Let’s Talk About It

“He’ll be fine, right?” the small boy tugged on the woman’s sleeve.

“His leg just hurts a little. Remember when you broke your arm?”

“It doesn’t work that way—” the man standing next to them scoffed, but he was stopped mid-sentence.

“Shhh. He’ll be fine.” She turned back to the boy and smoothed his hair.

For weeks, the horse’s lame leg had been dragging behind the brown gelding as he carried supplies or a rider. Today, the limp had grown so bad that he refused to move, no matter how many men tugged on the rope. His head hung low, his weight heavy on three good legs.

It was still midday, and the sun filtered through the crowns of the trees as the group gathered around the animal.

“We have to get Joel.” An older man rose from his spot.

“No.” A young woman stood up, blocking his way. “You won’t.”

“Then what the fuck do you expect me to do?”

“We wait. We give him a week.” The young woman in the turtleneck sweater looked around, scanning the group’s faces. “Feed him some more.”

Some people nodded.

“We waited a week already,” the man said, lowering his voice. “The horse is dead.”

“Then we wait one more.” The woman was joined by a young man at her side.

“He won’t get better.”

“So what, we just kill him?” a young girl standing beside the horse wailed.

“We don’t.” The man muttered and pushed past the woman, marching toward the edge of their makeshift camp.

Leaves rustled under his boots as the group held their breath.

When he returned, he was not alone. The crowd fell silent as they approached; some lowered their gaze, others stared. The man was tall and broad, but that wasn’t what made him who he was to them. There was no excess muscle, no supernatural strength.

And yet, they all stared. The woman pulled the boy behind her.

He walked toward the horse, the group parting before him. He swept a look across the crowd. Several people dropped their eyes.

The gelding’s head was close to the forest floor now, warm nostrils almost touching the ground.

When he reached the animal, he looped the rope around his hand and tugged its head up to hold it in place. He reached into his pocket, and the silver blade glinted in the sunlight.

“Aren’t you supposed to shoot it?” someone in the crowd asked.

“’m not wastin’ rounds on a horse,” Joel muttered, not taking his eyes off the animal, the blade pressed flush against its skin.

The horse didn’t move, either unaware of its fate or too tired to resist.

“We’re not slaughtering him like this!” another voice shouted.

“Sure. Gimme my gun then.” He held out his hand, and someone turned to fetch it. “Just keep yours ready for when the horde hears this.”

The crowd fell silent. The man who had moved for the gun straightened and looked away.

Joel turned back to the horse and laid his hand on its neck, pressing against the warmth of its hide and the steady beat beneath it. With a single sharp motion, he drove the knife deep into its neck.

The horse’s neigh came out weak as it thrashed, Joel’s arm straining to keep its head in place, but no one dared step closer.

He sawed the blade deeper into the wound. The horse flailed once more before collapsing, its knees buckling beneath it.

Blood pooled beneath its neck as it seized one final time.

Someone gasped. A child began to cry, its mother shushing it quickly.

A girl reached out to touch the horse’s still-warm nostrils, but a hand caught her shoulder and pulled her back.

Joel crouched beside the body and leaned over it. The blade pierced the skin again, slicing along the animal’s abdomen.

“What the fuck,” the tall man near the scene whispered through clenched teeth. “What the fuck are you doin’?”

“Take him away, there are children here!” a woman shouted.

Joel’s movements didn’t falter, his hands skilled as he cut clean lines through skin and flesh, separating tissue.

“Calm down, guys,” a voice said. “He’s right. We need to skin it quickly before it rots.”

“Do you hear yourself, Tommy? Why would we skin our horse?”

“’Cause we need the hide, and we need the meat, Janet. I’m sorry.” Tommy placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, both to comfort her and to keep her from lunging at his brother.

“But this is Bill.” The woman pointed at the body with a trembling hand. “We had him for weeks. He carried us and the supplies.”

“And now he’s gonna feed us too. Let it go, Janet.” Tommy pulled the crying woman into a hug. Then he looked at the others. “Show’s over, everyone.” He gestured for the group to scatter.

***

Tommy seemed to appear out of nowhere. He checked once more to make sure no one had followed him before announcing himself.

Joel’s back was turned, seemingly unaware, but Tommy knew better. If he couldn’t hear him, he could at least sense him.

“You scared ’em today. Again.”

“What the fuck did you expect me to do? Put him in a splint?” Joel asked, washing the blood from his hands in the stream.

“No. Just… take it easy on them. They left their office jobs less than three weeks ago and—”

“Well, too fucking bad.” He rose and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I hope they enjoy dinner.”

“You don’t have to be like this.”

“It’s better for you if I am.”

***

Bill’s flesh simmered above the fire, portioned and made into stew.

The group gathered around and shared a meal. They told stories from before. Someone sang a song. The pieces of meat no longer resembled the animal.

One bowl was set aside, and when the feast ended and the group dispersed into their tents, Joel emerged from his.

He took the bowl and headed back toward the edge of camp.

Once there, he crouched and shoveled the food into his mouth, eating quickly, glancing left and right as he did.

***

By Thursday, Bill’s lifeless body seemed long forgotten. The remaining flesh was cooked and dried, and his hide cleaned.

Apart from the affection the group had for the horse, his absence posed a more pressing problem. It was now impossible to travel farther from camp to hunt, secure the perimeter, or haul game.

There was the car, its tank still half full, but it wasn’t practical in the woods and would attract too much attention.

Most of the group fell into a lull, unaware of the danger the situation posed. Life carried on—clothes washed in the cold stream, food cooked over the fire, someone laughing.

On good days, it almost felt like a camping trip.

The day was quiet. It was getting warmer, and the group lounged outside the makeshift tents.

It happened quickly.

Something rustled in the leaves, and before anyone could react, a small figure appeared in the bushes.

It was a child. Frail, a girl judging by the braid.

Jessica and Adam noticed her first, freezing in their tracks.

“Hey, baby girl,” Jessica cooed. “Where’s your mama?”

The girl twitched but didn’t step forward.

“Are you alone?” Jessica crouched and extended her hand.

The child took a step forward, her body shaking as she moved.

“She’s got it,” Adam said. “She’s bit.”

“You don’t know that,” Jessica replied, still facing the girl.

“She’s twitching already.”

The girl inched toward them. Leaves cracked beneath her shoes.

Her neck twitched slightly, and Jessica flinched but didn’t move.

“We gotta do something,” Tommy urged, his rifle now raised and pointed at the girl.

“Definitely not fucking shoot her,” Jessica scoffed, rising to her feet.

“Guys, decision time.” Tommy’s finger lingered just above the trigger.

“Where the fuck is Joel?” someone yelled, and heads turned around the camp.

Suddenly, leaves crunched under a heavier weight.

A shriek cut through the woods.

A grunt.

A gush of blood.

A loud but stilted „No”.

The child struggled briefly, held in large arms, then went limp. Her pale body looked like a rag doll held up by its neck.

Joel stood behind her, his blade buried deep in her neck.

Once she stopped thrashing, he let her body fall to the ground with a thud. 

Jessica gasped, frozen in place, her arm still stretched towards the scene.

Tommy moved the rifle back over his shoulder, but there was no relief in his eyes.

The group dispersed in silence.

***

The group settled into this life as best they could. Old habits died hard, and the outbreak had not waited for anyone to harden.

You sat by the fire one night, warming your palms near the flames when a familiar face appeared beside you.

“Hi, Tommy.”

“Hey, you.” He nodded toward the fire. “Sorry, I need to put it out soon.”

“That’s okay.”

You moved your hands closer to the flames, the heat prickling at your fingers.

“You’re a tough one,” he said suddenly. “You don’t look it. But you are.”

You weren’t sure what he meant. You couldn’t recall any acts of bravery on your part in the past weeks.

“It’s either this or you die.”

“Yeah, I don’t think everyone got that memo.” He chuckled.

Your thoughts drifted back to David, who felt he was too good to spare to take watch or hunt. He was of the strong belief that the experience gained in the position he held at the city council would prove very useful when the group built an actual settlement.

You snorted, though not everyone had found it amusing. Janet said it made sense.

“Where does he go when he’s gone?”

“You mean Joel?”

You nodded.

“Keeps to himself.”

You fixed your gaze on the flames, then shifted it to him. Thirty, at most, he already looked older than when you first met him. The crease between his brows had deepened, but there was still warmth in his eyes.

“They don’t like him.”

He snorted, but without humor. “Yeah. He’s… too much for them sometimes.”

“He protects them.”

“Mhm.”

You wondered why Tommy didn’t stay with his brother or force him back to camp. You had a sister, too, somewhere. If she were still here, you would stand by her no matter what she did.

“You don’t agree?”

“Joel has his way of doin’ things. It works, but it’s not always pretty.”

“Who cares what’s pretty?”

“I reckon we should care. We should never stop carin’ about it.”

“What? Keeping appearances?” Irritation crept into your voice.

“Bein’ human. Gettin’ dressed in the mornin’, sayin’ please and thank you, bein’ kind.”

“He’s human,” you shot back.

“He doesn’t want to be, I think. Not anymore.”

You wondered what had split the brothers so differently. Why saying please and thank you still mattered to Tommy, and Joel stopped concerning himself with it from the very beginning.

“Was he a soldier?” you asked.

Tommy shook his head. “No. I was.”

“You?” You stared at him.

“Yep. He built houses.”

You imagined Joel’s hands building something instead of breaking it.

***

Two days later, you moved the camp deeper into the woods. The infected shrieks woke the group in the dead of night, and just like that, it was decided.

On the way to the new spot, Jessica found an abandoned backpack. It was full of cans, and it felt like a gift from the universe that had betrayed you. Janet thanked the Lord, and someone scoffed loudly.

That night, everyone sat by the fire again, the warmed cans emptied into bowls and mugs.

You remembered when Joel still approached the group without being summoned, when he shared meals with you. Mothers ushered their children away from him. Men subtly positioned themselves between him and the women. One day, someone spat on the ground in front of where he stood. After that, he stopped coming altogether.

You hesitated at first, but it felt right. You picked up the bowl they had set aside and, careful not to draw attention, slipped away from the fire.

His sleeping bag wasn’t far from where the others slept, but it was separated by a line of bushes. He sat on the ground, focused on something in his hands.

You approached quietly and saw him carving a small shape with his pocketknife. Your steps were light, deliberate—but when you came close, his eyes snapped up to meet yours. His brows were drawn tight, his body coiled, ready to lunge.

You extended the bowl toward him and set it down carefully, your movements slow, cautious—as if feeding a wary animal. His eyes never left yours as you stepped back.

Once you were out of his sight, you turned and ran.

***

It became a habit then. Every day, it played out the same. You slipped away from camp with the bowl and brought it to him, his distrustful eyes tracking your every step.

You stopped running back. Instead, you watched from behind a tree as he ate.

One day, you didn’t retreat at all. There were two bowls in your hands now, and you moved closer to him than before.

“Don’t,” he said.

You stayed where you were. You didn’t move any closer. You crouched, set one bowl on your lap, and nudged the other toward him.

“What do ya want from me?”

“Nothing,” you said, digging into your food.

