SEAL'd Honor (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts) by Gabi Moore (23)

Chapter 10 - Zack

“She’s… I don’t know, I just can’t describe her.”

I didn’t usually speak to my brother about my love life, but let’s just say it had been a month of firsts and strange beginnings. And he did ask.

My brother Ben and I have what I can mostly call an opportunistic relationship. We got along well enough… when there was time. Since he’s the eldest by five years, he could actually remember a time when my old man wasn’t a complete bag of shit, and once in a while liked to take it on himself to remind me how things hadn’t always been this bad, and that ma used to be happier, and things had been better before. At the end of the day, though, men don’t love women. Not really. He might as well have been trying to convince me that unicorns roamed the earth before I was born, but were conveniently all gone now.

Growing up, Ben and I competed a lot. We were even competitive in the way we chose to act out after dad finally left and ma began what would be a decades-long repeat of the same mental breakdown every two years or so. I guess we were different kinds of ‘bad’. Ben was already on his third marriage by the time I found Maggie, but the joke was that my relationship with her went so bad, so fast, that I soon caught up to him in the “fuck up Olympics”, as we liked to call it in our teens. Competing with him wasn’t that much fun anymore, now that we were older and both of us had started to feel just a little beat down by life in general. Oh well.

“What’s her name?” he asked, and took a swig of beer. He was getting a little on in years, and I was still considering whether I should give him a hard time for that little pooch hanging over his belt.

“Maddy.”

“Oh, shit, her name’s Maggie?”

“No, Maddy. As in Madeleine.”

“Huh. Kind of creepy how close their names are. You got a type, huh?”

“Nah, not really. Her and Maggie are like chalk and cheese.”

“Is Maggie the cheese here?” he asked and cocked a goofy eyebrow at me.

I laughed.

“Well, let me put it another way. They’re like chocolate and …Brent crude oil. How’s that? Make it any clearer for you?”

He chuckled and took another swig, then relaxed into that 1000-yard stare of his, adjusting his weight on the camping chair a little. It was getting dark and cold, and I began to wonder if I was just imagining mosquitoes buzzing round my bare ankles. I hated fishing. But my brother wasn’t the kind of man to just chat for no reason, and since friendly faces were thin on the ground since I was released, I had agreed to come along.

“How is Maggie anyway? Spoken to her lately?”

I hadn’t and I didn’t care. I had heard friends of friends mention that she might have moved out of state and had a kid, but when it came to our small town, that could have been anyone. I didn’t care where she was or what she was doing there. That chapter of my life had closed.

I shrugged my shoulders and he nodded. At least Ben always knew well and good when to leave a topic alone. But he tried another one.

“Your new girlfriend. She uh… she know about your little… incident?” he asked, not tearing his eyes from some distant point on the horizon, well aware that no fish in its right mind would be bothering us this evening.

I took a swig of my own.

“I haven’t told her.”

He turned and gave me a long, dry look.

“You uhhh…?” He lifted his eyebrows again.

Even with the pretense of fishing, Ben still didn’t exactly chat with me, but kind of just suggested things with his face and waited for me to catch his drift.

“Slept with her? Yeah.”

He flicked a stone he had been rolling between his fingertips into the water and it broke the still sheet into a few thin, circular ripples.

“Huh. Dude, you’d better tell her.”

“Well, she knows I was in prison. Just… she doesn’t know why. Yet. I met her on one of those… you know those dating sites for prisoners.”

He was going to needle it out of me anyway, so I may as well confess straight out. I sipped nervously. I’ve lived long enough to know not to truly compete with any man, but there are some races your older brother will just always beat you at. I waited to see what he’d say.

“Well shit.”

He crushed the can a little in his hand and tossed it over, landing it in an empty bucket.

“So what’s her deal then? Got a bunch of kids? Is she …you know…?” He made some vague gestures with his hands and pulled a face, suggesting any number of possible ways a woman who would willingly date a prisoner might be, well, …you know.

“There’s nothing wrong with her. Christ. She’s nice. She’s a vet and she lives alone. No kids but she kind of fosters animals before they get rehomed and stuff. Really sweet woman. Long, long brown hair. Really pretty hair. Blue-ish eyes…”

He looked at me, waiting for the catch.

“Well shit,” he said, when he realized there was no ‘but’.

“Ben, I think… I think I really like her.”

“Buddy, you met her like a few weeks ago. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but she’s not the only woman in the world, you know.”

“She’s the only woman like that,” I said.

He smiled broadly at me and sat up in his seat.

“Hoo boy, you’re a goner,” he said, whistling low and shaking his head.

I punched his arm.

“Shut up. I mean it. She’s… different. She’s sweet and kind and really gentle.”

He stood up and went over to the cooler box, picking up a fresh beer and gesturing to ask if I wanted one.

“Nah, I’m still working on this one. She’s got a really good heart, you know?”

He sidled back over to the camping chairs.

“Kinda makes you wonder what she’s doing with a guy like you then, huh?” he laughed, and cracked the tab on the can.

“Kinda.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird she doesn’t want to know why you went to prison? Like, at all? You could find that all out in five minutes with Google.”

He had a point. It was weird. But she was just different. This was a woman who rescued an abandoned parrot and nursed it back to health, even though it had done nothing but bite her each and every day since. She had lost count of the unwanted animals she had patiently rescued and rehomes. She never cared how the animals that came into the clinic got that way. She just helped them, as they were.

“I’ll tell her soon. She’s a good woman. She deserves to know,” I said decisively. “And I’m looking for better jobs now, too. I’m getting back on track,” I added, as though the prettier I could make my life now, the easier it would be for her to accept how ugly it used to be.

Ben settled down into his old spot on the horizon and said nothing more about the topic. I could tell what he was thinking, though. That I would share my deep dark secret with her, and she’d flip out and I’d never hear from her again, plain and simple. And to be honest, I was secretly thinking the same thing.

Chapter 11 - Madeleine

The darkness was blanketed all around me. There is good in this world, and there is bad.

I huddled closer in to the small, wavering flicker of flame and held it in my hands, breathing in the hot stream of air that snaked off the top, staring deeply at the blue core of the fire. As long as I kept my focus on the light, it would all be OK. The darkness would be OK.

And it all depended on me being able to stand here still like this, in the dark. It didn’t matter that this was just a medicine cupboard and that it was 9am on a boring weekday in a boring suburban animal clinic. Darkness is still darkness …and it’s the same everywhere.

I cradled the match flame in my hands and went as close as I could to it, breathing the warmth in.

Nobody knew that I did this. It was such a secret, I barely even remembered myself when I started doing it. Maybe after Alex left. Maybe before that even. Or maybe it was that time a hunter came in with his mangled dog, just after I had earned my license and started practicing alone.

He had been shooting rabbits and accidentally blasted a gaping wound in the leg of his own spaniel dog. He stood casual as can be, yammering away as I tried to stop the bleeding. He said that the dog would be fine, he was sure. Then he told me a story that I never forgot. A hunting story: that the predator can always tell when the prey has given up. Even before the prey itself knows, the predator can see something, see the way the skin ripples over the prey’s bones as it runs, a change in the eyes, a sort of attitude in the skin, in the smell of the body. It’s a small, almost invisible change, but it’s still a tacit agreement, a secret communication that the prey unofficially submits to being taken by the predator.

I curled my hand round the flame and let my mind go dark.

Being a vet is ugly work. I don’t mind the blood and the bones and the torn skin. What sickens me most is the violence – the human violence. The people who would deliberately harm another creature, or the people who’d bring in their lifelong pet and put her down because they didn’t think she was worth the $400 to save. The animals are fine. It’s the humans that I couldn’t handle.

In any case, every morning here, right before I start work, I put on my name-embroidered overalls and I step into this quiet, dark cupboard, and I light a match, and I pray that I’m strong enough to deal with whatever lays ahead. By the time 5pm rolls around, I’m often broken. Fed up. Tired. But this little cupboard spell keeps me alive through it all. I can stare into the mangy, hollow eyes of an abused cat and remember that little flicker of flame in the darkness, and I can keep going. Whatever that little twitch in the prey animal’s skin is, that look in the eye, that smell… well, I refuse to do that. I’m not ready to be anyone’s prey yet.

I blew out the flame and threw open the door, the burnt match odor dissipating quickly. Almost instantly, one of the nurses blustered in and told me there was an emergency, a mix breed dog had been pulled from a fight and was now thrashing around in the waiting room, crushed, bloody leg dangling behind him.

All five of us in the surgery flew into the waiting room and tried to restrain a large brown lab mix, his hackles high and lips pulled back into a frothy snarl. The owner stood to the side, hysterical, unable to pull her eyes away from the lashings of fresh blood thrown all over the linoleum.

The receptionist had ushered everyone else out, and I raced back into the surgery and snatched a vial of alprazolam and a syringe. The assistants held back the snarling animal while I reached for his neck and jabbed the tranquilizer in as precisely as I could. Trails of blood following us, the dog still thrashing wildly, we managed to usher him into the surgery and hoist him up onto the table where I could examine his leg. He was a strong one.

With a flash of irritation, I eyed the bulbous blue sack bobbing between his legs. People didn’t fix their dogs and then they were surprised when they became aggressive?

One of the assistants held the snapping dog firm round his neck and the rest of him wriggled and resisted, his claws scratching the metal table and leaving welts on the nurses’ arms.

“What about the other dog?” I asked, trying to get a clear look at the leg, bloody but still kicking back in anger.

“Killed,” said one of the assistants, and shot me a loaded look.

I frowned. The leg was hideously damaged but until the dog stopped fighting me, I couldn’t get a clear look – it was all just blood-matted fur and gristle. Grasping at the knee, I pulled slightly to get a better look at the shinbone and before I knew it, the nails scratched one long line on the table and all at once the assistant lurched forward and screamed, “oh shit!”

I lifted my head to see the assistant lose his grip on the neck and immediately the pink, ribbed inside of the dog’s mouth came snapping towards me. I ducked out of the way but he quickly sunk wet, angry teeth right into the stretched sinew of my neck. I screamed out loud. The assistants yanked him off quickly and thunked him back down onto the table, where he whimpered and thrashed, the tranquilizer finally setting in.

My hand was on my neck now, and my head whirred with pain and shock. I looked to see the dog finally submitting, lying flat on the surgery table, panting hard under three sets of panicked hands pinning him down. Out the corner of his eye he watched me as I staggered back, my neck ringing with pain.

“He’s drawn blood, come over here quick,” said one of the nurses, and she was soon fussing with the slobbery patch on my neck, unwrapping swabs and furiously disinfecting the area.

But the pain felt strange on my skin. I felt …exuberant.

I stared into that animal’s eyes and he stared straight back into mine. My head swum and swirled with panic, but somehow there was one bright, sharp spot in my awareness, just ahead of my eyes. I saw it clearly: I was alive. As alive and as much an animal as that slathering dog in front of me. And I wasn’t fucking scared.

In fact, as I stood there, heart banging like a drum, the memory of him came to me all at once.

Zack.

I saw his hard, angry fists raining down onto Alex’s body. I saw those same hands close around my own body. I saw the damp, black wires beneath his navel, and the veins in his immense cock, and felt the throb it had left deep inside my body, and all at once I laughed, from the sheer thrill of it, from the pain, from I don’t know what. But I laughed.

“It doesn’t hurt!” I told the fretting nurse, and kept staring into the dog’s eyes as the consciousness seeped out of them and he closed his lids. “I’m fine, I’m fine!”

And I was more than fine. I felt amazing. I could never have told the others in the room that morning, but something strange had happened to me. Something dark had come over me. Being bitten in the neck by an angry dog shouldn’t feel like this, should it? Why had I thought of Zack, all over me, and in me, and why had I felt hot and crazy and angry and more alive than I ever had? And what’s more, what was this delicious buzzing between my legs?

I tried to focus.

The dog. His eyes rolled back in his head and his tongue lolled out his mouth. Now, I could go in and do some damage control. Most of the assistants and nurses cleared out and I got to work on the brown lab. I told myself to pay attention. I would see Zack later on that evening. There’d be time enough to figure out what the hell was going on with me. But for now, the beast was sleeping and while he did, I’d need to mend his broken leg.

I poured out a stream of yellow liquid into his cup and set my teapot back on the table. I thought it was funny, that an ex-con’s favorite tea was chamomile, but I didn’t say so for fear of hurting his feelings.

As I lifted my own cup to my lips, I noticed that I was still shaking. Still trembling from the adrenaline put there this morning by the ferocious brown lab.

He sat opposite on me on the sofa. Yes, the sofa, and he watched me warmly, all easy smiles and lightly tanned skin that looked like burnished metal against his casual white shirt.

“You know, you sure are getting picked on a lot these days,” he laughed, and held the teacup in his wide hands, gesturing to my neck.

I laughed back.

It was true. With my still-bruised cheekbone and my newest addition of two vampire-like puncture wounds right on the jugular, I really was a sight to behold.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “you make looking beat up seem so pretty and glamorous.”

I giggled. He might be on to something. I had been on fire all day. Triumphant over my tussle with the beast, two fresh trophy wounds to show for my trouble and now, the thing I had been looking forward to all day: Zack. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was glowing.

Our recent tryst on this very sofa seemed like a dim memory. Something reset and I felt like I had to start all over, gathering up the nerve to touch him again, to kiss him again. We hadn’t spoken much about our last meeting, but my body remembered everything. Every last pulsing, sticky, delicious detail. I was still aching somewhere deep inside where he had been, and the thought both scared and thrilled me.

Just remembering his naughty smile and the force he used to pull apart my legs… something about finding little traces of him on me drove me wild at the most inappropriate times. I discovered a handprint on my ass while showering and was ten minutes late for work. I saw the letters “ZAK” on a license plate and instantly became wet. And when I sat a certain way, and squeezed my legs just so, and thought of just the right naughty thought, I could feel him. All I could think about all that day was his hard body, his sweet smile …and his fat, ruthless cock.

In fact, I was even having trouble just looking him in the eye at that moment.

“Glamorous? Well I wouldn’t call it glamorous,” I said, losing myself a little in his gaze and then tearing my eyes away again.

“Well, you’re beautiful, whatever happens,” he said, and I noticed his voice crack on the word ‘beautiful’.

