hands. Away from her. It was important not to look at her. Not to see her underneath me, drenched in our sweat.

I was blood and bone and not looking at her was a mission of protection.

I got up off the bed with legs that shook and feet that didn’t work, and I staggered to the bathroom, opening the door so Pest could come out, smelling the air like she was a prude and not guilty of trying to lick her own butt.

I dealt with the condom and pulled up my pants and splashed water on my face, all while figuring out the next three things I needed to do. That’s how I would work this.

Three things. One step in front of the other.

Find my keys.

Get my stuff.

Go down to the truck.

I could do those three things. If I thought past that, things fell apart.

In the bedroom Beth was finally sitting up, her bun half falling down around one shoulder.

Her chest was covered in red marks from my beard. Smaller bruises around her neck from my openmouthed kisses.

Don’t look, I told myself. Three things.

Find my keys.

Get my stuff.

Go down to the truck.

My keys were in the drawer of the bedside table with the condoms and my wallet. I put them in my pocket with numb hands. Feeling her gaze on me all the while.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice rough and scratchy.

“Do you…” I cleared my throat. My own voice sounded like it had been dragged across a gravel road. “Do you need a ride?”

Her eyebrows hit her hairline. “A ride. Where?”

“Do you have a way home?”

“You’re still leaving.”

It wasn’t a question. So I didn’t answer.

It was obvious what she’d been hoping, that the sex would change my mind. That it would be enough to keep me here.

I gathered my duffel bag. Threw the last of my stuff into it. Shook the bag with the last of Pest’s kibble and then threw it in the bag. I turned to see Pest in Beth’s arms. She was licking the sweat off Beth’s face.

I’d fucked the rage out of myself. I’d fucked everything out of myself, and now I was empty. Hollow.

Find my keys.

Get my stuff.

Go down to the truck.

I added breathe to the list because I kept forgetting to do it.

“You can’t… get past it?” she asked.

I nearly laughed. “Get past you not telling me about my grandfather?” She looked so fucking hopeful. “No,” I told her. “I can’t.”

“But you’d drive me back to Los Angeles if I needed you to?”

I nodded, unable to watch Pest trying to comfort her. “Do you?” I asked, looking at the door, the dresser. Anything but her.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t need a ride.”

“Okay.” Daring one last look, I watched her hunch over herself, the knobs of her spine pressed against the skin of her back. Her hair slipping over her shoulder to cover part of her face.

Remember, I thought. Remember all of it. The beauty and the pain and how it hurt to love her.

This is how wishes end up. This is why they’re dangerous.

I opened the door, the sunlight having slipped behind a cloud, turning the day dramatically dark.

Good, I thought. Better.

“Here,” she said, gathering Pest up in her hands and holding her out to me, tears and snot running down her face. “Pest.”

I realized at once how I could solve the problem of Pest. Of who would take care of her when I wasn’t around.

Because not being around seemed pretty fucking likely. If I went back to San Francisco, I’d probably be killed. If I didn’t, I’d be on the run for the rest of my life. Because if Bates and Sammy could find me in nowhere, Arizona, they could find me anywhere.

I’d take a stand in San Francisco.

“Keep her,” I said.

“She’s your pet,” Beth said, standing up, looking aghast.

“She’s yours now,” I said quietly and reached out to scrub at Pest’s head the way she liked for the last time. “Take care of her.”

“Tommy.”

“Take care of yourself. No drugs.”

Tears dripped off her chin onto Pest’s head. “I don’t believe you mean this,” she cried. “I don’t believe you can worry about me and care about me and still leave me.”

“You worried and cared and still lied. We’re endlessly capable of hurting each other.”

She sobbed so hard she shook, and I hit my limit.

Leave. Just leave.

And keep fucking breathing.

I closed the door to the apartment above the garage and took the stairs down to the parking area. Too late I realized Pete was standing in the shadows near my truck.

He gave me pause for a minute. One heart-stopping minute when my curiosity and my fucking endless need for someone to call my own almost swamped me, but then I opened the driver-side door and threw in my bag.

“Tommy.”

“What?” I snapped, not looking at him. Where were my fucking shades when I needed them?

“I’m sorry.”

I laughed humorlessly.

“And if you need anything,” he said. “I’m here. I’m always here. I’ll always be here.”

That wasn’t true, was it? He’d die. Like my mother. Like his wife. We all did. We all would.

“You want to do something for me?”

His throat bobbed and his eyes were all watery, his regret and his sorrow coming at me like fucking tentacles. I had to get the hell out of here.

“Very much,” he said.

“Take better care of Beth,” I said, got myself in my truck and drove out of there.

It wasn’t until I was on the highway heading north that I realized I was crying.

And had been for quite some time.