He waited, watching you. When you didn’t budge, he finally reached for the bowl. He ate more slowly than before, but his eyes never left you, his body still coiled, ready to run or fight.

***

You shifted closer each day, and he pretended not to notice—but of course he did. His eyes scanned the surroundings constantly, alert to everything.

“Can I sit here?” you asked once you reached the spot where he usually sat.

“I ain’t gonna tell you what you can or can’t do.”

You sat beside him. The sudden proximity overwhelmed you, but you didn’t let it show. The bowl was back in your hands, food shoveled into your mouth.

You could see him clearly now. He had sun-warmed skin and hazel eyes—like Tommy’s, but sadder. His dark curls had grown long enough to tuck behind his ears. You had the sudden urge to thread your fingers through them.

No one spoke as you ate.

***

The next time you finished your meal, you didn’t retreat immediately. He sensed the shift.

“You want somethin’?”

You hesitated. Maybe you had overstayed your welcome. Maybe you didn’t belong here. Maybe the rest of the group was right, and your defiance was juvenile.

You reached into your pocket, your fingers closing around the scissors. He tensed, the bowl slipping from his hands and hitting the ground.

“I can cut your hair. If you want.” Your voice sounded thin, uncertain.

His mouth twitched. He looked down, then scanned the trees again.

You pulled the scissors out slowly and held them in your open palm so he could see.

He looked at the tool, then back at you. The nod he gave was so slight you thought you might have imagined it. But when you stepped closer, he didn’t move.

You stood beside him and reached for his hair—carefully, slowly—but he still flinched at your touch. You tried again.

His hair was soft, and you had expected him to smell bad, but he didn’t.

Your fingers moved through the strands of his curls, the dull office scissors trimming away the excess length. You had never cut a person’s hair before, but it wasn’t so different from grooming a dog.

When you finished, you allowed yourself a small breath. He looked more like a person now, and only now you noticed he was much younger than you’d thought. 

You kept your hands in his hair for a few moments more than necessary, and you were surprised to see he didn’t move away from your touch—instead, his head pressed up slightly against your palm, in a movement so minuscule, you wondered if it was deliberate.

His eyes didn’t walk you back to camp.

***

You moved camp again, chased off by sounds you couldn’t place but instinctively wanted farther away from. Joel took down two infected while you were on the move, and the sound of the blade sinking into their necks still rang in your ears.

Food was scarce, and tempers were short.

When you finished your food—a sorry excuse for a meal—you set the bowl aside and rested your hands on your knees. Joel looked at you expectantly. There was a quiet understanding between you now. You ate in silence, sitting close. He let you mend his shirt.

“Can I stay here?”

His brows furrowed, and he shifted away from you.

You dragged your sleeping bag closer to his. He gave you a displeased look as he lay down, but he didn’t say anything.

In the morning, you slipped away before the others could notice—but Joel was already awake, watching you leave.

***

The other night, surrounded by chilly air and distant sounds of the hunting animals, you edged closer to him, holding your breath so you wouldn’t startle him.

He shifted but didn’t turn toward you.

“Don’t.”

“Why?”

You were close enough now to smell him.

“I’m no good.”

“You don’t have to be.”

He didn’t say anything. And you stayed.

***

The day was warm, but the stream’s water was icy as you wrung out the freshly washed shirts.

Jessica was doing laundry beside you, but instead of her usual humming and chatter, she kept her distance. Every so often, she looked at you assessingly when she thought you wouldn’t notice.

“What’s your problem?” you asked, your hands straining to twist the water from a pair of jeans.

“I know where you’ve been.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

You twisted the fabric again.

“You’ve been whoring yourself to the older Miller.”

Your fingers froze on the wet denim.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She huffed a laugh and stepped closer, stopping just inches from your face.

“Was it your idea?” she asked with a smirk. “Think you’ll be safer now?”

“You’ve got it wrong.” You didn’t move.

“Stupid fucking girl. He’ll start expecting this from all of us.”

“He demands nothing from us.”

That seemed to amuse her.

She leaned in closer, her lips nearly brushing your ear. “So you’re just a whore then.”

Your fingernails dug into your palms, but you didn’t budge.

Finally, Jessica stepped back and grabbed the basket of laundry. Before heading toward camp, she turned to you once more.

“Wait until he’s done with you. Used up or pregnant—and he’ll just take another. Wonder how pleased you’ll be then.”

***

You fell into your sleeping bag with urgency and didn’t even look at Joel before zipping yourself up.

You were furious and didn’t know at what exactly. Was it the accusation? The fact that it was not true? Your lack of reaction?

“Somethin’ happen?” His raspy voice suddenly sounded.

You were so unaccustomed to him speaking that it startled you.

„No.” You shot back. „Night.”

You tossed and turned, but sleep wouldn’t come. You inched closer to Joel in your sleeping bag, crawling like an oversized worm.

You scooted close, but not nearly close enough to touch. He didn’t stop you.

***

The voices stopped when you approached the fire. You didn’t pause. You kept walking toward the simmering pot.

You glanced around. A few of them turned their faces away.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Janet said.

“Me?” You looked around. “Why?”

“You know why.”

You searched for Tommy’s eyes, but he looked away. His arm was wrapped around Jessica, who pressed her face into his chest as if afraid of you.

“Look at me, Tommy,” you demanded. “Tell them.”

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” he whispered.

He finally met your gaze. There was an apology in his eyes—but it was hollow. It didn’t matter anymore.

You straightened and took two bowls.

***

You woke up close to him, your bodies covered in blankets, almost touching.

Without thinking, you reached for him, burying your fingers in his hair.

He flinched, startled by the sudden touch. He turned to face you, and even after realizing there was no danger, he scrambled to move away.

“Don’t do that,” he grunted.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t damn yourself.”

You shifted back, and he slowly lay back down, farther away, but facing you for the first time.

***

One night, not long after, he almost chased you off.

Emboldened by the previous nights spent in close proximity—close enough to smell each other and hear each other breathe—you edged even nearer.

This time, you didn’t reach for him. You only positioned yourself close enough that any shift of his body would press him against you.

You waited for what felt like an eternity, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. Apart from that, his body remained still.

Sometime in the night, you jolted awake when his body trembled against yours.

In a matter of seconds, he pulled away, widening the space between you. The sudden absence of heat made you feel cold.

“It’s not safe for you here,” he rasped.

You frowned in confusion. “Where else would be safer?”

He lay back down and turned away from you again.

You stayed awake for a long time, watching his broad back rise and fall with each breath.

***

The day started with him, your every day did lately—but this time he moved fast, slinging the rifle over one shoulder and his backpack over the other.

You checked your pocket for the scissors — the plastic handle firm and reassuring in your grip.

He turned back to you, one brow raised in question.

“I wanna come.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t gonna tell you what to do.”

The forest was quiet, the snap of sticks underfoot the only sound around you. He walked ahead, steady and tall. He never looked back, but you knew he was aware of your footsteps falling close behind his own.

You moved far from camp and deeper into the woods. Despite the midday sun, the canopy thickened overhead, the path growing darker with each step.

“What are we hunting?” you asked, tired of the silence between you.

“Whatever we can.”

You were surprised he answered at all, even if it was dismissive. He didn’t slow down or turn.

Something loomed ahead. You stayed behind him without a word, though if he’d been anyone else, you would have pushed forward to see first.

It was a cabin—small and weathered, more a hunting shack than a home.

Joel stopped so suddenly you nearly collided with his back. He held out a hand, signaling you to stay.

You’d spent the last five weeks in the woods, growing accustomed to its rhythm—the stream, the trees, the animals. No matter how unprepared the group had been, this felt safer. The alternative—other people, other groups, the army—was what you all knew you had to avoid.

The cabin could mean people.

It could also mean food. Guns. Ammo. Tools.

Joel stood still, scanning the clearing in silence, then finally stepped forward. You moved close behind him.

He gripped the rifle as he approached the shack. Your fingers closed around the scissors in your pocket.

The door resisted at first, but when Joel finally kicked it open, there were no obvious signs anyone had been there in weeks.

You scanned the room. Bare wooden walls. A table with six chairs still around it. Shelves. Cabinets.

“Oh my God,” you whispered as your hand closed around a can stored high above your head. You brushed your fingers over the cool metal. There were more.

You stood on your toes to pull them down.

Bolognese sauce. Canned peaches. Baked beans. Your mouth watered as you stared at the labels.

Later, when you tried to recall what happened and in what order, you were never able to.

One moment Joel stood beside you, reaching for the cans.

The next, for the rifle.

A thump against the door.

Two men.

Pain—as you were shoved into the cabinet.

A scream.

A gush.

A chair crashing to the floor.

You froze, scissors clutched so tightly in front of you that your knuckles turned white. You were there—right there—but it felt distant, as if you were watching it from somewhere else.

He looked even bigger now as he drove one of the men into the wall. Blood poured from the man’s neck where Joel’s blade was buried.

A grunt. A twitch. Still.

The other one—taller, broader, furious, Joel’s equal in all the ways that mattered now—lunged.

His fist was raised but empty. It was just hands now. Flesh against flesh.

They grappled until Joel forced him backward, out the door, and onto the cabin steps.

One wrong step. A snap.

Joel’s hand clamped around his head.

He drove it down against the wooden step. 

Once.

Twice.

The sound of bone cracking.

Again.

The body went limp, but Joel’s grip didn’t budge, smashing the battered head against the wood again.

Blood pooled across the step—thick, dark, spreading. Flesh and bone reduced to mush.

A face that was no longer a face.

Your body was still frozen, scissors pointed—at who? At them? At Joel?

His body heaved with strain. His fingers loosened, and the mangled head dropped to the ground. The sound was wet, and somehow that was the thing that made your stomach turn.

When he straightened and turned toward the inside of the cabin again, his face was freckled with specks of blood, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide. He looked almost high on the violence, breathing heavily through his mouth as he walked toward you.

His bloodied fists were still clenched tight, as if ready to take on another threat.

“Joel.” Your voice came out barely a whisper.

He walked toward the point of your scissors until they pressed against his chest. 

For one breath, you stood like that—his broad frame towering over you, your back against the wall, the dull blade digging into his shirt.

Your fingers loosened around the scissors, and you let them fall to the floor with a thud. 

It was inevitable. There was no version of this moment in which it didn’t happen.

His body caged yours against the wall, the weight of him pressing you harder into the wood.

“Joel.” You mouthed it, but no sound came out.

You gasped as his hand grabbed the back of your head, fingers buried in your hair, pulling at the roots. Your faces collided—not in a kiss, but in shared breath, a clash of foreheads, a hungry look.

You could smell the sweat on his skin now, all strain and adrenaline and man and killing. It should have repulsed you, but instead you breathed in deep, desperate for more.

Pull. Turn. Push.

You almost tripped as he walked you back toward the table. The edge dug into your thigh as he pushed you on top of it and pressed you flat onto your back.

His jaw was clenched, teeth grinding as he hovered over you.

Your head throbbed with adrenaline, pulsing with blood as he reached to unzip your jeans, tugging them along with your underwear from your hips until they hung around your ankles. He seemed to expect you to struggle—you expected it too—but your body moved on its own, raising your hips to help him undress you, kicking the jeans off your legs to spread before him.