We sat in silence drinking for a moment. The calm before a storm. He flicked his eyes up to glance at me and then I knew all at once: it was going to happen.

Again.

I blushed and felt my pussy twitch deliciously. Half the fun now, I guess, was waiting it out. A game to see who could hold out the longest.

“More tea?” he asked, and I wanted to make a joke about how funny I thought it was for him to say that, but decided against it.

“No thanks, I’m good. There is something else I want though.” My heartbeat was like a wild animal caged in my ribs.

“Oh? What’s that?” He put his cup down.

“Could I possibly get another kiss?” I said, and tilted my head coyly to the side.

He inhaled deeply and looked me over with a pleased expression.

God he was handsome. A good, strong face. A serious jaw. Full, firm lips and clear eyes. But dear Lord was there something unbearably naughty creeping all over that expression of his. He smiled and spoke in a low mumble.

“I’d be afraid to kiss you, quite frankly. I wouldn’t want to give you another injury…” he said, and lifted delicate fingertips to graze against my bruised skin.

The effect was electric.

I exhaled and tried to keep eye contact.

“Oh, I’m not scared of you,” I said, a little smile fluttering on my lips.

“You’re not? Maybe you should be. I can be very rough, you know.”

The jolt of pleasure that zapped through me was so intense I felt like I would pass out. I would have done anything for him to just reach over and kiss me already.

“You? Rough?” I giggled.

He pretended to be insulted with a playful jump of his eyebrows.

“Ma’am, don’t I remember you saying what a dangerous convict I was? What a bad guy? In fact a man so dangerous that they…” All of a sudden, he leaned in so close I could almost taste the words from his lips. “…so dangerous that they had to lock him up away from society. Surely you must be just a little scared…” he said, putting on his best dramatic voice.

I was already soaking wet.

He wasn’t a bad man. But he was a man. The more I thought about this answer he had given, the more I understood it. I was scared. I was very scared. But I didn’t know how to explain all the other things I felt. The strange feeling that pulsed through me as I stared into the animal eyes of the rabid lab. The thrill I felt as his scratch marks stung on my arm. My heart beating when I thought certain unthinkable things about Zack… I didn’t know how to say: yes I’m scared. But I like it.

I smiled, my lips hovering just an inch from his.

“Well, when you put it that way, maybe I am just a little scared,” I said and leaned forward slightly to touch the tips of my lips to his. Not to kiss him, but just to touch.

Instantly, his strong hands folded round my neck and pulled me in deeper, and I surrendered into a deep, full, passionate kiss. It was an uncompromising, penetrating kiss, one that took all of me, and I so I gave myself up to it, all of myself, and opened my lips to his.

Soon his warm body was pressed close to mine, where I hadn’t even realized how much I had missed it. It was as though I had been holding on, holding my breath and waiting for him, and now that his strong arms were folding around me again, I could just exhale and let all of that go.

“I’ve wrestled one savage beast today, I think I can handle another,” I said teasingly, and with this came a low growl from deep inside his chest as he pounced on me. I squealed with delight as he jumped on top of me and pinned me down. I could already feel his solid cock jamming into my belly, even through his thick trousers.

Were we crazy? Was this all too fast? My heart was pumping at fever pitch. There is good in this world, and there is bad. But maybe there’s something else, too. A third thing: good-bad.

My throat went dry and I considered opening my mouth, coming up for air between each deep, animalistic kiss, and telling him I was scared, and saying please don’t hurt me. I thought about begging him to slow down. That the speed with which he was tearing my clothing off was scary, that it was too much, he was too much, too big, too rough for me, that I wasn’t ready yet. I thought of begging him to be gentle, to go slow. To be good. But then I realized that if I asked him to stop… he would.

As his hungry, frenzied lips travelled down over my neck and breasts, I threw my head back and bit down on my lips, a dark understanding brewing at the back of my mind.

I didn’t want him to stop.

Chapter 12 - Zack

After the last stitch of clothing was gone between us, my eyes hazed over and I felt a kind of delicious rage pumping through me. Maybe it was the smell of her vulnerability. Maybe it was something about the way she looked at me - just right, just that split second flicker in her pale eyes that told me …yes.

It was only the second time we had slept together, but it was already eerie how swiftly she could bring this lusty rage over me, how I could be sipping tea one moment and the next want to fuck her senseless, all because of the soft, slight way she held the words in her mouth when she said I’m not scared.

But I sure as hell was scared.

Fucking petrified.

It was something new to me: I was genuinely afraid of hurting her. She was small and soft and yielding. Naïve of the violence that a human body can really be capable of; she was untrained, innocent, a sitting duck with soft eyes that made me feel weird things in the pit of my stomach.

In truth, I was more afraid of what she was doing to me.

I kissed her hard and her little strawberry tongue came fiercely back at me. I slid eager hands down her smooth body.

There was just so much to hold and squeeze I wished I had more hands than two – her full breasts with their puffy pink nipples, the little swell of creamy flesh under her belly button, her shapely bones underneath the velvet skin on each of her hips, like she was living cello.

I slid two thumbs down between that sweet cleft and was nearly delirious to find her secret inner thighs already slick. I kissed her there. I looked up to see her smiling down at me with something like intoxication on her sweet face. I was rock hard. I knew her so well …but did I? Were we being crazy, going so fast?

“Turn around,” I said, surprising myself.

Her little eyes opened wider, and she froze, looking down at me between her legs. I raised one hand to her pretty neck and caressed the little red holes there. Around each was a small shadow of black bruising. She raised her chin and twisted her neck as I did so, like a cat. Soon, she was on her knees in front of me, her ass waggling at me, her forearms flat on the floor.

Some sick part of me imagined her ex bursting in the room at just this moment, right in time to see just exactly what I was about to do to his woman.

I shook my head to clear it, then spread eager hands over her wide hips, gently pulling her ass cheeks apart. She tossed her head to the side, her waterfall of brown hair flowing down from her head like it had a magical life of its own. I slid my hands up to greet her breasts and then back down again. When I dipped the greedy tip of my cock into that sweet little well between her legs, she instantly swiveled her hips back towards me, groaning into her curtain of hair. It was a miracle how wet she became. How ready she was.

I slid in smoothly and slowly, shuddering at how amazing it felt to be in her again, at how she seemed to melt and swell all around me as I sunk deeper and deeper in.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” I mumbled under my breath and again came those sweet hips back towards me.

One hand went to her swollen little clit and she began to stroke herself in tight, urgent circles. The sight of this alone drove me wild. When I heard an overwhelmed little squeak from somewhere behind the curtain of hair, I couldn’t hold back anymore; drawing back my hips I slammed into her, hard, giving her the full length of my cock and driving deep to find that soaking place inside that she had shown me just a few days before.

I wanted more, I wanted all of her, and as I felt her twinge and clench around me, something inside me took over and I fucked her again, bringing all the strength I could muster down into that little quivering slit, watching her body swell and open and submit to another thrust, and then another, and another.

Her little fingers moved furiously over her clit as I pounded again and again into her, each blow from my hips sending fleshy ripples through hers. The delicious rage pumped through me like it was boiling in my blood. Next to my brown and scribbled-on body, hers seemed as white and clean as an angel’s.

I gripped hard on her hips, stopping myself from going further, knowing I shouldn’t hurt her.

All at once she got up off her elbows and leaned back onto me, her shapely back pressing against me and her long hair snaking over us both. I caught sight of the little wounds on her neck and felt something strange stirring in me. Waves of pleasure were washing over me, and with each stroking thrust she eased me closer to the edge, closer to bursting and filling her with my cum.

Inside she was so silky, so sweet and so astonishingly warm, I was soon fucking her harder than I thought she could handle, harder than I should, lifting both knees off the ground so I could sink deeper into her poor little cunt with every lunge. I wrapped my arms round her to steady her against my own ruthless cock, and through little parted lips she groaned, and a single bead of sweat ran down her temple.

“Zack,” she said, flopping forward and steadying her hands on the ground in front of her again. “Oh my God, Zack…”

Her voice was shaky and near-hysterical.

I fucking loved it.

A tortured little mumble escaped from her throat and then she was silent, both her hands desperately clutching the carpet underfoot, her body tensing right up. I could feel she was close to coming.

I stroked a long hand up and then down her spine to soothe her.

“Shhhh,” I said as I continued to fuck her, deep and quick and hard. Her breasts shook underneath her. I could hear she had stopped breathing. I felt her tight little pussy swell and squeeze around me, and I knew she would come soon.

“Zack!” she mumbled, and I fucked harder. “Oh God, Zack… right there!”

All at once, she was thrusting her own hips back into me, her hungry body swallowing me up, my balls slapping against her with each violent thrust.

“I’m going to--”

The words got stuck in her throat. I was so engorged inside her I felt I’d never be able to pull free. She was so wet I could hear it.

“Zack, I’m…

“Fucking come for me,” I growled.

I grabbed her hips and sent one final, brutal fuck straight into the juicy core of her, as hard and as deep as I could reach. Her spine curled and bucked and her entire body tightened around me, all of a sudden, wracked with the brutal force of her orgasm beating through her.

She jerked forward, and to my amazement, a giant gush of liquid spurted from her and splashed everywhere, down over my cock, and onto both of our thighs. She let out a long, guttural cry and then whimpered as her body clenched again and a second, smaller gush followed, dousing us again. I looked down to see my wet cock bouncing at the entrance of her pulsating, juicy body. Sweet fuck, it was the eye of God himself winking back at me.

Without thinking, I grabbed her shuddering frame, the last dribbles of her orgasms still pumping through her, and shoved my cock straight back in again. She was slick and tight and hot enough inside it nearly took my breath away. Fired up to see her so utterly dissolved in her own pleasure, I only needed a few thrusts to bring myself right to the edge, and when I tumbled over myself, her pussy clenched hard around me, milking every last drop out of me. I cried out and collapsed onto her sweat-soaked back, my own orgasm beating hard through my body, in wave after wave of ecstasy.

Still jammed in her, head still spinning, I linked my arms round her waist and planted dazed and dizzy kisses along her back and neck. She merely hung her head down low, the roots of her long hair wet and dark from sweat, the ends tangled and wild. It must have been a full minute before her body stopped heaving under mine, and the little ripples and twitches inside her body stopped and her breathing slowed and came back to normal.

I peeled myself off of her and knelt back on my haunches.

I was speechless.

She turned to look at me – the most beautiful I’d ever seen her, with buttery eyes and wild damp hair flowing everywhere and her lower lip wet and parted – and burst out laughing. She looked down at the wet patch on the floor. Then up at me, then to my still hard dick.

“I think you… I think you broke me,” she laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh as well.

“I’ve never …do you …have you done that before?” I said. I had never seen a woman orgasm so hard before in my life. She looked as puzzled as I did.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can barely even remember who I am right now!” and giggled so sweetly I couldn’t help but lean forward and embrace her.

“Didn’t I tell you I could be rough?” I said in my best stud voice. I felt her breasts jiggle in my arms as she laughed.

“Oh well, I’ve learned my lesson now, I’ll never doubt you again,” she said and we both collapsed together laughing, lying side by side, a little giddy.

I stared up at the ceiling, waiting for my heartbeat to calm down. At the edge of my vision I saw a cat slink along a coffee table and then trotting off out of sight. The ceiling was in rough shape, and needed some work. I hated to think of her getting up there to change dusty light bulbs.

“Zack?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay the night?”

“OK.”

Chapter 13 - Madeleine

Some animals are easy. They take quickly to humans and don’t fuss much and will tilt their heads to let you push the needle into the flesh of their necks, knowing somewhere in their quiet animal minds that it will help them somehow.

Some animals are difficult. They kick and scream and bite and hiss, and just when you think you’ve won them over, they scratch up your skin and slip your grasp, making you chase them all over again.

Maisy was one of the easy ones.

That’s partly why it was her I scooped up one sunny Saturday morning to give to Zack when he asked to help with my crazy menagerie. Maisy was a frail white and brown kitten, all heartbeat and bones and eyes, but she melted easily into anyone’s grasp, purring for whoever picked her up and dutifully eating whatever you gave her as though she didn’t know the difference between medicine and food.

“Like this?” he asked me.

Something twanged in my heart to see his big, strong hands cupped lightly around little Maisy, and they both stared back at me with wide eyes.

“Am I holding her right?” he said again. To his credit, Maisy did give the impression that she’d disappear into a puff of smoke if you held her too hard.

“What do you think, Maisy?” I said and leaned forward, placing my ear next to her whiskered face. “Yup, purring like a diesel engine, I think she’s happy,” I said. He beamed and stroked the pad of his thumb against her little head, and her eyes narrowed in pleasure.

“Ready to give her the medicine?”

“Yeah, let’s do it! Maisy says she wants some of the good stuff, please,” he said laughing, and lifting her to his own ear.

These days, Zack took to hanging around my house shirtless. At first I didn’t know what to make of it but now, seeing all six-foot of him standing in my kitchen with a tiny kitten pressed to his bare chest, I didn’t seem to mind so much.

I opened a cupboard and pulled out her formula, took a large plastic syringe from the drawer and then sucked up the correct dosage for her. She had been abandoned as a kitten and this medicine would go some way to replacing the nourishment she would have gotten from her mother. I handed the syringe to him and he took it expertly in his other hand, all of Maisy curled up cutely in his other hand, like a lint ball that had suddenly sprouted eyes.

“Just gently put the end in her mouth,” I instructed him. “Not there, in the corner of her mouth, and squeeze very gently and very slowly. Just like that! She’ll lap it up.”

Little Maisy, sweetheart that she was, tilted back her head and obediently swallowed her medicine, her little muzzle peeling back off her tiny canine fangs.

With supreme focus, Zack depressed the syringe and sent the liquid slowly into her mouth, and all at once her little throat began to pulse up and down as she swallowed. He flashed his gaze up at me and then quickly back down to the task at hand.

“She’s doing it! She’s eating it up,” he said with glee. If he weren’t so engrossed with his kitten, I would have pounced on him with how hot he looked at that moment.