You were left spread open, exposed for him, right on the bloodied table, right next to the body lying against the wall.

He pressed you hard against the table, and you wondered why. You did nothing to stop this. Nothing to escape him. You didn’t tighten a single muscle to struggle.

He didn’t let you go for a moment, even when he struggled with his own jeans, big, shaking fingers fumbling with the button. His teeth ground harder as he finally freed himself.

Your body pulsed—your head, your fingers, your cunt. Fight or flight or fuck.

He guided his cock—thick, red, already wet at the tip—against your entrance, and his large palm rested on your face, holding it against the table so you’d look away from him. 

The first stretch of him was painful, your body barely accommodating his girth.

Your breath hitched as he pulled back out, only to bury himself to the hilt again. Soon, the table creaked beneath you with every fast, sharp thrust he gave you, the constant burn of the stretch soon starting to mix with raw pleasure as your body molded itself around him.

“This what you wanted?” he grunted, not slowing his brutal thrusts. “’Cause this is what I am.”

The weight of his hand pressed your cheek harder against the table, and you raised yours to cover it, turning your head to look at him, despite the weight of his palm. His bloodied fingers on your cheek twitched, but he didn’t force it back.

Your eyes met, and immediately, he turned his gaze away, fixed it on the wall instead, forcing you to stare at his blood-stained jawline.

His cock drove into you at an unforgiving pace, hips crashing into yours, the other hand harshly holding you down, and you thought you were supposed to be scared, but now trapped underneath him, it was the first time in a long time you were not scared at all.

“Joel.” You reached to cup his jaw, and he flinched, but didn’t brush it off.

Guided by your hand, he turned his face back toward you, finally looking into your eyes.

His face cradled with your hand. His palm still on your jaw. 

The sharpness of his thrusts against the pain in his dark, haunted eyes, the deepened crease between his brows.

He looked deep into your eyes, beyond them, inside you, and your eyes burned, but you didn’t even blink, desperate to see inside too.

The moment didn’t last long—his thrusts turned erratic and soon he pulled out, leaving you empty, and with a low grunt, he spilled on the ground between his feet.

Heavy breaths. A bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. Cool air between your wet thighs.

Your fingers tightened on his face, but he yanked himself out of your grip.

“Fuck.” He spat it out, turning away from you, already zipping himself up.

He paced a tight circle in the middle of the cabin, running a hand through his hair. Finally, he turned to the shelves and stripped them bare, sweeping cans and supplies into your backpacks with sharp, efficient movements.

Your legs shook as you lowered yourself to the floor, pulling up your jeans with trembling fingers.

He didn’t look at you again, not in the cabin, not when you stepped outside. Not the entire walk back to camp.

***

The backpacks hit the ground, and three women immediately crouched beside them, rifling through the contents and pulling out the precious cans.

Janet clasped her hands and tipped her face toward the sky in silent prayer, thanking the Lord for the path he never walked, the people he didn’t kill, the food he didn’t provide.

Joel slung his pack over his shoulder and walked away without a word. No one commented on the blood on his hands or clothes—whether they didn’t notice or simply chose not to ask.

You moved to follow him, but he stopped you, his arm shooting out the same way it had when you reached the cabin.

“Don’t,” he said, and stepped away.

You were left standing beside the cheering group, your face still marked with the blood of the man whose skull had been smashed against the cabin steps.

***

You spent two days on the edge of the campsite, lingering near the tree line, trying to be invisible.

They didn’t acknowledge you, but let you slip past them when you washed your bloodied shirt in the stream and when you grabbed a bowl to eat near your sleeping bag, away from the fire.

You didn’t grab one for Joel. And for two entire days, you didn’t dare go see him. You lived like an animal, alone and without words, the same way he did.

On the third morning, you woke to screaming—shrieks of terror tearing through the woods.

Still groggy, you pushed yourself up and hurried toward the noise, careful to stay far enough away that no one would think to stop you.

You recognized his broad frame immediately, standing among the group like something half-man, half-bear—burly, immovable.

“John, please, you know we have to—” Tommy held his hands out, trying to calm the other man.

“Move the fuck away, Tommy.”

John lunged at him, but Tommy caught him and held him back, struggling to keep him from breaking free.

You stepped closer, needing to see what had driven him to this.

John’s son, Steve stood a few feet away, gangly and young, his eyes wide with fear. You didn’t know them well. You hadn’t cared to. You wondered if you cared now, seeing him at gunpoint.

Joel’s gunpoint.

“Tommy, please.” Jessica stood nearby, looking like a college girl trying to break up a bar fight. “Please, there has to be another way.”

“There’s no way, baby.” Tommy’s voice softened, though his grip on John stayed firm.

The crowd gathered tighter around them. Someone shouted. Someone else began to cry. The noise swelled into a mess of wails and pleas.

“Dad.” Steve’s voice cut through it all. “Dad, stop. Stop it and let them.”

“I won’t let this fucking monster near you,” John growled, still straining against Tommy. “I won’t fucking let it.”

“I’m already fucking gone!” Steve’s shout commanded silence—even from his father. “Do it now. Do it before I turn.”

He straightened his back and lifted his chin, turning toward Joel.

From where you stood, you could see Joel’s face clearly. The crease between his brows. The tight set of his jaw. His gaze flicked to Tommy, to John, down to his own hands, then back to Steve.

Before anyone could move, he stepped forward, lowering the gun to drop it on the ground.

One hand came up to cradle Steve’s face.

The other drove the blade into his exposed neck, and with a gushing sound and a gasp, the young man fell.

John’s wail cut through the woods, Tommy holding him through it. You wondered if his embrace was meant to comfort the man or shield his brother from him.

Joel wiped the blade on the ground and tucked it back into his pocket before taking in the scene—the horror on the faces of the crowd, John’s devastation—and walking back to his corner of the edge of the camp.

***

There was a slight tremble in your hands as you carried both bowls in front of you, step by careful step, moving farther from the camp.

The night was dark and quiet, marked by the heavy weight of the first death since you’d settled in the woods. A death by the hands of one of your own—though you wondered if Joel could even be called Steven’s killer and if he was truly one of your own at all.

He was carving a piece of wood with his knife, but he sensed your presence the moment you came close.

Without a word, he set the wood aside and lowered the blade.

He seemed too tired, too pained to fight you off or send you back. Instead, he silently accepted the food.

With the bowls empty and the meal—hearty, warm, worth the two lives lost in that cabin—sitting heavy in your stomachs, you inched closer to him. His face was wary but exhausted, and his body didn’t move when you approached.

You cupped his face. Instinctively, he flinched—but he stayed.

His eyes were heavy-lidded, dark, sad. So fucking sad and ashamed.

Your hand slid to his chest, pushing gently until he leaned back. You kept pressing, slow and steady, until he lay on his sleeping bag.

You straddled him carefully, determined not to spook him. Moving slowly, as if there could be movement slow enough not to be detected until it was too late to retreat.

He let you.

You held his gaze. When he tried to look away, you steadied his jaw again, urging him to stay with you, to see you.

His palms were flat against the ground, pressing hard into the soil as if anchoring himself, restraining whatever instinct told him to move.

You reached down, palming the growing hardness beneath his jeans, coaxing him fully awake under your touch.

His brow lifted slightly, confusion flickering at the corner of his mouth, but he stayed still—letting you decide what happened next.

You unzipped him and freed his erection, drawing a surprised, stilted gasp from his throat.

You pushed your jeans down your legs and kicked them aside, the hem of your shirt the only thing covering you now.

Before you could think it through—before doubt could creep in—you guided him toward you, notching him at your entrance. You dragged the tip of his cock through your wet folds, coating him in your slick.

His expression tightened, almost pained. His arms twitched against the ground, fingers digging slightly into the soil.

You sank down slowly with a soft whimper, taking him inch by inch until he filled you completely, stretching you the way you’d needed since the violence-stained day in the cabin.

As you began to move—slow, deliberate—it became harder and harder for him to remain motionless. Still, he forced himself to stay grounded, limbs tense, face set in concentration.

When you reached for his hand, he flinched again. It was heavy, its weight burdened by restraint and shame. He tried to pull it away, but you held on, guiding it to your waist beneath your shirt. You pressed his fingers into your skin, urging them to curl there.

He gave a slight shake of his head—a silent protest—the first real movement he’d allowed himself.

You pressed his palm harder against you.

“I want it. Please, I want you,” you whimpered.

He shook his head again, the crease between his brows deepening.

“I’m no good.” His voice was rough, strained thin.

“You’re good.” Your hand softened on his cheek. “You’re good for me.”

He looked as if your touch burned.

“You’re making me feel so good,” you whispered, keeping your hips moving slowly against him.

His eyes closed — not to escape, but to feel — and a quiet whimper slipped from his mouth.

Your rhythm changed, rising and sinking with more intent, lifting until only the head of him stretched your sensitive entrance before taking him deep again. Another choked sound left him.

His hand tightened on your waist, not possessively, but with certainty, with choice, and you slowly moved your hand from his, trusting him not to let you go. 

His rough, calloused fingers were gentle against your skin, holding it with care and reverence, with fear of breaking.

“See? You’re gentle with me.”

You leaned forward until your bodies pressed together, your hands bracketing his face for balance.

The scent of him—his skin, his sweat—hit you hard, almost electric.

Your foreheads touched. Your noses brushed. You shared breath.

“You make me feel safe,” you murmured, moving against him. “I never feel safe here. But you make me safe.”

A sound tore from his throat — something between a groan and a wounded exhale. His eyes squeezed shut again, but his hand never left you.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw his other arm twitch beside him, as if fighting the urge to rise. You reached for it quickly, pulling his hand from the ground and dragging it up your body.

“I want you to touch me,” you whispered against his jaw. “I know you won’t hurt me. You’d never hurt me.”

This time he didn’t resist.

You placed his palm high on your thigh, where it met your ass. He cupped you immediately, stroking without guidance.

You whimpered into his neck.

“So good. Feels so good.”

His hips began to move beneath you—small, careful thrusts that met your rhythm.

His hands roamed more freely now.

You lifted your head to look at him. His eyes were open—barely—but enough to meet yours as you reached down between you, circling your clit in time with your movements.

Nose to nose, forehead to forehead, lips brushing but not quite kissing—just shared breath and quiet sounds.

Your legs began to tremble. Pleasure coiled low in your belly, tightening until it snapped, a wave breaking through you and pulling the air from your lungs.

You didn’t look away.

As you lifted off him, he slipped free, and you stroked him quickly, watching his face as release overtook him. He spilled into your hand with a muffled groan, eyes still locked on yours.

***

You knew your quiet life in the woods would one day end one way or another—a horde attack, wolves tracking you down, raiders pillaging through your camp. Danger was abundant, and you couldn’t outrun it forever.

What you didn’t expect was how it happened—and how anticlimactic the dissolution of the group would be.

One day, things continued the way they always had. Next, a girl was picked off by a stray infected. John didn’t come back from a hunt. And soon, the rest of them grew restless.

“It’s been weeks. They must’ve figured it out already, and we’re hiding in the woods the entire time.” David extended his hands as if preaching, a small group gathered around him. “We just need to find the army. They’ll lead us.”

“There is no army, David. No one’s gonna fucking lead us anywhere,” snapped a young man you didn’t know well.

They argued in circles until the group was divided. David and the others who still believed the army had things under control packed their belongings and left the campsite, led by faith in a new settlement that was surely waiting for them once they emerged from the trees.

Others stayed—but not for long. The group was vulnerable now, its numbers depleted, and it felt like something was ending whether they admitted it or not.

It was a shock to everyone but you and Joel when Tommy announced he was leaving.

“I caught a radio transmission. There are people tryin’ to make their own place out there. No army. No government.” He shoved his things into his backpack as he spoke. “Y’all can come with me. But I gotta leave now, while they’re still close.”

You saw the tears in Jessica’s eyes and the war in her head as she watched him. Someone called it a ruse. A trap. A pipe dream.

So Tommy left—with another man who had always been eager and reckless, the same way Tommy had always been eager and reckless too.

He came by before he went, lingering at the edge of the camp, his eyes searching until they found Joel.

“What do you want me to say?” Joel asked. “I ain’t gonna tell you what to do.”

Tommy nodded at him. Then he glanced at you, as if in question. 

And that was the last time you saw him.

You didn’t wait to be the last ones left. You packed in the morning—what little you had tucked neatly into your backpacks—and you left without goodbyes.

You never discussed where to go or where to settle.

But once you distanced yourselves from the camp, your legs led you in the same direction.

***

You were already standing on the doorstep of the cabin when he emerged from the trees. He took longer than you’d expected.

There was fresh blood on his sleeves and his hands, and as soon as it became clear it wasn’t his, you didn’t ask about it.

Once the door was closed behind him, you picked up the bucket of snow you had melted earlier. When he sat down—heavy and slow—on the wooden chair, you knelt on the floor between his legs.

His face was drawn tight with pain and exhaustion as he let you take his hands in yours, gently scrubbing away the blood and dirt.

His eyes never left you while you worked, even as you dried his fingers carefully with a cloth.

You ate dinner in comfortable silence, your elbows brushing against each other at the small table. The stew you’d made from the rabbits he brought you the day before tasted like something far finer than it was after weeks of hunger. He hummed in quiet appreciation as he shoveled it into his mouth.

At night, he lay down first, his body tired and heavy against the bedroll, while you stayed behind to tidy the makeshift kitchen—careful to dispose of any scraps that might draw animals back to you.

When you finally joined him, you were certain he was asleep, but the moment you shifted close to his broad back, you felt him tremble.

His eyes were closed, yet his body was still fighting something.

You moved closer, folding yourself around him—your knees curling into his, your chest pressed flush against his back, your arm reaching around to rest your palm over his heartbeat.

You buried your face in his hair and inhaled—the scent of woods and winter air, sweat, and faint iron beneath it.

He trembled again.

You held him there, anchoring him to you.

You mouthed soft, inaudible words against the nape of his neck—telling him he was good, that he kept you safe, that he did what had to be done.

Much older than you were led to believe in the feeble, short few days you had to come to terms with the betrothal.

Fear chokes you, holds your lungs in terrible, tight fists, as work roughened hands lift your veil.

This is how you first see him, cloaked in lace quickly scrounged by your mother for this moment, fingers trembling in white sleeves that don't belong to you. You have avoided looking at him, until this moment, unsteady gaze on his shoes instead, the hem of his trousers, afraid that you might lose your composure otherwise. And you will not give anyone the satisfaction of your tears.

The veil softens his features, rubs out some of the lines from his face like charcoal smudged on a page. You tilt your face up as he folds the fabric back. His movements are surprisingly gentle, careful not to brush your face or hair.

You keep your expression carefully composed, stony. He might be your father's friend and peer, but he is certainly older. His forehead is lined; crow's feet bracket his eyes. His beard is mostly gray, and it looks as though his dark hair is following suit. A scar bisects the bridge of his nose, others mark the high points in his cheeks, faint nicks that could have been from shaving or something else entirely. Brawling when he was a boy, maybe, falls taken while drunk.

It's hard for you to pass judgment since you don't know him at all.

Despite that, his shoulders are broad. His chest and arms are thick. He looks strong and capable, and that could bode very badly for you.

Even so, even so much older, he is handsome.

That handsomeness means nothing for you know nothing of him, of what kind of man he is, how he might treat you as a wife.

The chapel echoes around you, empty but for your father and the priest. White winter light spears down from a window set high in the stone wall, cold, high wind whistling just beyond.

His eyes travel over your face, cataloguing your features like you have been memorizing his. Your eyes meet his for the briefest of moments. The touch is not warm; his brows lower over a hardened gaze. He looks to the priest and nods, who begins the ceremony without preamble. Apparently your looks have been found suitable enough to go through with it.

You will yourself not to cry, to keep the bile rising up the back of your throat in check.

The words pass over you in a torrent, meaningless and loud, vows and promises of obedience and faithfulness, humility and deference. All, it seemed, directed at you. Your husband, you gather, would be your shepherd, your judge and jury, your king, dealing out punishment as he saw fit for the mistakes you were guaranteed to make.

Like a child. For obviously you, a girl, a woman, needed such guidance. Your family would.

Your stomach knots at the thought. Children, which meant you would have to endure the act you'd been accused of in the first place to land you here, in this quiet church on a blindingly cold Saturday morning. In shame, in relative secret.

"You have been ruined," your mother had said when you were told of the arrangement, spittle flying in her anger and disappointment. "We have no choice."

"Mother," you had pleaded, "It isn't true."

Her gaze had been cold and hard by necessity, steeling herself for the fate that awaited you. All because jealous girls had condemned you. "The mayor's daughter has spoken against you. Would accuse her of being a liar?"

Bad enough, to have relations out of wedlock; terrible, wretched, that you had done so where someone could see. That you had been caught in the snow, against the side of her father's stables with a farmhand. Loud and unseemly, and, worse, unabashed. The picture of untrammeled lust.

"I did not—" You had protested, throat thick with tears. "I haven't spoken more than a word to the boy." Boy, because he was a few years younger than you. He'd eagerly taken up the story from the mayor's daughter, something swaggering in his voice, falsely humbled by his mistake for which he would not be punished. The only reason you were not being forced to marry him, was his engagement to the daughter's best friend. Though, she had not looked happy to be taking on the embarrassment of being attached to a man with a wandering eyes, something mean had glittered in her face too. "I wasn't even anywhere near those stables—"

"Enough!" Her voice had rung loudly in the kitchen. "It's been settled. You will be grateful anyone would marry you with those accusations hanging over your head. It's this or-or," she stammers over the words, "destitution."

It doesn't matter. You know nothing you could say matters. It's the mayor's darling daughter's word, and all her friends', against yours, and you have spent too many years being untamed for it to matter. You should have been married years ago, instead you disappeared into the forests surrounding the village for days at a time, read when you should have been pursuing the womanly arts of cooking or mending or weaving, argued when you should have practiced humility and silence, skipped Sunday service. Worn trousers only once, because you had received lashes for that.

You were accused of waywardness or sharpness of tongue and ill discipline. Someone, the whispers said, should have beaten it out of you long ago; that a timely marriage and children could have mellowed you out.

Too late for all that now.

"An old friend of your father's has graciously agreed to help us," she'd said casually, bustling about the washing. "You're lucky he is in need of a wife."

It froze something within you. "Mother, please—"

"You should have been married years ago, anyway," she says briskly. "Your father should have never allowed you such wildness and freedom. It does not suit a lady. Look where it has landed you."

Her scorn hurt, and your venomous tongue retaliated. "But to a man I don't know? You would throw me to wolves for this? He might be a brute—"

"You could do with a hard man," she'd said, not looking at you. "It might finally teach you your place."

"I would rather die—" you'd all but choked.

"By all means," she'd all but snarled, throwing down the washing in her hands, "drown yourself in the river if you see fit to. It would spare us the shame."

She had refused to come to the chapel, though she'd helped you dress, done your hair, that morning. She walked as far as the gate at the end of the yard, and you'd sworn as you walked away, through the encroaching blizzard, that you'd heard her sob.

You suspect your father is only present because it is his duty to present you, and give you away. Since the accusation, he hasn't been able to look at you. His darling daughter he'd always been so kind to, so proud of despite the way people spoke of you, your cleverness.

The thought makes your throat ache, that they could so easily lose their only child.

A hand touches yours and you jump.

Your fiance slides his rough palm around your hand and grips it softly in his, squeezing. He says your name, a question in his voice, and you feel faint, dizzy.

The priest clears his throat and you sense that you've been absent from the room for longer than you meant to be, lingering in memories that already seem a lifetime ago. The vows are repeated again, droning and long.

His hand is warm on yours, your trembling, icy fingers.

You are thankful you don't have to repeat the vows verbatim. Saying his name would rot something inside you, falsehoods hidden inside promises. I take thee, Joel—

No. You couldn't bear it.

All you have to do is say—

"I do."

You aren't sure it's your voice but who else could have said it?

Far away inside yourself, you watch in horror as his mouth repeats the same.

"I do."

A deep voice, like his mouth is cave.

You brace yourself for his kiss, his touch, his head bowing over yours, but he only squeezes your hands again and releases you.

Like birds with broken wings, they fall limp at your sides.

The men gather themselves, leave you at the altar along as the descend from the pulpit and cross the chapel.

You hear warnings as you stand there alone in the pale shaft of light that grows fainter with each passing moment, the storm worsening outside, the sun already sinking on this terrible December day.

Headstrong, you hear of your character.

Willful.

Stubborn.

Needlessly reckless, sharp tongued, sly.

A tricky little thing.

"She may require a firm hand," the priest says, "I know her temperament well, have known her since she was a child. But she's a good girl and will learn her place, with the proper corrections. She can learn to be an obedient wife."

Your father doesn't dispute this as help from the church is offered, if needed, to assist you in learning the place and pace of an obedient, good wife. Spending time with godly women, instead of among the trees. "And mother," he adds. "Of course." He chuckles, "Winter is very long here. And she is nearly past childbearing years."

It's bullshit, of course.

It should not be possible for your stomach to knot itself more, but something sours and you have to press a hand to your stomach to keep the empty maw yawning open inside you at bay.

You still stand at the head of the church, listening to this, thinking that the icy water of the river might yet be an option. Maybe you can fling yourself off the wagon as you pass over a bridge.

The priest calls your name sharply, and makes an exaggerated gesture toward your husband. "Off with you, girl. Your husband is waiting or did you not notice?" His expression, when he turns back, says, see? this is the obstinacy I tell you of.

Joel doesn't comment and you can't yet read the expression on his face .

He pushes the church doors open and disappears into the worsening storm, the coming night.

You are not even afforded a wedding band.

.

.

.

Though his home is supposedly only a half day's ride west from your town, it is full dark by the time you arrive.

You have never really left your village before, and to you it seems a world away and terribly lonely. Isolated. A cottage at the edge of the world, hemmed in by bristling fir trees, whispering snow drifts.

You're glad to be there, if only to get out of the snow and wind, away from his body next to yours on the wagon bench that you want to curl into just to warm yourself for a moment.