Once the syringe was emptied, he set it carefully aside and then held her up at eye height to examine her, goofy grin all over his face. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats things that are smaller and weaker than him. And the way he was smiling and cooing at sweet Maisy turned my legs to jelly. With the end of his pinky finger he wiped her tiny cat mouth and then – God help me – then he gave her a dainty kiss right on her little snout. Completely full of food and with a face stuck in a permanent worried face, Maisy bobbed a little in his hand and mewed, once. He howled with laughter and put her down, and we both watched her scampering off, her little winder wound up for the next few hours at least.

He clapped his hands and looked up at me with twinkles in his eyes.

“So, what’s next? Am I ready to start birthing baby cows yet?” he asked and came over to wrap his arms round my waist.

“Not just yet!” I laughed, and leaned in for a kiss. “Besides, I’m sure I can put you to better use with something else…” I said, and tried to catch his eye.

“Oh?”

He hovered his gorgeous full lips above mine and his teasing breath lingered there for a moment, with that naughty smile I was beginning to know and love.

“Yes, if you want to make yourself useful, maybe you can stop talking for a second and kiss me instead.”

“Useful? Yes, ma’am…” he growled and closed his warm, delicious lips around mine for a long, lazy kiss. I staggered a little as the full weight of his body pressed against mine, and soon found my back pressed flat against the refrigerator. With hungry kisses, his tongue explored my mouth, my lips, my neck…

I was still zinging inside from our recent morning romp, my hair knotted up into a shaggy pile on top of my head, wearing his shirt and still pink in the face from all the things he had done to me before it was even 7 o’clock. I thumped my head back against the fridge and let him kiss me, and my poor body responded instantly, wet within seconds at the touch of his lips, opening up to him like I hadn’t already gone twelve rounds in the ring with that magnificent, merciless cock of his, just a few hours ago.

I liked what he did to me. When I was with him, I was no pushover. I bit him back. I bucked and moaned and thrashed and made as much noise as I damn well pleased. I made a mess. A big mess. And he let me.

Soon he was planting a trail of hot kisses down my collarbones and then he hoisted the shirt up and over my head, revealing my breasts, still warm with sex-smell and the cotton of his sweatshirt. He buried his head in my cleavage and I smiled down at him, hands resting on his head. Beatific. Like Our Lady of the Glorious Tits, smiling sweetly down at one of her worshippers.

“Spread your legs for me,” he mumbled, already nestling his way into that tender V between my legs.

I obeyed.

He was kneeling down in front of me now, and I could make out the strong muscles in his haunches as he positioned himself to kiss me. Not quite what I imagined when I suggested we head to the kitchen for something to eat, but again, I’d take it.

I sighed loudly and let my head fall to the side.

How could this man, this man who was tenderly parting my pussy lips and sending the sweetest, most careful tongue onto my swollen clit, this man who was dabbing the curious tips of his finger against me, this man who knew how to melt my body inside with just a look… how could this man have ever hurt anyone? I would ask him about his past. I couldn’t avoid it forever. But later…

I wasn’t sure if I trusted him … or just wanted to trust him. All I knew was that my doubts and fears never lasted long. We were never more than a few hours away from some sizzling glance, some sweet, dirty whispers, some electrifying touch or a full out session in bed that left my head whirling and my body crackling like it had been hit by lightning.

I would ask him. I had to. But I would do it later. Right now all I could focus on was the delightful torment of his tongue flicking over that desperate ache, and the juice pouring out of me as he toyed expertly with that little nub, kissing and licking me to some sweet, quivering point.

I grasped at his wild, coily blonde hair and tried to pull him deeper, but he pulled back a little and looked up at me with a wicked smile.

“Now, Maddy, I’ll drown and die if you try pull another stunt like you did this morning,” he said in a graveled voice, then went back to work. A moan escaped my lips and I felt the cool metal of the fridge behind me against the goosebumps on my back.

“If you keep doing that, well, I can’t promise anything,” I breathed, and it was true. Still raw and turned on from this morning, I didn’t need much to get me right back to that sweet, sweet point of no return.

“Doing what my dear?” he asked, as though he were speaking directly to the slippery folds of my hopelessly turned on body. “This?” As he spoke, he licked the full, firm tip of his tongue once, all the way up against the length of my shuddering pussy, just exactly in the way he had recently learnt. A few more of those licks and I’d be a wild, quivering mess in no time.

“Yes, that,” I said and playfully slapped his bare shoulder.

“Yes ma’am.”

God I loved the way he said that, and I looked down to see his strong pecs and shoulders working as he placed his hands on my hips and pulled me deeper down onto him. My toes were shaking, barefoot on the kitchen floor. My loose bun was beginning to come undone.

“I won’t do this again,” he said, and with the word “this” he stroked his long tongue again all the way up, sending my body jerking a little.

“Naughty. I said don’t do that…” I muttered, my breath coming in gasps now as I tried to steady myself against the swelling waves of pleasure pulsing over me.

“What? I already told that you that I won’t do this…” A third stroke came over my swollen clit, and my hips jumped and jerked with the pump of pleasure it sent through me.

“You bastard,” I said, the edges of my hair coming loose now and hanging low over one side of my face.

The first time it happened was on the sofa. The first time we fucked, he has dug his thick, hard cock into me and forced out strange, new sensations, feelings that washed over me and melted me completely. He still liked to tease me about the carpet cleaner we needed to rent to get rid of the enormous mark on the rug the following day. The second time it happened was even more wickedly delicious than the first. He had thrown me down on the bed, hoisted both legs high up and held my ankles in one hand, split my pussy lips open and pounded me so hard I saw stars and squirted violently all over him.

The third time, he was making a game out of ‘breaking me’. He knew precisely which buttons to press, and which pulleys and levers to activate to open my floodgates and have me a drooling, bumbling muddle within 15 minutes. Since then, I had lost count of the times we had played this game with one another. He seemed to know exactly what to do to me. And all I knew was that I wanted more and more.

I thrust myself back into the surface of the fridge and tried to still my buzzing mind. But all at once I felt him sink one and then two fingers easily into my hungry little hole, driving them up into me right to the knuckles, so swiftly I couldn’t help but yelp with pleasure. But I couldn’t go anywhere except down, onto his fingers, and deeper into that delicious ecstasy. I was close now, so close, and I suddenly felt that familiar, watery bliss boiling inside me, threatening to break loose and drench us both.

He momentarily looked up to me and smiled at my sweetly tortured face.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

“What?” I could scarcely contain myself. My knees started to shake.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said, this time more firmly.

“I’m… I’m thinking of…” I started to say, and felt my face blush hard.

“Don’t be shy. Tell me. Fucking tell me,” he said again, this time jamming his thick fingers deeper into me, stroking my hot, twitching body towards its inevitable orgasm.

“I…” I squirmed against the fridge, thrashing my head side to side, clutching down hard on his shoulders.

“Say it.” His voice was dry and dark and deep and pushed me closer just as surely as his fingers did. My toes curled and clawed at the floor as the room started to spin.

“Say it!”

“I’m going to fucking come! I’m going to fucking come all over your face!” and the last thing I saw was the naked, knotted muscles in his bicep as he pulled my body down, hard, to stop me from bucking and jerking away from him. My eyes slammed closed and something from deep inside me swirled and spun and broke loose, and soon I was coming hard down on his fingers, trying to scream but my voice bubbling out in jagged rasps as I tried to breathe through each wave of a hot, juicy orgasm.

He yanked out his fingers and I exploded, my hips curling up and sending a huge stream of liquid spraying onto his chest and chin. Before my eyelids flittered closed I looked down to see his naughty face, smiling back up at me with a wild expression of astonishment.

He released me. I shuddered and cried out. Then with a long squelch my naked, sweaty back slid down the surface of the fridge door and I crumpled down into a heap on the floor, legs still convulsing. I heard his knees crack as he stood, his tall frame like a monolith over me. He had reached in deep somehow and found one single, glorious thread running all through me, a thread that started at my throat and ended at the little buzzing nub of my clit, and he had somehow pulled, and that thread came all undone, leaving me unseamed, orgasming so hard my stitches had come loose.

Eyes closed, I reached out for him and my hand touched his hard, hairy shins. I opened my eyes to see him standing tall over me, his turn now to look down at me. I smiled; relishing what was coming, and tried to stand up. He easily put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down again.

“No, you stay down there,” he mumbled, and then pulled down his pants.

Chapter 14 - Zack

Ben flicked his wrist and the fishing line glinted in the sunshine and went plinking into the pond in front of us. It was a fancy move, for a guy who never caught a damn thing.

The late afternoon sun was hazy and golden; a kind of aimless day that made you overlook the fact that time was passing. A man could forget he had a past at all, with the light falling on the water the way it was falling just then.

“It’s going to come and bite you in the ass is all I’m saying,” he said, chewing his lower lip.

Man did I hate fishing. To make things worse he had already told me that same line three times already.

“I know …but I feel like I missed my chance already, you know?

“At some point, buddy, it’s just lying. You’re just straight up lying to her.”

I hated it when he had a point. It was really inconvenient that a bonehead like my brother was right so often.

“She’s asked me why I went to prison, so I’ve never told her. I didn’t think much would come of the whole thing anyway, to be honest. I thought she’d run screaming on the first date. I didn’t expect us to hit it off so well.”

“It’s gonna bite you in the ass, Zack. You need to tell her.”

“I wasn’t sure what we were even doing, you know? So I never went into detail. I’m not going to spill this big sob story to a woman I just met, you know? A woman I barely knew.”

“But you know her now.”

“I know. But that means it’s even harder to tell her.”

Ben chuckled under his breath. Not being completely honest with Maddy was eating me up inside. But the thought of telling her just how bad my past was felt even worse somehow.

“You two both deserve each other, I swear,” he said. “She’s the monkey who doesn’t see, and you’re the monkey who doesn’t tell. You’re honestly telling me you’ve never even looked Maggie up? Asked around about where she got to and what she’s doing?”

I shook my head.

If daggers could kill, Maggie would be a deadly assassin. She had let me know in no uncertain terms that she wanted me out of her life.

“I spent two years trying to forget about her, why would I go looking for her now? What would be the point?”

“Because maybe she’ll come looking for you?”

I watched my own line disappearing into the still water and frowned.

“How’s ma?” he said casually, realizing my patience was wearing thin.

“Ah, you know. Getting old.”

“I know, right?”

“She’s so forgetful these days. She used to be so sharp.”

“Tell me about it.”

“She’s taking care of that little kitten I got her.”

“Oh yeah? The one Maggie got her?”

“Dude. It’s Maddy.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he said and caught my eye over the fishing line.

“Forget about it.”

“Hey, Zack?”

“What?”

“You should tell her.”

After it got dark we piled all the fishing stuff back into the truck and started to make our way back home.

“Hey, how’s work man?” he said, and I realized that we probably hadn’t spoken for the last half hour at least.

“Yeah, I’m looking into some new things, kind of a lot of prospects but none of them look appealing you know?”

“Yep.”

“This airport gig is killing me, though, no doubt about it. It’s enough to make me get itchy feet again, you know?”

He turned to look at me, briefly taking his eyes off the road.

“Don’t even joke, Zack.”

I didn’t respond.

“Something else will come up. Make friends for fuck’s sake. Date around a bit.”

“Well, I already told you, I’m seeing Maddy.”

“Yeah but… just in case that doesn’t work out, you know? Nothing wrong with getting out there, keeping your options open, you know?”

I looked at him.

“You think I’m going to hurt her or something,” I said. He didn’t turn his head to look at me again.

“Zack, what if I’m afraid that she’s going to hurt you?”

Chapter 15 - Madeleine

I watched him squeeze the blood out of his steak with the tip of his knife.

I thought about how much that stupid steak had cost. About how someone like Alex couldn’t really afford it. Not like I could either, but whatever, it was his ‘treat’ and maybe I’d got some satisfaction watching him pay for it all, and try to apologize. Again. True, he had never put this much effort in before, but this dinner had all the familiar flavors of the I-swear-this-is-the-last-time type apology that Alex was so skilled at. Right down to me almost considering whether I should just go easy on him. Almost.

“What’s so different about this course and the one you did the time before?” I said.

He was dressed up nicer than I think I had ever seen him. Dark blue jacket with a collared shirt, his hair all combed back. He always did clean up nice.

“Well, this course isn’t about anger management, it’s about understanding anger. You know, getting to the root of why you get angry and what to do about it,” he said, leaning in close like he had a secret to tell me. Or like he wanted to rope me in on a pyramid scheme. I didn’t lean in myself.

“Well, that sounds great. I hope it works out for this time,” I said coldly, and looked down at my own steak. Even on that expensive china and with that ridiculous price tag, it was obvious that it just steak. Just meat. And it wasn’t even that good a steak, either. I pushed it around my plate.

“Oh, it will work this time,” he said. “I just want your friendship for now. You can take as long as you need, I understand. But I mean it Maddy, I’m making important changes. Things are improving for me.”

Since we had sat down here in this restaurant, his little speech had been suspiciously free of actual apologies. More like all the reasons why I should forget he had ever hit me, forget that he had barged into my house and got into a fight with …well, not my boyfriend, but with Zack. Whatever he was.

“Well that’s great. You certainly do have a lot of improving to do…” I said, and pushed my knife and fork together. I wasn’t even hungry.

He smiled a tight smile at me and shrugged.

“I get that you’re angry,” he said.

“I’m angry?”

“I know. I deserve you being mad at me. I know. You have every right to hate my guts right now.”

“Oh I do? How kind of you to tell me all the things I have a right to do.”

His lips twisted a little.

“Can you just meet me halfway, Maddy? Can you just acknowledge that I’m trying to apologize here?”

I scoffed and pushed my plate away.

“Oh, is that what you’re trying to do? Apologize? I hadn’t noticed,” I said. It was out of character for me, to be so bitchy. But all the things that were in character for me had never worked out for me, so why the hell not?

His lips twisted a little more.

“Maddy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened. I don’t know how many times I have to apologize.”

“You can apologize as much as you want.”

“And then?”

“And then what?”

“Do you… forgive me? Can you at least understand where I’m coming from? Christ, Maddy, you know what I’m asking you,” he blurted.

The restaurant had those weird little pretend tea lights on the table, the ones that are just an LED light in a candle-shaped piece of plastic. They flicker quite convincingly, but when your hand goes over them, you realize they’re cold and fake. No flame there. I had spent the whole day helping others, giving to others, and now here I was with Alex, and, predictably, he wanted something from me too.