Joel offers you a hand which you reluctantly take, helps you down from the wagon. He ushers you inside and says something about the horses before he disappears back into the storm, leaving you there alone. The space is small and cold, the hearth only ashes after his day away from home.

Though you're freezing, you can't make yourself stoke the fire.

Although, maybe if you did and he could warm himself, he might not want to warm himself with you. On the other hand, maybe warmth would encourage him, would tempt him.

In either case, you're a wife now and you watched your mother long enough to know what that means. Aside from the rest of it, he will expect cooking, a hot meal when he comes back inside.

But, the priest and your father had called you stubborn, and so you would be. You might as well be all the things they accused you of.

Something petulant pulses in your belly.

Swallowing your anxiety, you perch at the table and decide to wait. You don't want to serve him; you don't want to be his wife. And, besides, you don't know what provisions he has, where the larder is. He may beat you for poking around where you don't belong while trying to find it.

Every choice seems worse than the last, so you refuse to make one. You sit at the table, freezing slowly as the snow on your shoulders melts and bleeds into your coat. You feel a distance from yourself, as though you are literally frozen to the chair, mind pulling apart from your body like sticky caramel leaving looping threads behind. Time crawls by and you aren't sure how much of it passes before the door bangs inward in a swirl of white.

When he comes in, his eyes flick to the cold grate, to the empty stove. He does not berate you. He doesn't look at you at all.

Joel merely passes you at the table and builds up the fire, a process that takes longer than it should because the wood is wet. He hadn't any by the stove and had to bring some in, snow flecked and iced over.

You don't offer him any conversation, and he leaves you to your thoughts until quietly coaxed meek flames sputter into a roar.

It's only then that he speaks to you for the first time.

"You're cold. C'mon over here and warm up."

You're terrified to approach him, and hesitate to buy time. "You've been working so hard," you offer demurely as you can. These are some of the first full sentences you've spoken to him. "You should warm up."

He eyes you for a moment. "You're shiverin'."

There's no denying it. Tremors rack your shoulders, the thick wool of your coat soaked and weighed down.

You clear your throat and stand, steeling yourself to stand next to him at the grate, to surely have his hands press against you. You're his wife now, sold like a pig to slaughter, and he will want to touch you. You might as well stop being prudish about it and get over it. As far as he's been told, as far as your reputation is concerned, you are versed in this anyway.

You smooth out your skirts and approach.

To your surprise, he moves out of the way, giving you a wide berth to stand at the fire alone.

"You can take your coat off," he offers.

"Must I?" You ask, a tad snakily, without thinking.

"No," he answers, and you swear his mustache twitches, like he is repressing a smile, "might help with the cold, though."

It weighs heavily on your shoulders, cold and wet. You know he's right but shedding it feels like peeling off your skin, all that's beneath is that thin, hurried, second-hand wedding dress.

Even as unconventional a girl as you were, as opinionated and strong willed, you'd always dreamed of a wedding. A love match, in a dress sown by your mother's hands, witnessed by your friends and family, merriment, so many flowers you could drown in them. Instead, this. A fist closes tightly around your heart, squeezes until it feel like something might pop.

Joel opens cabinets, pulls out provisions you hadn't dared to look for earlier. His hands are rough and red from the cold, the brutal weather. The knobs of his knuckles are swollen. You sense he's keeping his back to you, moving slowly, so that you can observe him uninterrupted. Snow is peppered over his shoulders and hair, still unmelted for how cold the room is.

Despite it all, you find you'd like to touch that fine snow, curl a lick of dark hair around your finger just to see if it was as soft as it looked.

You unfasten the buttons and let the coat slip down your shoulders. The warmth is sudden and hot against your back through the thin material of the dress. You turn into it and close your eyes, try to imagine you're by the hearth at home, flames flicking hungrily behind your eyelids.

Joel clears his throat, nearer than you expect, and you start. "I'll hang that up to dry," he says, holding out a hand. "You hungry?"

You clutch the coat to your chest before releasing it to him, careful not to touch his hand. "No," you answer, sure that putting anything in your body would come straight back up. "But please, you should sit," you plead. You hate how simpering you sound, your voice an unrecognizably anxious animal in your throat. But he wields so much power over you, will always now, and should be decide you weren't fit to be his wife he could cast you out, or correct you as he saw fit. You are now this, forever. Nothing but this. "I'm your wife," you continue, the word hot and dry in your mouth, "and it's my duty. Let me fix something for you. I'm a decent cook."

You are a terrible cook. You never had the patience, which had made your mother click her tongue. But there are a couple things you learned to make decently.

Joel, to your surprise, waves you down, after hanging your coat on a hook by the door. "That's all right. I've been feedin' myself for awhile; one more night won't hurt nothin'."

You hover awkwardly and only sit when he insists that you do, warming yourself by the hearth while he rummages around.

The wind moans outside, rattles the shutters and the panes of glass in their window frames. The front door creaks, like someone is leaning on it, trying to get in.

The sounds are lonely but you don't break the silence of his quick dinner.

He clears the table and then sets about filling a warming plate with hot coal from the grate.

You heart stutters a nervous tattoo in your chest when he disappears with it through a door behind you. Your mind had skimmed over it, not let you contemplate where it might lead.

All the stories you've heard from the many girls that married before you told of pain, that it was just something you endured for your husband's pleasure. It feels okay, you'd heard from one blushing friend, whispering just outside the belfry on summer afternoon, once you get used to it. But it's awful to start.

It does not help matters, that your mother made the man out to be a brute, that he might be the man to cure you of your willful ways.

What wilfulness, you have to wonder.

You simply did as you pleased, which, you suppose was the point. Women were to be obedient and meek, led not leaders. You took your own counsel, spoke your mind. Look where that had landed you. With the mean daughter of the mayor jealous and telling tales of all that time you spent alone.

It had all ended with a husband twice your age, that you did not know, that might be a strict disciplinarian. Your world had always been small, but you were free to roam it. Now it has shrunken to the size of a pin. To this room and this man and nothing more.

And, you are terribly afraid of violence.

Your parents were never strict with you, had hardly ever used corporal punished. You don't know how to endure that kind of pain. Better to be cautious for now, follow each of his whims, bow to any request or demand. You can push later, find the weak spots later, you only have to bear him for now.

Joel returns twice for more pans of coal, lids snapping closed with a metallic clang, before he carries your little suitcase through.

You stand when he gestures you within.

The room is spare and clean, and you have to tramp down the instinct to turn and run, fling yourself into the snow and run until your legs gave out.

The door closes behind you with a soft snick. To contain the heat of the room, you think desperately.

Something rustles and you turn to find him undressing.

You have never seen a man's nude body before, aside from the time you and a friend has spied on boys at the river once when you were young, seeing nothing but murky water and thin, veiny chests, and the curious part of you just wants to watch, to discover it. Instead, you reach for the buttons on your dress and follow suit, fingers shaking.

It seems odd, you think, that he isn't touching you, tugging the fabric loose himself, but maybe this is how it's done. Maybe this is how he does it. Perhaps you should be helping him.

You glance up to find him still not looking at you, redressing in warm underclothes.

You falter, unsure, and let the buttons hang loose at your chest.

The uncertainty is making you feel like a caged animal.

What does he want with you? You can take it into your own hands.

They had called you brave and determined, let that be true.

You let the dress slip off your shoulders and pool on the floor. You step out of the ring of fabric, approach him slowly, presenting yourself to him in your underthings, shoulders bare, nipples perking against the fabric in the bone-deep cold.

His eyes travel the length of your body, eyes eventually landing on yours.

His gaze doesn't seem brutish, but men are good at hiding it when they liked to. Maybe you're seeing what you need to, to reach for his hands.

Joel curls one hand around both of your wrists, stops the trajectory of your hand toward his chest. "We don't have to."

A confused combination of rejection and relief rushes through you. "I'm your wife. You don't want to have me?"

He exhales, his warm breath ghosting over your lips. "It ain't that. I know you didn't choose to marry an old man," he says, tongue soaked with a bitterness turned inward. He releases your hands, steps back. "I'm sorry I don't have nowhere else for ya to sleep."

"Oh," you murmur, a tight fist clenching around your throat.

You had been prepared for anything but consideration, but this.

None of this is how you imagined marriage, a husband, this long night.

He nods, doesn't seem to expect you to say anything else. You close your hands around one of his. "Husband," you say softly, saying his name feels too intimate. "I can't bear the uncertainty. Please, I would rather have it done."

Joel watches you, his eyes flicking between both of yours. He covers your hands with his free hand and pushes them down. "Nothin' to be uncertain about. I won't touch you."

He releases you and moves away, seeming to mean what he said.

The candles are blown out, the room plunged into darkness and you settle in the blissfully warm bed together, a wide space between your bodies.

The coverlet smells of sweet summer hay, at odds with the chill in the room, freezing your nose. It smells of something deeper too, a heady scent of salt and skin and cotton.

You don't dare sleep, despite his words and supposed kindness.

It could be a trick, a test, something to make you loosen your guard, for you to fall asleep only to wake with those rough hands on your body, pulling you apart in ways you can only guess at.

You lie in the dark, missing something you never even really had.

His breathing evens and deepens in sleep, but adrenaline and distrust and worry won't let you follow. You do not want to follow. You watch his shoulders lift through the dark, the line of his nose, the part of his chapped lips.

Eventually the world lightens to a gray muteness beyond the shuttered windows, and only then do you let yourself cry.

Mourning, but relief, too, that at least the first night is over.

.

.

.

While the blizzard abates over the next few days, the snow does not.

It continues down day after day, making the already perilous, winter weathered roads, completely impassable. You are stuck, trapped, an animal with it's foot caught in a snare.

For the first three days, you don't sleep at all, forcing yourself to stay awake and vigilant by any means, pinching your skin until you bled to forego sleep. But eventually exhaustion forces you to, shepherds you into dreams where it's warm, there are no men, no churches or mayor's daughters, and you walk unmolested through green forests alone, only a leather-bound notebook and leaping fish for company.

You wake and mourn something that will never be.

The land is beautiful, at least, iced white like the little cakes you sometimes saw in the baker's window just down the road from your home, but brutal and harsh, unforgiving.

You become aquatinted with Joel's house and the keeping of it, and feel quietly relived when he spends most of the day tending to the land, the horses, the other animals in the stables you've yet to see. You sense that he doesn't know what to make you of either, what to do with you, how to interact with you, how to fit together now that you're condemned to be stuck that way.

Loneliness infects you like a sickness, an unattractive melancholia that's only broken in the evenings when you warm yourself at the grate and eat dinner with Joel. Even though you don't speak the company is welcome, just the presence of him buoys you a little, shields you from the cold. Your fears that he would be a terror to you pass slowly, though you haven't had the opportunity to do something that might require his retributive, readjusting hand, stuck inside as you are.

A guiding hand, the priest would call it, towards the just path of being a good wife.

You mend clothes, cook to the best of your ability, sweep and scrub and wash until your hands are raw and stinging from the pervasive cold. You yearn to wander as you used to, to walk among the swaying, frozen trees, to at least go outside. You tell yourself that you are working toward asking him, that you won't neglect tasks for it.

As long and terribly lonely as the days are, the nights are worse. You ache with homesickness and betrayal. You are without even the comfort of your own things, since passing the roads are impossible, you only have the small suitcase you'd been able to carry. Your father had been set to deliver your things the next day. You have no way of knowing if he even attempted the journey.

A different feeling has joined that cacophony of confused familial hurt, something like lust and shame.

Joel washes before bed at the basin on the dresser, and you are often subject to this display though he turns his back to you. You are the one to lie out the cloth, the soap, and warm the water he uses to wash away the stink of the stables. Musky leather and hay and heady sweat, replaced with the clean scent of soap and skin. Often, water drips down his broad shoulders, pools at the base of his spine, curves over the thick, twisting muscle in his biceps and forearms.

He is no boy at a river, but neither is he your contemporary. His chest hair is gray as the hair of his beard, wrinkles tucked into curious corners of his body. It fascinates you, so different from your own body.

Betrayal of yourself pulses between your thighs, an ache that you want to reach beneath the coverlet and touch away, though you don't dare.

Each night, you expect to be the one where he reaches for you, claims you and seals your marriage but he never does.

You remember your friend's words. It would hurt and then be okay. You want to know for yourself what okay feels like.

It makes you wonder what it would be like, a curious daydream.

One horrible night, your usual dream of freedom morphs into that want, only it's not your hand massaging away the want, but Joel's. Those rough, broad fingers between your legs. You had to roll out of bed and gulp down water at the pitcher in the corner of the room, feeling stupid and wretched. Silly, even. For what would he get out of touching you there? Nothing, just your own desire run amok.

The closest you get to touching him, is bandaging his cold ruined hands, standing between his legs where he sits at the table, looking and not looking at him, his eyes raking over you. He had said thank you so earnestly, it had made your face warm.

Weeks pass into more than a month and a half in this way, one cold, dark day bleeding into the next, the soft humiliation of feeling unwelcome and unwanted and terribly alone, like a butterfly with it's wings pinned. For all your intrigue, he seems profoundly uninterested in you. He leaves you to your own mind, to your own lonesomeness. You are, maybe, just a girl that did his cooking.

You long to stretch your legs, take a walk, explore uninterrupted as you used to, report what you saw in the journal you haven't dared to take out in front of Joel, buried in your case beneath your clothes. You're already trapped, what if he didn't like you to write? Trapped by body and mind might really drive you to drown yourself in a river or go seeking a length of rope.

Things change when he finds you crying one evening, from the ache in your chest, from the caged wounded-ness, from the fear that still occasionally lurched to the front of your mind, for all the cruelties he could inflict so suddenly, if he chose.

You don't dry your eyes quickly enough and the next sleepy afternoon, eyes drooping from boredom, Joel slips inside in a burst of cold, snow peppered in his hair. Before you have the chance to offer him supper from the stove, he's saying your name and giving you pause.

"You want to come out to the stables? Maybe it'd do you good to get out of this house." If you didn't know better, you'd say he sounds worried.

"Are you—"

"I ain't puttin' you to work just yet," he says with a smile. It's a joke, and you find it disarming. "Just to stretch your legs. See another living thing that ain't me."

"Yes, okay," you agree, maybe too quickly and eagerly, because he laughs. You let him hold out your coat so you can slip your arms into the sleeves.

Joel holds the door open and offers his arm for you to balance on as you cross together through the thick icy drifts of snow to the stables. His arm is sturdy and strong beneath your fingers, warm even through all the layers you're both wearing. Fat flakes of snow sticks to your lashes, white flurries drowning your vision of Joel. His strong jaw, the tight squint of his eyes against the white glare of the world.

You glance away, feel that tightness bloom in your belly.

It feels good to walk, to cross a distance instead of pacing the cottage floor in circles all day long. He pulls back the stable door. It's surprisingly warm within, from the combined heat of the animals' bodies and whatever work he'd been sweating over. There are two horses and a cow, a smattering of chickens with their own little coop at the back.

You can't help but rush to them, patting noses, feeling hot breath on your face. The chickens squawk something terrible, but a spotted one rubs against your leg and let's you bend at the waist to pet it.

Joel fiddles around at a bench in the corner, breath puffing before his face. You see the flash of a pairing knife, wood shavings fluttering to the ground.

You tentatively creep closer, trying to peer over his shoulder at what he might be making. You would have never guessed he was creative.

"We only have goats," you say as you stroke the face of the mare whose stall is nearest Joel, as near as you can get without being obvious. "Very mean and terribly stubborn."

He chuckles, puts down his work and leans over the side of the stall. "Well, none a' those here."

It's silent for a long time, the plunk of snow against the roof, the quiet sound of the animals breathing. Joel clears his throat awkwardly after awhile and you stiffen. "Listen, I know we ain't had the best start with the weather and all. That and I'm not exactly the husband anyone looks for."

You turn to him, meeting his eyes, and feel something between you soften. "You've been kind to me. Kinder than I deserve," you answer. "Considering that marrying me will have hurt your reputation."

You wonder what he was promised in return for this. You assumed it was a child, that he was getting older and wanted to continue his line and so needed a young wife. But, he hasn't attempted to touch you at all.

"Ain't really got a reputation to speak of anyway," he chuckles. "Never cared about it neither."

How you wish you had the luxury of not caring about it. You glance away, smooth your fingers down the horse's freckled nose. "Were you ever married before?"

"Once," he answers. "Long time ago."

"When did she die?"

Joel shifts. "Hasn't," he grunts. "Far as I know. One mornin' she was gone, never came home."

You feel your eyes go wide. "Oh. I didn't know."

A runaway wife.

A vast thing you did not know possible.

"It's all right." He shakes his head. "I'm guess I'm askin' what I can do to help you feel better about this whole mess. I shouldn't have—" he waves a hand toward the direction of the house, "just left you on your own for so long. In the house. I figured it was better. That you might not. . ." He doesn't continue and you don't need him too.

He thought he was making you more comfortable, that you wouldn't have liked his company.

You don't correct him, because it's true. When you first arrived it was very true.

"Oh." You think for a long moment, of all the silence and tiptoeing around each other. Maybe there's a better way than that, if not the way of a married couple. "They lied about me, you know. The mayor's daughter and her friends and that boy. I didn't do anything wrong."

He looks a little embarrassed to be hearing talk of your supposed sin of the flesh so bluntly. "I figured," he answers, rubbing his chin.

You blink. "You did?" He nods and you continue. "She was jealous, I think, that I did as I pleased. I guess that's what could help me." You hurry to continue, because he'd only just told you of his first wife disappearing without a trace. "Of course, I would keep up with the work, and I can help here, too," you gesture around. "I'd like to help with the animals. . .But I'd like to roam, too."

He thinks on it for a long minute. "I'd maybe even appreciate work out here more. I can milk the cow, if it's anything like milking a goat. I can chop wood. If you'd allow it."

That earns you a chuckle. "You want to chop wood?" He asks, a little amused.

"If you'd allow it," you cast your eyes down. "Of course I don't want to disobey you."

You aren't expecting him to take your hand and jump when he does. You'd both removed your gloves when you entered the barn and his skin is warm and calloused against your own.

His jaw works as he contemplates you, a fascination in his eyes. "Forget all that nonsense about obeying and whatever else that priest was goin' on about." He shakes his head, "I'm too old to think any of it means anything."

You aren't sure what he means by that, but nod all the same.

"So, how 'bout this. We'll start takin' it all on together. I did my own damn housework for years so I ain't completely useless. And you can help chop wood, if it suits you to."

It sounds too good, so you contain your enthusiasm and nod. "A fine idea. We might know each other better then, to spend some time togeher."

He nods, and something pink rises in his cheeks. "And," he shuffles his feet, squeezes your hand in both of his. "that's enough. Understand? You're might be my wife, but I'm no fool."

You understand what he means. That this thing is more partnership than relationship. It soothes you, if it also disappoints you a little. All those parts of him you think of exploring, suddenly out of reach.

"I understand."

"Good, come spring, when it's warmer, we'll figure something better for sleepin'."

You nod and then dare to ask, "And wandering? If the work is finished and I'd like to walk alone?"

He touches your cheek for the first time, the barest brush of his fingers, a tentative affection. "Always home before dark. That's all I ask."

"I can do that." You cradle the hand that had touched your face against the mare's stall, daring to hope.

You feel like you can breathe for the first time since the mayor's daughter stood and pointed her finger at you in church all those weeks ago.

.

.

.

Spring comes late in the year this far north.

The roads turn to mud that sticks the horses' hooves in place, bogs down the wagon.

Joel watches you lift the ax above your head and bring it neatly down on the splint of wood balanced on the stump in front of you, just the way he'd shown you months ago, in the dead of that terrible winter. If you wanted to chop firewood, who was he to tell you not to?

The shaw around your shoulders flutters in the breeze as you retrieve the fallen logs, reveals the strength in your forearms.

He glances away. You are the most unsettlingly pretty creature he's ever set eyes on, and much too young for him. Much too good for him, much too good for anyone. All the warnings he'd been given on your temperament had sounded only like compliments to him, and he'd been proven right. And now that you'd loosened, he appreciates your unflinching opinions, your sharp pointed tongue.

And, Joel doesn't necessarily mind being bossed all that much. You're usually right, anyway.

If he is worried sick right up until the moment when you return to the cottage when you roam about, no one is the wiser of it. You always return before dark, and he never tells you not to go.

Some creatures just didn't need caging; they'd come home all on their own if you let them.

Preventing you from walking alone, taking time to yourself to explore would be akin to clipping a bird's wings. He's sorry for all those weeks at the start when he left you inside, hadn't realized you thought you couldn't leave the cottage, not even just outside.

It's still cold and your breath unspools in front of you in a pale cloud as you work, sweating and breathing hard through your teeth.

He feels a longing for you that he probably shouldn't. He had made a promise to you and he intended to keep it, wife or not. You content now, at ease, in his presence. The longer he keeps that vow as the days grow longer, the more you'll settle.

Soon, the roads will clear and you can go into the village for supplies that are bitterly needed after such a long winter. He thinks you'll like the town, less haughty and judgemental than the one you grew up in.

The afternoon sun dapples over your skin, makes the sweat on your brow, at the base of your throat, shimmer. He glances away, his thoughts already spiraling toward what you will smell like that evening, coated in a day's hard work. Lying beside you each night in bed is a sweet, unending torture. You dream often, murmuring in your sleep, occasionally pierced with a cry, sometimes a grunt and moan. Mouth parted, chest heaving. He wonders what or who you dream of, and goes to great pains to hide how hard he often is in the morning.

It feels sort of like a betrayal, how quickly his mind conjures up your bare skin, waiting and open, unfolding just for him, the imagined taste of you on his tongue, the plush part of your lips, little pink tongue pressing against your teeth.

He could only endure it. Once summer came, he might be able to take care of it elsewhere and not risk you overhearing, or worse, catching him.

Aside from the torture of sleep, everything else is fine. You're clever and quick; a better chess player than him by far. You best him nearly every evening you plat. You write and draw in a little notebook that you once squirreled away like he might take it. Now, you leave it on the table, let him read little bits of stories, thumb through your drawings of animals you come across. You only have to hear something once to be able to repeat it verbatim, reciting poetry or stories not in your notebook for him when requested.