“You should want to be a better person whether I forgive you or not,” I said. I don’t know where that came from, but it was the right thing to say. I wouldn’t put it past him to lose his temper in a public place, but I sensed I had a long way to go before he was angry enough to make a scene. And so I was safe. And so I kept talking.

“And just because everyone understands you and sees where you’re coming from, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t do what you did, right?”

The look on his face was stony.

A year or two ago, I would have bought all of this hook, line and sinker. I would have eaten up his story of contrition and redemption, and been more than happy to welcome him back into my life, thrilled, even, that I got to be the special woman that he’d wrestle his demons for, that he loved me, that none of it was his fault anyway.

But today, I could see it for what it was. An expensive restaurant and a nice-looking jacket didn’t hide that fact that it was the same old bullshit story as always. He leaned back in his chair and eyed me with something close to exasperation.

“Is it the other guy?” he said at last. I had been waiting for him to mention it. So far, he had said nothing. Pretended that he hadn’t had his ass handed to him just a few weeks ago and that Zack was just some inconvenient ghost that would evaporate now that he was sorry enough and promised he’d never, ever be mean again.

I returned his stony gaze.

“Is what the other guy?” I said. I thought about getting dessert, and adding it to the already bulging bill that I knew he couldn’t really afford. I hadn’t come out here with any intention to be vindictive, but something about the way he was pressing on that steak with his knife made me want to stop being so damn sweet and nice for a change.

“You know. Is he the problem?”

The cheek on this guy.

“The problem is that you’re an asshole, and so we broke up,” I said. Inwardly I winced a little, my body trained to cringe after saying something like that, used to the fact that a slap would inevitably follow. Instead, he stared at me hard, nostrils flaring.

“We’re on a break,” he said quietly. “Who is he anyway? Are you… are you seeing him?”

Oh, I was seeing him all right. Seeing his brains out on the regular, and I loved it. I was seeing him so often and so hard that some days it hurt to walk. I smiled inwardly at what would happen if I told him any of this. If I told him that Zack was better in bed, much better, that his cock was like a magic wand and that it had been teaching my body to do things I never even thought were possible. But it was my secret. One I liked keeping to myself.

“That’s not really any of your business.”

“Maddy, the guy hit me. I could press charges for assault for what he did.”

I said nothing.

“I’m serious Maddy. How would that look, especially for a guy with his history? I could go to the police station right now and I could press charges of assault for what he did.”

“And I could press charges of assault for what you did,” I spat. I hated the fact that the bruise on my cheek had already faded before he had the chance to actually see what he had done.

“Look, let’s not fight, OK? I’m here to apologize, I was wrong, I’m sorry. OK?”

“OK,” I said.

“OK what?”

I wanted to hit him myself. He was pathetic.

“OK. I’m glad you’re on the road to healing or whatever, and I sincerely hope you get your shit together, and OK, your plan sounds great. So what? What do you want from me?”

I loved the fact that he couldn’t yell in the restaurant, or reach over and pinch my arm to get me to shut up.

“I love you, Maddy,” he said, and I nearly laughed out loud at the way he said it. Not as a vulnerable, sweet admission. Not as a confession. Not as a platitude. But something like a weapon.

How many bruises had I already gathered because he loved me so much? How many stitches? How many nights had I cried away because of his stupid love? I knew what his love meant, and I didn’t want it anymore.

“Ok, but we’re not together anymore, Alex. Nothing is going to change that.” That really was the end of it. I was getting the feeling that this dinner needed to be over sooner rather than later. Why had I even come? A moment of stupid weakness. Zack didn’t know, and all of a sudden that felt like a bad mistake to have made. Alex knew how to make me crazy. But he hadn’t won this time. I had won. The angry look on his face told me that I had won, and he hadn’t expected it at all.

“So it is him then. You know, you could have just said so. Here I am making an ass of myself trying to win you back when you’ve already decided you’re going to go with some meathead…” he smirked dangerously and pushed his own plate away. Ah. This was the Alex I knew.

“Don’t call him that…”

“Where you cheating on me? Huh? How long have you been seeing this idiot for?”

“Alex, we’ve been broken up for months, I’ve never cheated on you, please, don’t raise your voice.”

“Who even is this guy?” he said, his voice louder than ever. The people at the next table looked over at us.

“Alex, calm down. Nobody cheated on anybody.”

This had been a bad idea, I could see it clearly now. Slowly, I was learning to deal with Alex, but one lesson I still hadn’t learned: there was no engaging with him at all. No apologies. No new leaves. Just the same old story again and again and again. The same ugly old leaf turning over and over forever.

“Where did you meet him? At work or something? You never go anywhere so where did you meet him. Huh?”

I was starting to get angry myself. I tried to breathe. Tried to remember that he was sick. That I didn’t have to listen to what he said. I tried to remember the little light in the dark.

“Answer me when I fucking speak to you,” he hissed, and all at once the façade was off and the Alex I knew and hated was there, in full force, only a restaurant table away from me.

I said nothing.

“Answer me,” he said, voice dripping with threat as he leaned in again, so close he looked as though he wanted to eat me.

“Answer me!”

“OK, fine! I fucking met him online, OK? On a prison dating site. He’s big and tattooed and scary looking and maybe he’s a bad idea but I don’t care, because he makes me feel amazing.”

He sat back in his seat and looked genuinely shocked.

“Maddy, what are you saying?”

I stared at his face. He was speechless.

“I think I should go now,” I said, and reached down to pick up my handbag.

A flash of panic flickered over his face.

“Go? Where are you going? We haven’t finished our dinner yet.”

I felt sincerely sorry for him.

“And I’m not your girlfriend,” I said. I felt afraid of him. I wanted to leave.

“What did he do? Is he a murderer or something? What if he hurts you?”

I only had to smirk at him for him to see the irony in what he had said.

“Tell me, Maddy. At least tell me what he did.”

“I don’t know what he did. And I don’t care.”

“So you’re just going to screw around with some weird guy who’s been in prison and you don’t even know what he did?”

I pushed back my chair and stood to leave.

“I expected more from you, Maddy. You’re being cruel. I can’t believe you’re being like this,” he said, trying a different tack. But I knew all his tacks.

“What happened to me taking as long as I needed? What about wanting to be my friend?”

I pushed the chair back in and left him there with the two steaks and the fake plastic light and the people around our table casting curious glances at us.

I walked out.

I suddenly saw my life through Zack’s eyes. When did I become such a weak, battered woman? Why on earth did I think it was a good idea to get dressed up and come out to meet this man, this man who had hurt me so much? What the hell was wrong with me?

Outside in the cool night air, I breathed in deep and felt my head clear. There was no question about it – Alex had to disappear from my life. I was done holding onto him. He was wasting my time. I could have been doing anything I wanted tonight. I could be at home with my animals, or doing something fun or …I could be curled up in Zack’s arms.

The more I walked on, though, the more Zack didn’t seem like such a savior either. If I was done tolerating crap from one man, why should I accept it from another? Maybe I did want to know. He was so evasive. Lately, I had tried asking him gently about his prison sentence, but he had only said it would be too difficult for him to say, that the wounds were still fresh. That he wanted to tell me, and he would tell me, but only when the moment was right. Well, why couldn’t I decide when the moment was right?

I pulled my coat around me and walked a little faster. I whipped my phone from out my pocket and texted him.

Maddy: Come over tonight. I miss you. We need to talk.

I stuffed the phone back into my pocket and walked on. It was blunt. Forceful even. But the evening air was so invigorating and cold, it all felt right. We did need to talk. And as I walked on, alone with my thoughts, I started to realize that I wasn’t even that scared of the dark anymore.

Chapter 16 - Zack

“When I returned home from deployment, I was in rough shape,” I said. “It was hard for me to ask for help, and back then I didn’t even know much about PTSD. I thought that I was just stressed; just getting back into the swing of things, and that it wasn’t so bad. But I was so jumpy. So paranoid, too.”

I looked at my face in the mirror. Was that the face of someone you’d trust? Would a sweet girl like Maddy believe any of it? I could go back further, I guess. I could tell her about dad and ma and why I joined the military at all. Or further back still, when I was five years old and Ben and I were still good friends and… well, none of that was important now.

I cleared my throat and looked square into the mirror again. If I had any hope of keeping this miraculous girl in my life, it would only be because I could look her in the eye and tell her the truth.

“My ex-girlfriend and I had a very difficult relationship. She waited for me but when I came back things were different between us. We fought more. We were both really angry people.”

I stopped here, distracted by the dripping bathroom tap and the thought that there was no elegant way to say what I needed to say. I straightened my shoulders and tried to keep my voice clear.

“I wanted to leave again, and she didn’t want me to. We fought so much. Eventually, I snapped at her one evening. She came up behind me and I don’t know, I just snapped. I hit her, but only by accident. Like I said, I didn’t even understand about PTSD back then. In my mind, it wasn’t really her that I hit. I just …acted from instinct. She wasn’t hurt badly, not at all. She was just shocked. She cried and cried …oh God it freaks me out just to think about the way that she cried that night. I tried to say sorry but it was no use. She was so afraid of me. It killed me. She wouldn’t even let me touch her.”

I looked at my reflection.

Was that the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Zack? Sometimes, I wasn’t even sure anymore.

“I felt so bad. She was angry about so many things, but I guess that became the thing she held onto. I told her we needed to break up, that I wanted to go abroad again, get some air. She didn’t want that either. Long story short, she reported me to the police. She …she took photos of the bruise. It looked so much worse than it was. She told everyone. I was convicted of domestic violence. I didn’t fight it. I could see how just fighting it was causing everyone so much pain, so I just went with it… I mean, I did hit her, right? It was messed up. I was kind of glad to go to prison, just to get away from everything.”

I looked back at myself, trying to see my face as she might see it. I didn’t want her to think I was some sleazy asshole trying to explain away something as rotten as hitting a woman. But I also wanted her to understand. I hadn’t meant it. I wasn’t some saint or anything, but I would never, ever hit a woman. That’s just not who I am. But there it was: I had hit her. A fact. And as that horrible purple mark on my ex’s skin leered back at me, I guess I decided that maybe I wasn’t as good a guy as I thought I was.

I took another deep breath, quickly brushed my teeth and headed out. It was weird of her, to send a text so late at night, but she lived pretty close by and she was right. We did need to chat. I drove in silence, practicing my speech in my head, nervously thumping the steering wheel. To my surprise, she was sitting outside on the steps as I pulled up into the driveway.

I parked, turned off the engine and stepped out, slamming the car door behind me.

“I thought you hated sitting in the dark?” I said playfully. I could see her white teeth smiling back at me from the porch steps.

“Yeah, I do. But tonight’s so pretty I decided to sit outside for a bit.”

I sat down beside her. I noticed she had pinned back her hair with a clip, and looking again I realized she was wearing makeup and heels. I’d have to ask her about that later.

I pulled a box from inside my jacket, tapped out a cigarette, and lit it in the darkness, the orange glow bobbing between us as we sat in silence.

She said nothing. It was my turn to speak, I suppose. I knew what she wanted to know, and enough was enough already. Either I would tell her and she’d leave, or I wouldn’t tell her and …what? I had to tell her.

“When I got back home from deployment,” I started, “I was in a pretty bad place. Back then I didn’t even know about PTSD. I thought that I was just stressed, but I was so jumpy and paranoid all the time.”

Damn. It sounded forced as hell.

“My ex and I fought a lot because of it. We were both really angry people,” I said, and I sensed her stirring in the darkness. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t. I had to go on.

“I… she came up behind me one day, just as a joke? I don’t know. She scared the daylights out of me, and I turned around and I … I hit her. Pretty hard, too.”

“You actually hit her?” said her voice in the darkness.

“I didn’t mean to, though. It was an accident.”

“So, you went to jail because you hit your girlfriend by accident?” she said, incredulous.

My eyes stung a little as I realized that no, she wasn’t going to smile and believe my stupid, almost unbelievable story and that yes, it looked bad. Really bad.

“Well, she reported me for domestic violence. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but the judge wanted to make a lesson out of me, and you know, I had this supervisor who also had it in for me since day one and he got involved, and the whole thing got blown out of proportion, and since I was an idiot and basically owned up to all of it…”

“Wait, but you did hit her?” she said.

My throat felt dry.

“Yes. Yes, I did hit her. But like I said, it was by accident.”

The night didn’t seem so cool and calm anymore.

“It just seems so weird that you would go to jail for one small mistake like that,” she said quietly.

Of course she would say that. Any woman with sense would say that. I knew what she was getting at. She waited in the dark for me to tell her what else I had done. For the secret behind the secret.

But there was nothing. Sure, technically, I wasn’t a domestic abuser. I hadn’t hit her on purpose. This much was true. But maybe I deserved the punishment anyway, in a roundabout sort of way.

I had done things in Iraq that were forgiving, but perhaps not strictly forgivable. Maybe I failed to stop myself from getting to that point. She needed me to be strong and I wasn’t, and so maybe two years was exactly the punishment I deserved. I didn’t know how to tell her this, though.

“So, you had PTSD? You hit her because you were stressed?”

I could almost feel the whirring of her brain as she tried to figure it out. Oh, it was more than ‘stress’. The things I had seen and done were not ‘stress’. When I came back, my whole world fell to pieces around me. Everything I thought I knew, everyone I loved, all of it broke down all around me, and none of it made sense anymore. I stopped being able to speak. Somedays, I felt like the only thing holding me together was the literal clenching of my jaw, or me holding my breath. That if I unballed my fists everything would fall to chaos again.

“Yeah. I was stressed. Really stressed. I didn’t mean it. I loved her. I never wanted to hurt her. But …but I did.”

This wasn’t at all how my speech was meant to go. That word ‘love’ felt dangerous on my tongue now, and I watched her in the silence as she thought a moment.

“Well, I believe you,” she said.

I hadn’t realized that she was unsure whether to believe me or not. “You did what you did, and you never meant to hurt her, so I can’t judge you.” It felt strange, as though she was just saying the words to convince herself.

“Have you ever hit a woman again? I’m just asking because you …well, when my ex came around…”

I reached out and touched her thigh. Her jeans felt so cold under my fingertips.