You've improved his life, the cottage and farm, in way he wouldn't have been able to picture before. This isn't what your father had meant when he came begging him to marry you and save their reputation, said Joel could use a woman's touch, a kind of helper.

It was bullshit, but maybe the loneliness finally got the better of him. After his wife disappeared, he hadn't thought of remarrying. Clearly he's the type you leave.

He continues watching you, brushing the mare, when the sound of an approaching wagon meets his ears. Joel glances up to find the ax abandoned against the stump, you hurrying quickly toward him in the mouth of the open stable.

"Someone's coming," you say, brow creased with worry, reaching for his sleeve. "Joel, I thought the roads were too—"

"Me too," he answers, checking the revolver at his hip. "Let's see who it is." He pushes his hand against your spine and feels your body loosen as you walk together toward the distant road.

The wagon plodding up the road eventually pulls to a muddy stop just at the fence line, a man jumping down from the driver's seat. "Father," he hears you murmur, before starting across the yard without waiting for him.

Joel follows, watches his old friend wrap an arm around you, murmuring your mother's sent greetings. You face folds at the mention of your mother, but you brighten quickly.

Joel hadn't even known your father had a daughter, until he appeared like a wraith at the edge of his land all those months ago, begging a favor.

Joel had told you of his own daughter one late evening when neither of you could sleep. Feeling your comforting warm attention across the mattress as he spoke to the dark ceiling. How his wife leaving, had also been a mother leaving.

Sarah had died very, very young, and though he'd never know for certain, he can't imagine selling her off the way your father had you. A wad of cash offered like you were goods to be traded in service of their name. It had soured his opinion of the man, and any leftover good will he felt toward him when they were younger.

Soiled, now that Joel was a hypocrite, finding comfort, among other feelings, in you, even if you were his wife. You're young, and you've placed immeasurable trust in him that he'd had to very carefully earn.

Joel joins you and shakes your father's well meaning hand as you say, "Stay for dinner, please. We'd love to have you and hear any news from town. We've been alone all winter."

"Of course," he answers jovially, glancing over you. "I thought for sure you'd have a spring chicken on the way, my dear."

It takes you a long moment to realize what he's getting at. A complicated knot of feelings writhes over your face before hurt dominates.

He clearly expected to find you pregnant.

You smile and don't answer, leading them toward the house instead.

.

.

.

The afternoon air is already below freezing again when your father finally leaves, wagon disappearing back down the road, unloaded of your meager things that you haven't missed in months. An odd anxiety has taken hold of you, and though you have too many chores to get done, you tell Joel you're going on a walk and leave without waiting for an answer.

You feel like a lamb put out to slaughter, though what else should your father have expected than to find you a pregnant wife, muted and different than you had been before marriage. It stings that he hadn't even asked after your well being, if Joel was treating you well, was good to you. It didn't matter you suppose, you aren't his problem, and if your husband saw fit to be cruel to you, that was that man's right.

He'd sat at the table and talked only to Joel where once he used to look to you, find pride in his clever daughter's conversation.

Now, you are silent, talked about like you aren't present, about how well you are or aren't fulfilling wifely duties. Clearly you'd failed in at least one respect since you were not pregnant. Never would he guess that Joel had never even stuck you, left the marriage unconsummated. It makes you feel adrift, all the easier to discard, since he could easily nullify the marriage for something like that.

You couldn't read how Joel felt about the whole thing as your father threw out childhood anecdotes about your petulance and reluctance to learn from your mother without care.

Humiliating. It made you seem frivolous and silly. Worse, many times over he implied thanks to Joel for the purchase of damaged goods, your supposed fling with the farmhand referenced repeatedly and only thinly veiled by polite convention.

Joel, apparently a damned martyr for marrying you. He was suffering so greatly by taking your hand in marriage.

Though, your father had said, wiping his chin of the grease spilling down it, good to have a woman's touch, as I told you before. It's no good for a man to take on duties of the home, or be, ah, alone all the time. I don't know how you stood to be without a wife for so many years.

It was a humiliating, punishing few hours. Clearly, your family had not thought of you beyond gladness that your indiscretion no long sullied their name.

You feel foolish too, for the affection you feel for Joel. When you are only a little help mate to him. That is why he draws no closer, doesn't really want to know you as a husband would know you.

You walk and walk, head down, alternating between seething rage and despair in turns. You don't notice the shadows creeping in at the edges of your vision, how quickly the sun has sunk behind the mountains. A horrible shame traces up your spine, making you shiver.

The world is still icy and cold, snowbanks piled high between muddy ruts cut into the earth. You don't notice how close you've strayed to the rushing creek, swollen with melted snow runoff spilling down the mountainside. You boot catches on the edge of an slick stone.

You grasp at a low handing tree branch to keep upright but fall into the water heavily, spluttering as it sweeps you into it's rush. Your lungs feel frozen as you gasp and flail for anything to find purchase on. All those times you thought of throwing yourself to a river's mercy, here was God doing it for you, for your ungrateful hardness, a nasty little girl that wanted too much and had no good sense.

Maybe God thought you had sex with that farmhand too.

Or maybe it was the sins of the flesh you imagined with a husband that did not return your desire.

It's almost easy to stop fighting the current and let it drag you down instead. You can't swim and maybe this is fate. No one would miss you, people would sigh and say maybe it was the most decent thing to happen to you, a blight scorched off the town's good name.

The water closes over your head, darkness swims at the corners of your vision.

You aren't sure how long you're under when something hard catches under your elbow, hauls you coughing and spluttering to shore.

A face looms above yours as you try to draw breath into your frozen lungs, coughing until you turn on your side and throw up, first water and then the little dinner you'd been able to stomach. "Breathe," a voice murmurs, which you only belatedly connect to Joel. Then, angrier, "What the hell were you thinkin'?"

You can't answer him just yet, feeling faint, still hiccoughing into the dirt, lungs still spasming from the shock of the cold water.

"Before dark," he growls suddenly when you finally manage to suck in a full breath of night air. "Come home before dark. That is the one goddamn thing I asked from you."

A new fear steals into you, that you will finally find out what happens when you disobey, and on the heels of your father, Joel's good friend, reminding him that you were dirty and used, beneath him in almost every way.

You cower, waiting for a blow on the black soil of the creek bank. "Joel, please, I'm sorry—" The word sicks in your graveled voice.

It doesn't come right then. Instead, his arms fit beneath your legs, around your back, and lifts you from the ground. "Jesus, sweetheart, no—I got you," he says softly. "Just breathe."

"Joel—"

"'s all right, now."

"Please don't—"

"We're just goin' home, or you'll freeze to death."

Your mind sways in and out of consciousness as he walks, dark branches wheeling above your head in a dark tangle, the world silent and near pitch black by the time you return to the cottage.

He sets you on your feet in the bedroom, yanks your coat down your arms. "Help me here, darlin'," he says, his voice softly desperate, that sweet little pet name a suspected accident. "You might lose fingers if you don't."

You help him wrestle with the fastenings of your clothes. "I didn't mean to."

"I know."

Only a muted embarrassment and helplessness reaches your mind, that he is seeing you nearly naked for the first time like this. His hands seem far away.

Joel tugs the blankets around your shoulders and hastily fills a pan with coal from the hearth. "Too damn cold," he mutters, and you wonder how long and far you'd gone if the fire from dinner was already spent. Distantly, you realize he is peeling himself out of his own clothes. "You'll get faster warmer," he explains. You nod, feeling very tired. "Don't close your eyes," he says, voice suddenly harsh. "Keep lookin' at me."

You struggle to follow his command, watching as so much skin is revealed, then pressed against yours.

His body is so hot, when your skin touches his, that it feels like being set aflame, touched by a scorching fire.

You whimper and he shushes you, presses you closer, head tucked beneath his chin. "You're all right," he murmurs, though it sounds as though he is trying desperately to convince himself. "You'll be all right, sweetheart."

For a long while he holds you in silence, scratchy lips against your forehead, beard pressed against your temple. You feel every part of him pressed against every part of you, the hair on his legs and chest, the muscle of his biceps and forearms, chest and collarbones and feet. The first time his hands are on you this way, because you'd been a little too emotional and nearly drowned yourself.

His broad palms splay over your spine, cradling you as shivers start to rack your body again. You hadn't realized they had stopped.

A relieved sigh climbs out of his throat.

"Were you trying to leave?"

You don't know how he means it, like his first wife had, or like you were trying to die. "No," you answer, "No, I fell in. I was upset." Your teeth chatter, click together so violently you're afraid you might bite your tongue. "I didn't realize how late it was. I'm sorry, Joel."

"Scared me, is all."

"I'm sorry," you whisper against his throat. "For all of it. I'm so ashamed."

He shakes his head. "Should be your father that's ashamed."

"I'm being punished," you continue. "For something I did not do."

Joel's hand pauses in its path down your spine, for just a moment. "Yeah," he agrees quietly. "I'm sorry for it."

"Not you," you nest down against him. Maybe if you were more coherent, you'd feel nervous about it, but it just feels good, his arms around you, his body against yours, finally. "I don't mean you, Joel. You are not my punishment."

"All right now," he mutters. "Enough a' that."

You are sure you move first, though if asked, Joel will say he did. You tilt your chin up and press your cold mouth to his.

Stolen little girlhood kisses amount to nothing compared to this. His heavy hands, his scratchy cheeks against yours. Full and warm blooded. Cradling and caressing and sighing just like you. His breath is yours.

It's all consuming, like a star parting the night sky.

.

.

.

Summer arrives quietly, softly.

You visit your family as a married couple, and Joel holds your hand through the Sunday church service you attend together even though some of the congregants eye you with stony, judgemental stares. You take pleasure in the burning gaze of those girls on you, angry that you don't seem uncomfortable with the man they'd indirectly sentenced you to.

As quickly as is possible, you leave again. It's hard to be there, among the stares but also among a village that used to be your home.

"Sure you wanna go so quick?"

"Yes, Joel."

He mulls it over, hands on his hips.

"What?" It occurs to you that maybe he isn't ready to leave. He has no family; you've only spoken to each other for months and months aside from that visit from your father and once from Joel's brother, who had been taken by surprise at your presence. Maybe he was craving company other than your own. "Would you like to stay longer?"

"No, I don't want you to feel like we're in any rush to get back."

You blink, taken aback. "I don't. I'd like to. . .go home."

His face softens. "All right, girl. Let's get a move on then." Joel helps you onto the wagon bench and starts to climb up when the priest, who Joel had managed to avoid earlier, passes by your parents' house.

"Mr. Miller! A moment?"

"What's he want, I wonder?" He asks, leaning his arms against the side of the wagon, his face close to yours. "I ain't his parishioner. Technically."

You roll your eyes. "Go see what he'd like," you say tenderly, touching his cheek just to nettle the other man. Indecent touching! You can hear the sermon already forming. Lusts of the flesh! Good thing you no longer attend to this town's church and will not have to hear it.

"Yes, ma'am."