“Maddy, please, I beg you, whatever happens, please know that I would never hurt you.”

It’s always like this. You start life in the military with crowds of people cheering you on. They can’t wait for you to go out there into the muck and fight, and be a fucking man, and protect your country and all that other crap. And when you come back with blood on your hands, those same people are suddenly afraid. You went too close to the thing you were meant to be destroying, and now you scare them. They want you to put on a tie and a nice clean shirt and forget all about the humanity you threw away, for them.

She turned and looked at me, and I could see the distant streetlights reflecting off the wet globes of her eyes. She had that same dizzy, intoxicated look on her face as when she had first come with me, the first time she had let me deep inside her, and trusted me with those raw, unbridled parts of her that we both were shocked to discover. I had laughed and slapped her bare ass at the time. Now, just the thought of it made my stomach turn.

She exhaled loudly and tried to smile.

“Well, that’s not so bad. Weird but… at least you’re not a murderer!” she said.

My stomach lurched inside.

“I understand. I hope you never …well, it’s not for me to say. Thank you for telling me,” she said. She used exactly the same patronizing tone as my stress counsellors did. I hated it. She folded her arms tightly over her beautiful breasts and looked away again.

“Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”

She put on a pot of chamomile tea and fussed a little with the dogs. I sat on the sofa and idly scratched the ear of Merlin, an ancient collie with a habit of resting her head on people’s knees and smiling up at them.

“Are you angry?” I asked, as she busied herself round the kitchen.

“Me? No. Of course not. I understand, this is how these things go. I’m sorry you went through all that.”

The words sounded hollow. She appeared in the room with the pot and two cups, and forced another smile. Something ached at the back of my throat.

“Are you like… getting therapy? For the PTSD?”

What she meant was, are you still a threat?

I nodded.

I went once or twice a week and had sessions with some old bat who had never crossed the state line and smelt like stale smoke, but yeah, technically, I was doing all the things I should have been. Just sucking it up and dealing with it.

She sat beside me and we kissed.

This was our usual routine. The sofa was our spot. Since the first time we had fucked, this had become our little nest. The secret, sacred place where she had shown me all sorts of wonderful things, and opened up to me. The only place in this run down house where things were beautiful and magical for a moment, where her body did enchanted things and the reason they did them was me. This sofa was brown and old and scuffed, but it was also an altar where I worshipped her, and where she taught me how to open deeper and deeper doors inside her. And now, she was keeping her distance, sitting all the way over to the side and trying to smile even though I could tell she didn’t want to.

We chatted and spoke for a while and then she clinked down her teacup and leaned in closer.

“I’m sorry if I’m a bit weird about what you just told me. You know …because of the way Alex was. I would just kick myself if I went and found another guy like that, you know?”

It hurt me that I couldn’t think of anything to do or say to make her trust me in that moment.

“Yeah, I know.”

She came close and kissed me again, and I held her, gently and carefully, my thoughts all over the place. Our clothes came off easily; by now we were well used to one another, to the buttons and zips, the ins and outs. I thought of the bruises I saw on her cheek that day. I ran my hands up and down her beautiful body and kissed her sweetly, but all I could see in my mind was the black and grey of her bruised skin.

Maddy was different. She had been kind and in our hidden moments together on this sofa, she had shown me something: that though I had hurt a woman in the past, I could do other things, too. Good things. When she fluttered her eyes closed and let her head fall back, she showed me that my hands could bring pleasure, too. I didn’t want to hurt. I wanted to make her moan again, the same way she had the first time she had squirted all over me.

I scooched over on the sofa closer to her and wrapped my eager body around hers.

Everything would be fine, all could be forgiven, so long as her hair smelt just that sweet and her little tongue moved just like that over my lips. My hand at the base of her neck, I pulled her head back and kissed her throat, and then I found that beautiful dark haze descending over me again, and I began to lose myself in her again, wanting to kiss her deeper and harder. I pawed at her urgently, her body soft under my hands. I yanked her shirt out of the way, eager to get at her sweet, beautiful breasts underneath. The fabric strained and pulled in my hands.

She jumped back and glared at me, both little eyebrows kinked into an expression of concern.

“Hey, easy tiger,” she said.

My face burned. I leaned in again, but her hands were blocking her now, and though she kissed me back, her body seemed a little hesitant. Closed somehow.

“You OK?”

“I’m fine!” she said and pulled me in for another kiss.

We did all the same things we had done a dozen times before. I kissed her. I took off her clothes and she took off mine. She kissed me, sucked the tip of my cock, kissed me again. I lay down on top of her and parted her legs. It was all the same. And yet it wasn’t.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” I asked her again. She seemed irritated at the question.

“Yes, I’m fine, what’s wrong? Are you fine?”

She was right there, in my arms, and yet I felt her drifting away from me.

“When I fought with Alex …it was because …I guess he reminded me of myself. Do you understand that? I never want to be like that, Maddy.”

She smiled.

“I know.”

I slid inside her but she was all the wrong kinds of tight. She climbed on top, and again I stared at the ceiling that badly needed repairs, and my mind got tangled up on the way she was looking down at me, and how cold her body seemed compared to normal. I thrust a few times and she moaned and twisted her head side to side. I came quickly, mostly by accident, and she flopped down on me, looking relieved.

“And you…?” I said coyly, tracing fingertips down her belly and snaking them between her legs. “It’s your turn now…”, but she squeezed her legs shut and smiled that same awful, tight-lipped smile and said, “it’s OK, I’m not really in the mood anyway.”

“Was I too …was that too rough?” I asked, my cock rapidly deflating.

She wriggled off of me and reached for her shirt again.

“It’s nothing, I already said. I told you I like it rough like that, really …I’m just not in the mood for that right now.”

I kissed her a little more after that, but then we both kind of drifted off from each other. Eventually she asked when I was going to go home.

“Home? Uh, I guess now,” I said. I had stayed the night before, why couldn’t I stay now?

She nodded and busied herself with the animals again.

I left soon after.

Chapter 17 - Madeleine

I lit the match and tried to find that thin ribbon of hot air floating above it. Tried to breathe in the light. It was getting late, a good few hours past midnight, but whatever. Tomorrow would come no matter what I did.

The flame wiggled and danced between my cupped hands as it burned its slow way down the matchstick. It reached the bottom and I blew it out and lit another. My spell wasn’t working tonight. I flicked it aside and plunged myself into darkness again.

It’s not that I was scared of him. I wasn’t.

But this was all going too fast. It was pretty inconvenient, actually, that I turned into some sex-starved animal whenever he touched me. I let myself go in ways I never knew I needed to until I met him. He fucked me so hard and deep and kissed me so passionately he shook strange things loose inside. Things I had badly needed to be shaken loose. But now, here he was, telling me about a past that just didn’t match up with his sweet blue eyes, or that wild curly blonde hair of his.

The story seemed strange, too. Was I missing something? Was that a story that really made any sense?

I had gone through all the therapy a person can be expected to go through. I had been putting healthy boundaries up between me and Alex, and I had felt, really felt, that I was getting stronger and more confident about myself. I’d lost a little bit of weight lately, I felt happier and work at the clinic didn’t weight so heavily on me anymore.

So why did I feel so apprehensive? Was he about to ruin it all for me? After all, it was exactly my style to cut contact with one noxious man …and then race into the arms of another. But I didn’t have it in me to do that again. My bruises had healed but I couldn’t do that again. No more. I couldn’t risk opening up to a man who could …I didn’t even want to think of it.

But had I already gone too far?

For someone who was supposedly overcoming abuse, I seemed to like some dark things. I had pushed my body back into him, hadn’t I? I had egged him on, relishing the feeling of his hand teasing round my throat when we had sex, encouraging him to be even rougher…I had felt a sick pride to see how red my skin would be after we’d been together.

Was I the problem?

I exhaled loudly and went to the bedroom. I was exhausted. I started to change into my pajamas and get ready for bed when I heard my phone beep. It was usually a happy sound for me. The sound of a message from Zack, and like a dog I was used to salivating every time I saw that little icon and his name pop up on my screen.

I rummaged for my phone and stared at it in the dim light of the room. A text. From Alex.

Alex: You’re right. I’m selfish. I know it’s unfair to keep hounding you to forgive me. I’ll carry that guilt with me for the rest of my life. But I did mean it when I said I wanted you in my life still. As friends. Please consider it. I’m sorry.

I held the phone in my hands for a moment and thought. If it was any later I would have assumed I was dreaming. Alex was a devil. But he was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a devil I knew. Though I had gone further with Zack than I had with any man, he still felt new and scary to me. And at that point, I didn’t know which was worse – embarking on a new relationship with someone who was a potential abuser …or embarking on a relationship with someone who treated me with nothing but love and respect. At the very least, I knew how to do the former.

I texted back.

Maddy: I’ll always be your friend, Alex.

I hit send and imagined my words flitting off over the ether to him, wherever he was. I suddenly felt a pang of guilt for leaving him with that big, stupid restaurant bill.

The response was almost instant.

Alex: Can I call you?

The phone felt warm and strange in my hand. Like I was holding Alex himself, only a small and glowing version of him.

Maddy: Sure.

It was only a few moments before the phone was buzzing and flashing in my hands.

I answered.

“I’m sorry for leaving you with that bill,” I said. I heard him laugh on the other side.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just money” he said. The line went quiet.

In the dark, with just his disembodied voice coming from the phone, I felt safe for a second. I climbed into bed and curled up, cupping the phone to my ear as I tucked myself in.

“Alex, this is fucked up. I’m so tired. This can’t go on anymore. I need to let go now. And I need you to let go of me,” I said.

They were strange words, intimate words that seemed to come from somewhere far off outside of me. The second I spoke them I imagined the outpouring of rage he’d respond with, of his insults and venom. How he’d tell me it was all my fault, that we were only on a break anyway, that I owed him, that I was disgusting, that I was the fucked up one.

“I know,” he said. “Maddy, I know.”

I was flabbergasted.

“That’s …well that’s not something I expected you to ever say.”

“I know. Look, can we forget the whole dinner thing? It’s hard for me, Maddy, being without you. I get crazy and frantic and then I stop thinking and then …well, you’ve seen what an asshole I can be. I have no excuse. I don’t know. I have problems. But I’m working on them.”

“I’ve heard it all before, Alex. You hurt me.”

The line was quiet for a while.

“I know. I hurt you and you were the one person who was gentle with me. The one person who tried to understand me. And I messed that up.”

“Yeah. You messed it up a lot.”

“You know what, Maddy, you should have broken up with me a long time ago. You’re stronger than you know.”

I laughed nervously.

“Who are you and what have you done with shitty old Alex?”

“Maddy, I’m serious. I walked all over you because …because you were too good. Too sweet. I took advantage because I was an asshole, and you were kind to me, and I didn’t know what to even do with that.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Alex, the man who would have punched a guy in the nose for looking at him funny, the guy who once broke his femur but finished his 8 hour shift first before going to the ER because he didn’t want anybody to think he was a ‘pansy’ … this same Alex was now speaking clearly and directly, saying all the things I had needed him to say so, so long ago. I was speechless.

“It’s stupid, I get this idea that I could win you back somehow, but I realize that that’s just another insult to you, just another imposition, you know? I get that. I’m sorry.”

His voice sounded faint and thin. It almost didn’t sound like him at all. Wasn’t it strange, how fragile men were, after everything? I had nursed broken bones and split lips and black eyes more times than I could count. But right now, it felt like they were truly the damaged ones. For some reason, Zack flashed into my mind.

“Why did you do it, Alex? Why did you hit me?” I asked. We had never had a conversation like this before.

Silence.

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Jesus, of so many things. Afraid you would leave. Afraid you would see what a fuck-up I was. You were always so smart, you know? You always knew so much. And you always seemed so calm. It pissed me off honestly. Like you were better than me. I don’t know. It’s sick. I felt like you would leave eventually. I couldn’t talk to you. I had no idea how to even explain what I needed. I’m learning now, Maddy. Too late, I know, but I’m learning.”

In the cool dark of the night, the tears on my lower lashes stung hot.

“I’m glad, Alex. I wish you only the best,” I said. I meant it, too. The whole conversation felt like a dream, and at any moment I’d wake up and see the same old usual texts calling me a whore and it would be my life as usual and at least then I’d know what to do. But this was all so strange. I thought of Zack again. Of his story about his ex.

“Alex, I need your help with something.”

“Anything,” he answered immediately. “What do you need? I’ll help you with anything.”

“This new guy …you know the one I’ve been seeing…?” I said. I heard him draw breath on the other side of the line.

“Yeah. The prisoner. What about him?”

“Well, I need some advice. He’s a bit …he’s a bit like you, in some ways”.

“Oh yeah? Asshole’s got a left hook on him that I’m a little jealous of, but yeah.”

“I’m afraid that …don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m afraid that if I get involved with him, the same thing will happen again. That he’ll become violent, that we’ll fight. Is that weird? Does that make sense?”

In the three years I had dated Alex, we had never had a conversation this personal, let alone a conversation about another man.

The line was quiet for a long, long time. I could hear him thinking. This was crazy. Maybe I had finally broken this weird spell, and he would launch into a full-blown attack now. Like always. Would he just laugh and say how this had all been one giant prank?

“Look, I’m not a fan of the guy, Maddy. Of course I’m not. He handed my ass to me; obviously I’m not going to sing the guy’s praises. But there’s only one question you need to ask, at the end of the day.”

This was it. This was the cheesy hallmark moment when he would ask me if I loved Zack or not. But how would I know if I loved him? It was so soon. I had no idea what I really felt about him yet, wasn’t it too soon? Who could ever really say, right? Did men ever really love women anyway?

“There’s only one question I think you should ask, and that is, do you love yourself when you’re around him?” he said.

My breath under the blankets was condensing into tiny water beads on the screen of the phone. It was a damn good question. And I answered it easily.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Well, then that seems pretty clear to me. Look, can I let you in on a little secret?”

“Ok…”

“The bigger and tougher the guy? The more noise he makes and the badder he seems? Well, the tougher the guy, the softer he is on the inside. I promise. Don’t worry about guys who seem a bit dinged up. Don’t be worried about angry men. It’s the heart that matters. You’re a good person, Maddy. You just don’t know what’s good for you. Does he make you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Does he encourage you to do all the things you love, and does he ask about the things you care about and does he remember the answers you tell him?”

“He does, actually.”

“Then go for it. And Maddy, if he ever lays a hand on you …” he said, and I could hear the smile on his voice. “Well I can try beat him up for you, right? Don’t stress about that. You deserve nice things. Trust yourself. And try to remember, not all men are like me.”

I was crying. The tears rolled easily out of my eyes and into the pillowcase. Why had Alex waited so long to say all of this? Where was this sweet, understanding guy when I had needed him? Why did he have to hurt me to realize all of this? A sad sense of regret washed over me.

“Oh my god, Alex, I don’t know when you turned into, like, Oprah or something,” I mumbled, trying to wipe my cheeks. He laughed good-naturedly.

“Yeah, well, I guess they’re getting something through my thick skull at that course I told you about.”

“Oh right, the course. I forgot about that. I guess it was worth the money.”

“The money was nothing. Money’s just money. The real cost was losing you,” he said, voice serious again.

I was stunned.

“Alex, I’m sorry …but we can’t be together anymore, Alex, we can’t.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Go and be with what’s-his-face. Guy seems a little rough around the edges but he doesn’t take shit. I can respect that.”

I beamed.

“I like him Alex. I think I like him a lot.”

I heard him clear his throat on the other end of the line.

“I’m gonna go now, Maddy. It’s hard, talking to you like this. Please take care of yourself?”

“Are you …are you going now? Can I speak to you again?” I said.

It felt like Alex had been in my life forever. He had never said ‘goodbye’ and meant it before. Hell, most of our relationship was spent with me wishing he’d just go once and for all. But something in the tone of his voice let me know he was serious this time.

“Alex, I’ll miss you,” I said quietly.

“I’ll miss you too.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Maddy. Thank you for everything.”

The line went dead before I could thank him in return. And just like that, he was gone.

I lay for a long time in bed, thinking. It was so late, but my mind was racing. One of the cats jumped onto the bed and nestled beside me, and my hand went absentmindedly to stroke her warm ears as she curled up against me.

It was true. I felt different around Zack. Like myself, only better.

I drifted off to sleep, thinking how difficult it had seemed to cut the ties of the past, but how swiftly they had dissolved now, all at once. I almost couldn’t imagine life now, without a crazy ex hanging over me. Hand on the cat’s ears, I slipped into a long, dreamless sleep.

And I thought of him.

Chapter 18 - Zack

“Ben, go and call your father for dinner please,” she said.

Ma was in her reclining chair; milky eyes scanning round the living room, both her gnarled hands clutching the arms of the chair like turkey claws.

“Ma, Ben isn’t here. It’s only me. It’s Zack here with you, remember?”

She tightened her mouth a little and looked me over, and then chuckled.

“Sorry about that, just having a senior moment, honey,” she muttered under her breath.

These ‘senior moments’ were looking more and more like full blown dementia, if any of the five doctors from the last month were to be trusted. A month ago it had only been a once-daily event, and she was sly enough to hide any memory lapses inside a well-timed joke, or she’d simply shrug her shoulders and change the topic. But she was becoming worse at that lately. And the senior moments were coming thick and fast.

At her age, nobody expected her to endure much more time beyond what she’d already done. In prison, you could spot people like my mother a mile away. They were going through the motions, sure, but everyone could see that they were done. They had done their time, and now they had checked out, in spirit if not in body.

Though it chewed me up to see her like this, I was also secretly relieved. Ma had started complaining about being tired from the time I was in middle school. And she had never stopped being tired. She was still tired. Nobody would blame her if she took a rest now. Not after everything.

“Ben? Won’t you call Maggie for dinner?” she said, her eyes scanning over the room again.

I rubbed my face.

“Ma, it’s me Zack. Ben isn’t here. And Maggie isn’t here either.”

She looked puzzled and squeezed the sides of the chair.

“Is she coming for dinner?”

“No, ma, Maggie and I broke up, remember? A long time ago.”

She frowned and squeezed, squeezed and frowned.

“Broke up? Are you sure?”

I was about to say something when the doorbell rang. Who the hell could that be, so late at night? I stood up.

“That’ll be Maggie! Such a sweet girl. Go and get her, we’re starting with dinner soon.”

I sighed and walked over to the door and opened it.

My jaw dropped.

It was Maggie. Fucking Maggie. Alive and well and real as anything and standing in our doorway, her handbag held across her body and her eyes wide. I heard ma shuffling behind me and turned to see her smiling and gesturing for Maggie to come in.

“Well, don’t just stand there, honey, come inside, we’re just about to have dinner!”

Those few seconds were the most excruciating of my life. Maggie stood there, all black hair and black clothes and panda eyes just like she always did them, and everything was just the same, except she was a little older. A little more tired looking, maybe. She looked as confused as I was, and shot me strange looks as she stepped inside and stood there awkwardly as ma forced a hug on her and then pulled her into the living room. I closed the door and tried to think. I hadn’t seen Maggie in …years.

She was dead to me, for all it mattered. After everything happened, she had become a ghost. And now she was resurrected somehow and here, in my living room. For a brief moment, I wondered if something sinister was about to happen. I closed the door quietly, mind racing.

They were both sitting on the sofa. Ma gripped Maggie’s hands in hers and raced through some small talk, cooing over her and smiling.

“So what …uh, what are you having for dinner?” Maggie asked. She shot pleading eyes at me as I walked in.

“Dinner? Oh no honey we’ve had dinner already.”

I caught Maggie’s eye and we stared at each other for a moment, two whole years and a jail sentence somehow crammed in that little space between us.

“Is this a bad time? I can just go.”

“Go? Don’t be crazy, for goodness sake,” ma said and stood to hobble towards the kitchen. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave you kids be, I’ve got work to do anyway.”

“Work? Ma, what work are you doing?” I said. I couldn’t deal with this shit right now.

“Well gosh, it’s nearly 8 o’clock and I haven’t even started dinner yet, that’s what!”

I stood in front of Maggie and we looked at one another. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Your mom… she’s not well,” she said. Her voice was still that same husky timbre I remembered. The kind of voice that only went clear and bright when she was screaming at you. A dangerous voice. Threatening or sexy, depending on how sure of yourself you felt.

“Yeah. Senior moments. It’s not looking good,” I said, and rubbed the back of my neck with my hand.

“You look well,” she said quietly.

“Thanks. You too, I guess.”

I realized all at once that I wanted her to leave. I was bone tired. This shit with ma’s dementia, and with Maddy suddenly seeming all distant and weird with me, and having to make money stretch till the end of the month while I waited for my first salary from the new job to come in… it was all too much. And she was too much. She had always been too much.

“Sit with me?” she said and patted the sofa seat next to her.

I shifted my weight and crossed my arms, not budging. The faint smile disappeared from her face.

“I heard you got out.”

“Evidently,” I said. It came out sounding meaner than I wanted it to, but I hated her being in ma’s house like this. Seeing ma struggle. Why had she pitched up here so late? And wasn’t she supposed to be living out of state somewhere?

She stood up and sidled over to me, and I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck. Her perfume was too strong and her lipstick too dark. I couldn’t decipher her expression but I knew I didn’t like it. She was looking at me the same way Maddy would look at one of her sick puppies after it threw up on the carpet: half pity, half irritation.

“You’re angry at me,” she said. If she was planning on having a big fat discussion right now, she had another thing coming.

“Can I ask why you’re here?” I said.

“Just to talk. It’s been so long.”

She took a step towards me and stood close. Really close. Her body suddenly struck me as so small compared to Maddy’s. It was a tight body. All teeth and bone and spite, held together with jewelry. She was like a bat. It took everything in me not to take a step away from her. To my dismay, I could hear ma clanging pots and pans in the kitchen.

Maggie reached out and touched my arm, and my skin crawled under her touch. Before I could object, she wrapped her arms round my neck and brought herself in for a hug. A wave of anger washed through me and I pushed her back again, hard, causing her to stagger back a step.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“What are you doing?” She looked down at the place where I had pushed her, then back up at me. Her voice wasn’t at screaming pitch yet, but it sure was getting there.

“Maggie, I haven’t seen you in years. I don’t …why are you even here?”

I heard ma begin to sing in the kitchen. A hard lump gathered in my throat.

“Jeez, fuck, I’m so sorry, I thought you’d be glad to see me,” she said bitterly.

“You just disappeared, Maggie. I didn’t hear from you. It’s been two years. Where the fuck did you even go?”

“I was hurting, Zack, OK? I was really confused. A lot of stuff happened back then, you know…”

“Yeah, all stuff that you caused.”

The look on her face was painful to see.

“I was scared, Zack.”

“So, what am I supposed to do about that? Leave then. Why are you even here?” My fists were so tight I felt my nails bite into my palms.

She sighed. “I see that not much has changed.”

“What do you want, Maddy?” I was more than bone tired.

“Maddy? Did you just call me Maddy?”

My skin prickled into a cold sweat.

“I think you should just go. Unless you had something specific you wanted to say, well, it’s late and I have to work tomorrow…”

“Who’s Maddy?” she asked, quick as a fox. She was almost smiling. I looked her square in the eye and sighed loudly.

“A woman I’m seeing.”

A wonderful woman, my inner dialogue continued. A woman who taught me things I didn’t even know I needed to learn. A sweet, beautiful, loving woman, one who’s very body seemed designed for every form of pleasure. A woman who made me want to weep with joy every time she looked my way and smiled. A woman who knew my dark, sordid history. Most of it anyway. And a woman who was drifting away, even now, even at this very second as ma was making dinner for the second time that evening, and my sordid past had rung the doorbell and waltzed into my living room in black stilettos, like nothing had ever happened.

“A woman. Is it serious?” she asked. Like she had any right to know.

“Yes. I think so.”

She looked at me.

“Does she know about me?”

I knew how her mind worked. For Maggie, everything was about her, and she had endless energy for creating whatever drama she needed to if she happened to find that something had the audacity to not be about her.

“Yes,” I said simply.

I knew that for Maggie, words were weapons, and she loved to take yours from you and turn them right back against you. So I gave her just one.

She took a step back and slowly paced around the room, picking up ma’s little ornaments and knick-knacks in her hand, one at a time, examining each one like she was deciding whether to smash it onto the ground or not. She seemed unimpressed with everything.

“And does she know about your …little issue?” she asked, with slow, quiet deliberation, almost sneering the words.

“That has nothing to do with anything. There is no issue. You know I was getting help for that, even before I went in.”

She shot me a poisonous look.

“So you haven’t told her then,” she said, and smiled darkly.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Poor girl.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She paced around the room a little more, like a panther in its cage, like she was gathering up strength to say the most biting thing she possibly could. There was a time when Maggie was young and sweet. When her black hair had a playful blue glint to it. Not anymore though. Life had done weird things to her. She picked up a tiny crystal frog in her hands and turning it over and over.

“I think you’d better go now, Maggie,” I said, and took a step towards her. The second I did, she jolted away from me. Both her hands instantly flew up as though to defend herself, a little black deer in headlights. She seemed genuinely alarmed. Was I such a monster? Was I so bad that people needed to be jittery around me? She gave a nervous smile and placed a hand on her chest to calm down, as though someone had just jumped out at her from behind a door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly more serious. “You’re not the only one with flashbacks, you know.”

She squirmed a little under my gaze. I felt like shit. It had taken all of five minutes of seeing her again and the old familiar feeling had come rushing right back: around Maggie, I was always the villain. Always the unwanted brute. Able to make her wince and cower just by moving too quickly.

I wrestled internally for a moment, wondering whether reaching out and hugging her would be soothing or just another insult for her to shrink back from. For a moment, her hair had that glossy blue tint in it again.

“Maggie …I’m sorry. What the hell happened to us? How did it get this bad?”

Like some kind of dangerous creature wriggling off a fly, she shrugged and looked up at me, eyes hardening up again. Here she was, my past, in the shape of a thin, angry woman. You may be able to run away from the past for a while, sure, but those things carry on living just the same without you. While I had my back turned, Maggie had become a strange caricature of herself.

The words that came out of her mouth next were kind and sweet, but said with a hidden venom. She made me remember how everything with her had always been just a little threatening, a little strange. She was the wasp hiding inside a flower. She painted her long nails red and smiled, but I was never sure what that smile meant.

“I don’t know what happened to us. Too much.”

“I’m sorry, Maggie, for everything.”

“I’m sorry too.”

“Have you been coping OK? With work and stuff? How’s everyone? I heard you moved.”

She smiled wistfully and tilted her head.

“I’m fine. Life goes on. Whatever. I just …I thought of you a lot, when you were away. I had a lot of time to think.”

“Me too.”

She lifted big, liquid eyes up at me.

“I’ve missed you, Zack.”

My jaw tightened. I reached out and hugged her after all. She didn’t resist. So I held her close a little and hugged her, and she let me.

“I missed you too, Maggie.”

Her body felt small and nervous in my arms. She leant into me a little, pressing her cheek against my chest. Despite myself, despite everything in me railing against it, despite everything that had happened and despite two whole years I had spent trying to wash her little black tendrils from out of my mind, despite all that, I felt my body responding to her. I tried to push her away again but she held on to me. Her body against mine reminded me of things. Of the things I knew she kept underneath all that black clothing. Of how things used to be between us.

“Do you remember how angry you used to be…?” she whispered, and before I knew it her hand was pressing urgently against my crotch. I shuddered and closed my eyes. Of course I remembered.

“How could I forget?” I said, and her hand was like a spell on me, conjuring up a past that I had tried so hard to forget, but which my body somehow remembered. I became so hard it nearly hurt. She rose up to her toes and whispered seductively into my ear.

“You know what I missed the most, Zack? Missed more than anything?”

I was more than a hundred pounds heavier than her and taller by a foot, but pulling away from her grasp at that moment seemed liked the hardest thing in the world.

“Do you know what I miss, Zack? I miss how cruel you were,” she continued. I twitched in her hands, trapped, unable to decide if I even wanted her to stop.

“Do you remember how hard you used to fuck me? You used to call it your ‘haze’, do you remember? I remember,” she whispered.

I groaned and pushed her away, shaking my head.

“Maggie, no. I can’t.”

She drew back and looked me over.

“What? That other woman?”

“I care about her. She’s special. She’s a good woman. I want to do the right thing this time,” I said, almost pleading.

She giggled.

“The right thing? Zack, the right thing for you is to stay away from any ‘good woman’. You’re a menace,” she said darkly.

“I’m different now.”

She looked down at my crotch and smirked at me.

“Really? You seem just the same to me.” She leaned in for another kiss, but I twisted my head away from her.

“I mean it, Maggie. I’m trying to be better.”

She cocked her head to the other side, undeterred.

“I understand you, Zack. We understand each other. There is no better for someone like you. But I don’t care how fucked up you are. We could try again…”

“I think you’d just better go,” I said, and squared my shoulders. I thought of Maddie. Of her mousy hair and fleshy hips. “That’s all in the past now.”

She frowned and shrugged, her mouth twisted.

“Suit yourself,” she said breezily. “When you break this other chick’s heart and she gets a restraining order against you or whatever, get in touch with me if you like. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be waiting around for you though.”

When she opened the door to leave, a big gust of cold wind blew into the house and lingered, even after she slammed the door again. I stared at the space where she had been standing. The frog had been put back down on the table in the wrong place, carelessly.

“Zack?”

I turned to see ma in the kitchen doorway, her old apron tied on and her brows knitted.

“Zack. We’ve already had dinner haven’t we?” she said, looking miserable. I nodded and she came up to me, and I folded my arms around her and pulled her frail body close.

“I’m scared, Zack. It’s happening so often now.”

I squeezed her and kissed her head. It smelt like powder and paper and sadness.

“I know, ma. I’m here. Don’t worry about it. I’m here.”

“Did I hear voices? Was somebody in here with you?” she said, and lifted questioning eyes to me.

“Yeah …it was uh …it was Maggie.”

She started and pulled away from my arms.

“Maggie?”

Her face was twisted in confusion.

“Unless we’re both having a senior moment, ma, Maggie came round. We chatted for a bit. I told her to get lost.”

Ma stepped forward and patted my arm knowingly.

“You don’t let that witch come inside here again. She’s done enough damage already.”

I hugged her again.

“I know what you need!” she said, clapping her hands together with glee.

“What’s that?”

“My famous spaghetti bolognaise. It’s so late and we both haven’t had any dinner yet, that’s the problem,” she said, and made for the kitchen.

I tried again to swallow down the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t go. Maggie was a bitch. I hated everything she was and everything she reminded me of. But there was one small irritating detail: she was right. About everything.

“Sure, ma. Your spaghetti’s the best.”

Chapter 19 - Madeleine

I smiled at the piece of paper, read the word written on it once over again, and folded it half a few times.

Alex.

I held the ball of paper in my fingertips, dipped it over the flame and watched as the fire licked the end and was soon burning it up. First the “A” disappeared, then the “L”, and I smiled when only “EX” was left. And then that, too, burnt away, and his name turned to cinders in my hands, and those blew away and disappeared as well.

I took a deep breath.

Today would be a good day.

I had already discussed it all with my therapist. I was allowed to want things. To trust myself again. To open up to Zack and be vulnerable with him, even though it was the scariest thing in the world for me. Even though he had a dark past. Even though he had done to others the one thing I swore I would never let anyone do to me again.

He was going to be here any minute, and so I dashed around the house quickly, kicking cat toys under the sofa, plumping the pillows and arranging and rearranging the candles neatly. It wasn’t the fanciest house you’ve ever seen in your life. But at the least it could be comfortable.

Being so proactive was a new thing for me. And the prospect was exciting. Me, Maddy Bright with her love handles and unfashionable hair and abandonment issue; little old me, warts and all, finally, once and for all, in a real, genuine relationship. Not the hostage situation I had going on with Alex. Not a pact with a broken boy I would nurse to health like I did one of my rescues. But a healthy, grown up and mature relationship. Why not? If Alex could move on and improve in life, so could I.

I heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel outside and raced to the mirror to check my reflection. He’d kiss all this lipstick off anyway, but I liked that I put it on all the same.

“Zack is that you?” I called out. When he appeared in the doorway I bounced over to him for a big hug, then planted my lips onto his and kissed him deeply. He laughed, then pulled back to get a good look at my outfit.

“Whoa, will you just look at you! You expecting anyone?” he said, with that deliciously naughty twinkle in his eye. I swatted his arm and pulled him inside.

“As a matter of fact, I am, silly. His name is Zack Hunter and he thinks he’s funny. You wouldn’t have seen him around by any chance, would you?” I said and beamed at him. Even I was surprised by how happy I was to see him.

He gave the two dogs lazing on the carpet an affectionate belly rub each and then stood to smile back at me.

“Zack you say, huh? Yeah I might have heard about that guy …he’s a shady one, I’d be careful,” he said, and then reached out and pulled me back into his arms for another kiss.

I loved how easy it was for us. How right it all felt. Why had I ever resisted him? Who cared if he had some trouble in the past with an ex? Didn’t we all? But that was the past. We were here in the present now, so what did any of that matter?

“Come and sit down. I have so much I wanted to tell you.”

He looked a little nervous as I sat beside him and cleared my throat. I made a mental note to get a better sofa. If I were going to be a mature, healthy, put-together adult, I’d have to start by getting some more sophisticated furniture, for one.

“I broke up with Alex. Properly this time.”

He looked at me blankly.

“I know, I’ve been broken up with him for ages, but this time everything’s really well and truly over. That cord is cut,” I said, and mimed a string that I snipped in half with two fingers.

He smiled and placed a firm hand on my knee and squeezed.

“That’s great, Maddy. I’m glad to hear that. It sounds like you guys had a really …unhealthy thing going on. I’m glad you’re not going to take his shit anymore.”

“Oh, but that’s the thing, that’s what different this time. I think I actually understand all his shit now. I think I can forgive him. We talked it all out, and you know, I can’t describe it, but I feel like I can move on from this now you know?”

I was expecting him to be a little more excited. I guess you can’t expect people to throw a party the fortieth time you’ve broken up with the same guy. But still.

“I just …I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. About him, about you. That’s why I wanted to talk to you today” I said. I didn’t like that my words seemed to make him frown. I went on.

“I’m sorry about the other day Zack. How …weird things were between us. I just needed to get my head clear about some things. I was just… I was scared.”

His face dropped. His pale eyes were flat but infinitely deep somehow. Like the sky. Like anything could be going on in there. He said nothing. This wasn’t quite how I had planned things. Like an idiot, and totally not like a mature, sophisticated woman who had her shit together, I carried on talking.

“So I guess what I needed to tell you is that I’m over all that now. New leaf and everything you know? I had such an interesting conversation with Alex, and I think I had some real insights into things, and into, you know, the whole situation, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you, because my therapist says I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for the things I want, and what I really want is to be honest with you, and I feel like we’ve gotten on so well till now and so…”

“Maddy, we should stop seeing each other.”

His voice was like a kick to my guts.

“What? But why?”

He was perched against our same old sofa, the unassuming place where this all had started, and now he was telling me he wanted to end it. He couldn’t make eye contact.

“Zack, why? I don’t understand.” My sophisticated woman act was hanging on by a thread.

“Because I’m not good for you. You said so yourself, you’re scared of me,” he said, staring so hard at the floor I thought he’d burn holes into it.

“But …but…”

“It’s true though, isn’t it? And you should be scared. I’m fucking scary. I could hurt you. Maybe people like you and me never change. Maybe you keep going after guys who hurt you and I keep going after women who let me hurt them, and maybe that’ll never change.”

My ears stung. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. The makeup on my face suddenly seemed so embarrassing. So stupid and weak. I took a deep breath and tried to think. This was fixable. It had to be. He didn’t mean it. He didn’t want to break up, surely.

“You’re wrong, Zack. People can change. So you hit your ex once, so what, big deal. People hurt people in this world, but it’s OK to move on from that. You can’t beat yourself up about that forever.”

He sat still but I could tell his muscles were working and tightening under his tanned skin. I could almost make out the wires in his strong neck slowly ratcheting up. All at once I heard Alex’s voice in my head: the harder the guy on the outside, the softer on the inside. I wasn’t scared anymore. The air thrummed while I waited for him to say something, anything.

“There’s other stuff, Maddy. Stuff you don’t know about.”

“Like what?”

“What I did in Iraq. What we all did.” He still couldn’t bring his eyes up to meet mine. I smiled and took a step to him.

“God, Zack, I don’t care about that. You needed to do what you needed to do. Nobody blames you for that. It’s not your fault, I mean come on, it doesn’t mean we have to break up…”

“I did bad things, Maddy.” He was wringing his hands, left over right over left again, as though he was trying to wash away something stubborn, something that wouldn’t come off. I took another step towards him.

“That’s all in the past now,” I said softly.

“No. It isn’t. I see their faces every night in my dreams,” he said, voice choking.

It hadn’t been that long ago since we had lain down on that very sofa together, his strong, naked body seeming like the safest place in the world. He looked so much smaller to me now. I went over and sat on the sofa with him, as though being there would protect me somehow from all the things he was saying. I reached out and carefully put my hand on his back.

“It’s not your fault, Zack. I know you would never want to hurt anyone on purpose. Whatever it is you did over there, I’m sure it’s not like you enjoyed it or anything.”

“Didn’t I?”

I snapped my hand back as he shot me a vicious look. The stinging started up in my ears again, stirring up into a full-blown whine.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? What I fucking said!”

He sprung up and all at once he swung a long leg back and hurled it forward, kicking the coffee table and sending it tumbling into the corner. I screamed and jumped back, but he pinned me in place with one hard look, his eyes wild and his chest heaving.

“You like this?” he yelled. “Huh? Think this is something you can fix?”

Though I tried not to, I began to cry. Maybe he was right. There was nothing else for me. Nothing but to repeat this same sad, stupid story over and over again.

He was pacing aggressively up and down the living room now, wiping his face, spitting mad.

“Being there did something to me, Maddy. I’m not a good man…”

“Yes you are!” I cried, trying to convince myself more than him. Not a bad man, he had said, but a man. My head was spinning.

“Listen to me, Maddy. You want the truth? All of it? Here it is. I liked it. The …stuff that happened there, I can’t explain it. A part of me wanted it. A sick part. It changed me, Maddy.”

We stood together in silence for a moment, the coffee table a sad casualty, keeled over to the side and everything that was on it splayed all across the floor. The world went dark for a moment. I stood dead still, mesmerized by his feet on the floor. Pacing up and down. Up and down. The fog in my head was clearing a little. Up and down. A part of me had wanted it to. All the pain. All the slapped skin and twisted wrists.

He took a deep breath and stared at me like he would pounce on me any second, then started pacing again.

“So we should break up. There’s no other way. Find a nice guy who won’t bring this sick shit into your life and take care of your animals and ju--”

“You let that bitch send you to jail because you felt guilty,” I said, cutting him off.

“What?”

“I get it now. I think I understand. You felt bad, for whatever it is that you did over there. Whatever awful thing you think you did, you came back and you were just looking for an excuse. And you didn’t fight her because you felt bad. You wanted to be punished.”

He stopped pacing.

“Don’t try to fix me, Maddy. It can’t be done,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Some animals are like this. Abused dogs, especially, or animals that have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They curl their spines and bare their teeth and snap at anyone. But they especially snap at people who want to be kind to them.

“I don’t care about any of it, Zack. I like the things we do together. Even the …dark things.”

“You should dump me.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then I’ll go,” he snapped and made for the door.

“You’re not going anywhere either,” I said firmly.

He looked at me.

“Then what? You like this?” he scoffed. ”You like having some big crazy out-of-control guy in your living room?”

And then, God help me, I did something that took all the strength I had left. I didn’t know how the fuck to be a put-together, sophisticated woman. I didn’t know how to pretend that I didn’t crave him, didn’t think about him. That I was fine on my own and didn’t need anyone. But I did know how to do something.

I took a step towards him.

I had nothing left. Being kind is the only weapon I’ve ever had, and it was the only thing I could now, to stop him from walking out of that door and leaving me forever.

With shaking hands, I lifted the hem of my shirt over the top of my head and flung it off to the side. Standing in my jeans and bra, my skin crisped up under his gaze. Slowly, I took off my bra, too. My nipples hardened and tightened to a slightly deeper shade of pink-brown. It was as though I had charmed a snake. He was frozen where he stood, watching me rapt, something dark going on behind those light eyes.

I unbuttoned the jeans, bent to slide them off and then straightened, throwing them in the direction of my poor murdered coffee table. My panties disappeared the same way, and I stood naked before him. My permanent ‘last few pounds’. My stretchmarks. My clumsy knees and nerdy hair. I held my shoulders back and stared back at him, hard, and it took everything I had in me.

His expression swirled and contorted as he looked me over. Alex hadn’t given me any advice about what to do about a man like this, and so I was going to have to figure it out myself.

“I’m not good for you,” he muttered, unconvincingly.

I took a step forward.

“I’ll only hurt you,” he said again, and this time he was the fearful one. I took another step closer to him. I took a deep breath and opened my arms slightly to him, presenting myself.

“Don’t hold back,” I said.

Chapter 20 - Zack

The haze lingered on the edge of my awareness. Dark, misty. Dangerous. I had put it away a long time ago, and now she was pulling it out of me again.

Her body was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. Every part of her curved, every line ended in some delicious cleft or curl, every surface of her looked silky and full. Just looking at her turned me on. I stiffened instantly, but more than that, I felt it in the back of my throat.

The haze descended slowly. And I let it.

I swiftly stepped back into the room and with a brutal kick, banished the upturned table even further. Even from where I stood, I could see the bob in her throat as she swallowed, watching me wide-eyed. I approached her, then roughly pushed the sofa out of the way. It was an ugly fucking sofa, and it was too small, and I hated it. No, what I was going to do to her now would have to happen on the floor.

A little smile twitched on the corner of her mouth, even though her eyes were still wide and wobbly with fear. What did such a sweet, pearly-skinned thing like her know about anything? About death? About violence? About fucking? She was all sweetness and light, this little bubble, this peach, and I was about to do things to her that would make her scream and cry and beg for mercy.

I picked up a floor lamp and brought it up over my head and then swung it down in one savage movement, smashing the glass on top. I tossed it aside and heard it clatter away.

She wanted it? I’d give it to her all right. The haze came over me and I let it. The room around receded. All her girly little trinkets disappeared, all the mismatched furniture, and the light went dim, and all that remained was my body, and her body, and the nasty things I was going to do to it.

I peeled off my shirt and let it slip to the ground. I loosened my belt and unzipped, relishing how the sound of the buckle hitting the floor seemed to send a fresh wave of panic through her. But she stood her ground. She looked at me defiantly, then down at my rapidly hardening cock, then back up at me again. “Don’t hold back,” she had said. I liked that. It was cute.

I kicked the crumpled jeans away and gobbled her up with my eyes. Like a little girl who’s just defied her parents, she raised her chin and stared straight back at me. Behind the falling haze, a part of me was terrified. This was it. She’d run away for sure, after all this. But the haze said, so what? Then fuck her before she does. At the back of my mind, a little voice said I would be too rough, that she was too kind, too lovely, too sweet. The haze thickened around me and said, sweet? Not for very much longer…

“Get on your knees,” I said, without thinking.

She was on the floor in a split second. I sauntered up to her and stood there for a moment, enjoying her eyes as they tracked my cock swaying in front of her face. She was so pretty. I lowered my fingertips and gently stroked the side of her cheek, a little open-sesame gesture to open up that pouty mouth of hers. She opened up, obediently. I slipped inside her warm mouth. The soft pad of skin under her chin bulged as she struggled to take me all in, her eyebrows sloping as I pushed, and pushed. She was warm inside, all the little parts of her mouth and tongue trembling around my shaft, and I pushed in further still.

Her flat hand came up to touch my groin, halting me at that depth, showing me that I could go no deeper. I flicked her hand away again and smiled. Good. That only let me know exactly where I would be pushing in even more. I slid in further, and she squeezed her eyes shut, both hands clasped in her lap like a choir girl, eyebrows kinking with concentration.

Her little tongue desperately tried to suck around me, but I placed a firm hand on her head.

“Did I tell you to suck?” I growled. She stopped. I didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to be fucking in her, as far as I could go. I had fucked the rest of her so thoroughly already, but this place, this sweet little spot right at the back of her throat, this wasn’t completely mine yet.

“Don’t move,” I ordered, and she obeyed, her overactive little eyebrows going still. I pressed in further. Pressed in so far that the flat of my stomach met her lips, and then, I went in further. Till the full length of my cock disappeared completely into her. Till my balls were against her chin. Fuck yes. Just like that.

Her legs squirmed and her chest fluttered a little as she focused on squeezing me all in. I reached down and grabbed a rough fistful of her hair, then slowly, so slow it nearly made me groan out loud, I pulled back her head and watched as the red, slick shaft of my cock slid all the way back out again, and I marveled at how she had swallowed it all, right the way to the hilt.

I was about to slam it back into her face again when I peered down and saw she had parted her kneeling legs, and had squirrelled away a little hand, a hand which was now working furiously on her clit as she held me in her mouth. She was fucking enjoying it. The haze thickened. I drew back, and slid the full length back into her again, holding her head firmly in place. And then I did it again. And again.

Her lower lashes were going damp with the strain of opening her throat for me, but not for one second did her little fingers stop. I growled and picked up the pace, burying both hands in that pretty girl hair of hers. Fuck, she felt amazing. I was too big for her. Too big by far. But come hell or high water, she was going to take every last inch of it, and I was going to make her, one way or another.

She choked a little but I kept going. I was in the haze. The small, fearful part of me was gone. All that remained was my body, and hers, the nasty things I was going to do to it. When I’d had enough I pulled upwards on her hair and brought her staggering a little to her feet. Her lips were glossy with spit and out the corner of my eye I saw her hand held off to the side, fingers also wet. She stared even more defiantly at me. Good. I was going to fuck her so hard and so good she’d be sorry she ever dared open this can of worms. Fingers still laced in her long hair, I pulled her firmly over for a kiss, and pressed a greedy tongue deep into her, guiding and angling her head as I did so. She kissed back, without resistance.

“On the floor,” I said, and released her hair. She got back onto her knees again, but I laughed, reached down to grab her shoulders, thrusting her forward and onto her hands and knees.

“Like a dog,” I said, and she dutifully hung her head low and took a deep breath. It was a side of her I had never seen before. Not ‘submissive’. Oh no, Madeleine Bright could never submit to anyone. It was more like …an offer. As she settled into her new stance she raised her ass a little and waggled it. It sent a wicked thrill through me, knowing that she knew full well what I intended to do to her.

I positioned myself behind her and with my foot, tapped the inside of both her inner thighs.

“Wider,” I said.

She spread her knees a little further apart, splitting that gorgeous cunt of her straight down the middle and giving me the most perfect view of the wet little slit down the middle. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She had said time and time before how this position was too much for her, how I was too big for it, how I went in too deep that way. I grasped her round hips and with one strong pump of my hips, I sunk deeply into her and paused as she whimpered below me.

The black haze buzzed around me so much that my thinking slowed and then stopped completely. Everything dissolved into sensation, the feeling of her wet, tight body engulfing me …the shuddering sound of her breath rushing into and out of her beautiful body …the naughty sounding squelch as I buried myself deeper and deeper into her excited little pussy.

I banged my hips harder and harder into hers, fists holding tight round her waist, pushing her knees even further apart with my legs, so that she had no choice but to flop down and back onto my cock …all of it. With each stab I felt myself growing wild, becoming harder inside her, swelling and knotting up inside the glorious heat of her, the tip of me threatening to explode.

Her heavy breasts swung wildly with each thrust. I could see her slender, outstretched arms hopelessly trying to steady her against the delicious cruelty I as pounding down onto her again, and again, and again. Her greedy little pussy puffed up and slip all the way down me, barely kissing the base of my cock before stroking me all the way up again, dousing me in her sweet juices, thrust after thrust after thrust.

I knew I was being too rough.

I was going too hard.

Too fast.

But I couldn’t stop. As I lifted her hips up and brought her down again and again onto my merciless cock, her knees nearly came off the floor entirely, and a deep guttural sound came over me at the thought of her so desperately compromised.

Fucked. Utterly impaled.

I threw back my head and let the rippling of her body wash over me. The haze closed over me like a dark, formless envelope. I realized my cheeks were wet. I looked down at her magnificent backside to see it slapped raw and red. Was that me? Had I done that to her? It didn’t matter now. The haze closed over me, cleanly, and I disappeared far away into myself.

Into her.

Chapter 21 - Madeleine

I lay against his chest until the air outside changed and it grew dark. It might have been an hour. It might have been three. I had placed my sweat-soaked and exhausted body length-ways along his, and as both our bodies cooled, it seemed that we had cemented ourselves together like that, permanently. There didn’t seem to be any reason to move anyway.

Not yet.

I nestled my head in the crook of his armpit and snuggled against him as he lay staring up at the ceiling. Or someplace far beyond the ceiling. Slowly, like I was afraid to scare it off if I moved too quickly, I began to think about what had happened to me. To him.

Gradually, and then all at once, something had come over him. His edges blurred. He became an animal. I struggled to keep up with him. Somehow, his face had dissolved and he stopped being Zack, and became …something else. Meat. A body. Something sad and wild and hungry and full to bursting with rage.

I settled against his body and he congealed against me, settled back into human form, re-shaped into the man I knew. But my own body was tender. I had come hard and desperately, shuddering and crying and with nothing to hold onto but the very man who was responsible for all the pleasure-pain in the first place. There was not an atom, not an inch that he hadn’t given me; everything was spent. His orgasm came over him like a defeat and he cried out like an animal, the knots all along his strong abdominals yanking tight as he bucked and quaked against me.

We had gone all the way to the edge. And then over it. I was covered in bruises and welts and patches of red, angry flesh. My body was sore and stretched and stinging. And yet, I felt more alive than ever. Stronger than ever. Like the surface damage to my body only fired me up somewhere deeper down, where it counted.

I traced my fingertips over the pink and red marks blooming along my upper thighs. I knew marks like this – they would morph into black bruises overnight, slowly, as my body came to realize the insult and decided to sulk in nasty shades of green and grey. But these bruises were different.

“That looks bad,” he said at last, looking down at my body. I had forgotten what his human voice sounded like.

“Not bad. Good,” I said.

But that wasn’t quite right either. It was bad. Bad and good. It didn’t make much sense in my mind yet. But as I stroked absentminded fingers over those raw places on my skin, I wondered whether my body already knew. The words ‘good and bad’ didn’t even begin to properly hold all the strange sensations swirling in me. Zack seemed beyond that somehow. He had most eloquently told me what he needed, not with words, but with his body. And somehow I had understood, not with my brain, and not even with my heart. But somewhere in these strange, blooming bruises on my legs and belly and arms. I stroked them gently, and understood.

“So…” he said.

“So,” I returned.

“I’m sorry about what I did to your furniture.”

“It’s just furniture.”

“And I’m sorry about what I did to your …butt.”

I laughed.

“You’re not a bad man Zack. But you are a man.”

Chapter 22 - Zack

There was something so pleasing about watching the white paste squashing seamlessly into the cracks. I pressed over the holes and dents, again and again, easing the mixture in and then leaning back to admire my smooth handiwork.

Once I had finished the ceiling, the rest of the house had started crying out to me for repairs. The tiles in the guest bathroom needed to be grouted again. Her extractor fan needed to replaced entirely. The woman I loved had cat flaps on every door in her home, each and every one of them broken. Once I went into repair-mode, I found I had my work cut out for me.

“Who’s a little jelly bean nose? Who is? Is it you? Hm? Are you a jelly bean nose?”

She came into the living room cooing over a ball of fluff in her cupped hands. She always did have a penchant for kittens.

“Maddy, I think you’ve identified who is, in fact, a jelly bean nose. Can you come over here and hold this for a second?” I said and held out the trowel to her as I tried to wobble down the step ladder.

She shifted the kitten into one hand and took the trowel from me with her other hand, giving me a fleeting peck on the cheek.

“If I had known how useful you were going to be around here, I would have adopted you much sooner,” she said and winked at me. I playfully slapped her ass.

“Watch out, I’m not completely tame yet,” I said, and wiped away some sweat with my forearm.

“Well, you have just over two hours till we have to leave.” She glanced at her watch. “How’s the speech coming along?”

She looked radiant today. When she got really busy, really distracted with playing with the dogs or when she came back from a long walk, her hair always went a little crazy, sending golden brown filaments all over her head that, in the right light, looked like a crown.

I peeled off my shirt and started for the shower.

“No speech. I’m just going to speak from the heart, just like you said I should,” I smiled. She lifted an eyebrow at me and smiled doubtfully. I cleared my throat and pretended to be on a podium, addressing the kitten in her hands.

“Gentlemen, there is no time for speaking delicately. We are soldiers, so let’s start by speaking honestly, before anything else. Before we can be strong for others, let’s be strong for ourselves. Can we dig deep to be face our own enemies first, our own fears, our own monsters and terrorists within?” I said, doing my best to come across as a serious orator, leaning in to the little creature purring in her hands. It mewed. I nodded seriously.

“It’s no longer a question of psychology. PTSD isn’t something that strikes, like a cold virus, just at random. It is a natural and obvious reaction to atrocities that no person should ever be forced to face. PTSD is not something to be medicated, to push away. It’s something to be listened to. Trauma is a sign that no matter how dark times have been for you, you are still alive. Alive and kicking. Anger is a gift. Fear is a gift…”

The kitten mewed again; cutting me off of the part of my speech I had worked hardest on. She smiled broadly at me and giggled, then put the kitten down. We both watched it scamper off.

A lot can change in a year.

An old house can become new. Bruises and welts can heal. And with patience, the black haze in my heart was lifting, evaporating off, molecule by molecule. It had started with a small blog, and then a book, and now I was speaking at six different places all over the country, addressing others like me, those men who had carried around dark hearts for too long.

I headed for the shower but she playfully caught my arm and pulled me towards her.

“Hey, you can’t just parade around here half naked like that and expect to get away with it.”

I kissed her, smiling.

“Hot Guy Six Actual, I repeat Hot Guy Six Actual, do you read? This is Mad Dog Delta, requesting permission to grope, sir, over.”

She was so cute when she got like this. And she always, always messed it up. I pressed my bare chest against her and drew in a deep breath of her smell. All warm soap and perfume and the faint whiff of kitten.

“Roger that, Mad Dog, we are Oscar Mike and ready to rendezvous at approximately,” I lifted her wrist to look at her watch, “fifteen hundred hours, do you copy?”

“Roger that!” she giggled and leaned in for a kiss.

She collapsed into me and our hungry mouths met. We had already made love once this morning, but when she got in this mood, there was no quenching that appetite of hers. The woman I loved had a lot of broken appliances in her life. And she was sexually ravenous. For both of her needs, I obliged happily.

She was my suburban Disney princess, nursing to health all the broken, ugly animals nobody wanted, including me. More than any soldier I had met in my short and tortured military career, Maddy had a capacity for pain that defied logic. She swallowed it, smiled, and still found the guts to look sweetly and kindly at the world. She had a strength that took my breath away. And as I quickly peeled off her clothes, for the second time that day, I was reminded that it wasn’t just her strength that left me breathless.

My hands melted over her warm, inviting flesh and she moaned and sighed, our bodies slipping easily into the now-familiar rhythms. I wanted to share it with everyone. I wanted to tell everyone how the curve of her hip had healed me. How salvation had arrived in her lips and her deft little fingers and her smile. At the talk this evening I was going to tell the men about the prison of the mind, and how freedom was scarier than any jail, about how the wounds we inflicted on ourselves were deeper than any the enemy could inflict on us.

But the secret was simpler than that.

Breath to breath, skin to skin, pain to pain, Maddy had taught me something strange and yet completely ordinary.

The real lesson I had learnt was this: every good thing that has ever happened in this world is because of women like Maddy. Not in a fancy, fluffy, mystical sense …but in a plain, everyday way.

Whatever is beautiful and transformed and good in this world, follow it. You will find it eventually leads back to some sweet, unassuming woman in a run-down suburban house filled with cats.

Every thread of forgiveness, everything that was once bad but is now good, follow it, and you will find it starts in a messy kitchen, folded in the warm hands of a kind woman.