Despite the intimacy, he has not touched you, not really, since that day you nearly drowned. You long for him to kiss you again, just once, but fear it may have been an accident borne of your stupidity, his fear of loss.

Joel climbs steps back down from the wagon and approaches. You watch the robin's egg sky instead of the men, counting the crowding of little white puffs on the horizon, pretending that you can't hear every word being spoken, of being tamed, cowed, broken. How is he faring with his new wife?

You mean to hear Joel's answer, but you mother is suddenly laboring onto the wagon bench beside you. You had not heard her approaching and had avoided speaking to her at church and lunch, Joel dutifully standing between you.

"We didn't get a chance to speak."

"Should I have something to say to you?"

You mother catches up your hand, holds it between both of hers. "I didn't want to send you away."

"And yet you did, for something you know I did not do. To a man you knew nothing of."

She huffs. "What's done is done. We did it to protect you, to save your name." You nod and tug your hand away. "Never mind all that," she says gently. "Tell me, how is he as a man? Does he treat you well?"

"I think," you start, watching Joel and the priest. "He might be the best man I've ever known."

She peers at you curiously. "He doesn't hurt you?"

"It would be much too late for your guilt if he did," you answer, "but no, he doesn't."

"You listen to him." Your mother sounds amazed.

"He listens to me. Let's me be." You shrug, "So I do the same."

She seems bewildered by that, that by not holding you down, forcing you to something else, you were better for it.

Your mother doesn't get to give an answer, because Joel is approaching.

She kisses you goodbye and he helps her down from the wagon. "So," you say when the village is finally behind you. "What did you tell the Father? How did you break my restless spirit?"

He chuckles. "I told him there wasn't anything to break."

It warms you to think he believes it. "Even when I fall into creeks in the cold?"

"I think your spirit is what kept you from drownin' so—"

"Oh, ha ha, very funny."

You want to lean into him, but wait until you're on the final stretch of dusty road when the evening sky is beginning to darken at the edges to do so, heavy against his shoulder.

You work together to curry the horses and stable them for the night, exhaustion aching in your bones by the time you turn in. Summer is as bright as winter is dark, and the sky is only just starting to darken, blushing pinks and smouldering orange over the trees.

Joel is saying something about a book, something about chess. He talks so much, now. Even when he's quiet, you know the language of him.

"Why don't you kiss me again?"

He blinks and meets your gaze, looking like a fish out of water. "I, uh—"

"If the first time was a mistake," you say. "It doesn't offend me. I like things as they are."

He clears his throat and bows his head, approaches you slowly, all the time looking down at his feet, brows tilted together. "I didn't mean for it to go like that," he admits. "That's true."

You meant it when you said you like things as they are, but disappointment still burns hot that his affection had been unintentional. "Okay," you agree when he stops in front of you. "That's just fine."

He shakes his head. "It ain't that I don't want that. But I promised you, I wouldn't. Our, uh, marriage vows didn't mean shit. But that, sweetheart, it meant something. I meant it."

"And if I said I wanted it?"

"You don't need to feel like you have to," he says quietly but firmly. "I wouldn't be able to stomach it."

You push your palm against his cheek, stand nearly chest to chest with him. "You have never made me feel like I needed to do or be anything at all for you." You lean against him, "I'd like it if you kissed me. And if, um, you'd like to—" Long held shame, years of hearing about how women were lustful temptresses comes creeping in. "Well, the rest of it—"

"If I'd like to what?" He teases, something wicked in the grin that pulls at the corners of your mouth. "Touch you?"

"I suppose," you say haughtily, flustered.

"Where?" His hot hands press to your sides, over the curves of your hips where no one has ever touched before. You startle and fall against him, your skin alive beneath his hands. "Here?"

You cover his hands, guide them boldly over your body, to your ass and waist and just beneath your breasts, back down to your hips. You lean in so your mouth brushes his. "You should make more vows to me. New ones that say you promise to never stop touching me."

"That could be arranged."

"Oh wonderful. I should hate to have to hunt down another husband."

He's pulls you toward the bedroom, the bed beyond. He has kissed you again, but he intends to do something to you, that much is clear.

"Hunt one down, huh? I think I fell into your lap."

He fell into your lap. The thought is a nice one.

You nod, bum hitting the edge of the bed. "I should think so. Had those girls witnessed even this behind that barn, I would have been killed where I stood. A happy accident that they didn't and I was given you instead."

His laugh is like a bark. "Ain't you somethin'."

He tilts you back, looks at your coiled body and hums. Your knees are pressed together out of habit, arms folded across your belly now. Still fully clothed and you feel naked as he looks down at you with a reverence and devotion you have only before seen in a pew. You settle your heels at the edge of the bed."Tell me again," he requests.

"I want you," you say quietly. "I want you to touch me."

Just as in your dreams that you thought frivolous and unrealistic, he peels your thighs apart and pushes his hand between your legs. You gasp and fight not to skitter away from his touch, to keep your hips against the mattress. If that's how warm only his hand felt through your clothes, you can't imagine what it will be like without.

He leans over you, moves his hand to tilt your chin up instead, finally presses his lips against yours again after so long.

"Joel," you sigh against his mouth, scratchy cheeks that you cup in your hands. "You'll be gentle with me."

It's not a question.

"Mm." His nose draws a line down your cheek to your jaw, mouth pressing against the underside of your jaw. You gasp when his teeth scrape along your skin, just a little. You tangle your hands in his hair, tug at the graying strands that slip through your fingers until he grunts against you.

Joel settles between your parted thighs, lost to you, apparently. "Joel."

"Sweetheart," he answers, lifting his head to look at you.

"I know it will hurt. Please make it easy on me."

He leans on his forearm, placed above the crown of your head, his other hand yanking the skirt of your dress up. "I will do everything to make it easy on you."

"Okay," you breathe, smoothing the worry. He wouldn't hurt you on purpose, of that you're sure.

He works you out of your clothes as you pull at his. There's only one part of him you haven't seen, one part of him you've never seen of any man. You tug at his trousers until a button pops open and you can push your hand down.

You gasp at the feeling of him in your hand, hard and warm, his skin soft and damp. You aren't sure what to do, not the way he moves with such certainty, thick fingers slipping beneath your underwear, parting the folds of you.

You watch his face as you move your hand, circling your fingers around him seems the natural fit of things, sliding your fist up and down his length. There's friction though and you wonder if it feels good for him.

He is signularly focused on you though, and for a moment you forget his cock in your hand because he touches something that makes your back arch off the bed, a moan yanked from your chest.

"There she goes," he coos, still moving his fingers over you, not even inside you yet.

That will go inside you, you remember suddenly. It feels too big for your hand, let alone your cunt. You squeeze his cock and rub your thumb along the head where you feel something leaking, helping your hand slide around him.

"How does that feel—"

He groans, and you turn your gaze to him, repeating the action, watching him shudder. "Am I doing okay?"

It gives you no small satisfaction to literately have him in the palm of your hand, giving to him. You stroke him slowly, tightening your grip as you reach the tip. "Jesus, girl," he murmurs, and then thrusts into your hand.

"Am I?"

"Little too good," he grunts. "I ain't gonna be much use to you if you keep that up."

You don't know what he means, especially since you want to keep making him sound like that forever. But you trust him, so you release him and kiss him instead, nipping at his bottom lip, feeling like an aching wound as his slips a finger inside you.

There's a little pressure but it doesn't hurt. You can feel how damp you are, easing the passage of his fingers, a second and third following, stretching you to almost the point of pain, but mostly it feels good, his hands working some kind of spell over you in tandem until your world bursts with pleasure.

Waves of it crash over you, slicking your skin with sweat in the warmth of your bedroom. He helps you out of the last bit of your clothes, nude body bared to him, hands scooping your breasts in too warm palms, brushing tentatively over your nipples.

So many thngs that you did not know could feel good.

Your mouth goes dry when you finally see his cock, aching from your attentions, the head an angry red. You have the most bizarre desire to out him in your mouth, that is only vindicated as not odd when Joel puts his head between your legs and makes you come again without his fingers even entering you.

"Please," you whine, beckoning him toward you, so open and vulnerable and never so safe. "Please just do it. I'm ready."

"You are, sweetheart," he coos. "Best I can get you anyway."

He lets you grip him and guide him to your entrance, pushing inside you in increments. You wonder at what brutes the men in your village must be like to have all the girls saying this is only something to endure. For though it hurts a little, it overwhelmingly feels good. Like stretching a sore muscle. He is heavy and warm, your bodies locked together in a way you will mourn when it parts.

Joel holds you close, pushes his forehead gently to yours, breath ghosting over your lips, so warm and present it makes something deep inside you sigh in satisfaction.

Here you belong, you are sure, here you are understood and wanted. You touch him wherever your hands can reach, marveling at the plains of his body as he ruts into you, skin slapping against skin.

He grunts against your neck when he comes and you follow only a moment later, panting into the dark of something that is now yours, clutching him tightly to your chest.

A new vow kept.

.

.

.

He wakes you in the middle of the night with gentle prodding.

The night is a soft sweet song outside your window, the low sounds of the land around you. "Joel?" you ask, pressing one hand over your eyes, rubbing away sleep. "What's wrong?"

"Nothin'," he assures. "There's just somethin' I wanna show you."

"Now?"

"If you're willin'."

Well, you are always willing, with him. Wrapped in only your dressing robe, he leads you outside, across the yard to the stables by lamplight.

He is shirtless, and you are close enough that you can see the flex of muscle in his arms when he rolls the doors open, and the cratered parts of him you finally got to touch.

"Joel—" You complain. "What—"

"C'mon, now," he motions you inside, the red light flickering over his features comforting instead of eerie.

"I'm sore you know," you grumble. And you are, a pleasant kind of pain that accompanies the pleasure he had given you. It's nothing like the girls had described to you. It had only been good. He had only been good.

He just chuckles, no small amount of pride in it, and leads you to the workbench that you can never quite tell what he does at. "You feel okay?" He asks, sincere.

"Okay," you scoff. "You very well know what you did to me."

"All right," he says softly. "Enough of that."

"Show me."

He clears his throat, and nods, pulling you near him at the bench.

There among the softly snuffling horses, he presents you with a tiny wood carving of a woman that looks just like you. You gasp and take her carefully from his hands, holding her up to moonlight and then lamplight, the exquisite detailing of her.

She has your nose and eyes. The shape of her body in movement, the exact way you hold your hands in miniature. An expression on her face of determination and muddled anxiety. Afraid, but getting on with it.

He has adored you, you see, from the moment he met you. He studied you as closely as you studied him. "It's beautiful."

"Yeah," he agrees, hand on your spine, "suppose I've got a good muse, though."

Your face feels hot, your whole body alight. "When did you—" just to confirm what you think you know.

"Morning after we married," he says. "Somethin' about the way you looked, I just. . .I had to get it down somewhere."

You rub your thumb over her silhouette. "She is missing her wedding band."

Joel's eyes flick to your hand, empty. "I suppose she is." He takes your hand and kisses it's fingers. "As you are."

This blog will have two main functions, the find and recommend. The intent is so build community and uplift others, writers big and small coming together.

So, how does it work?

Find

There are two sorts of "find"

Send an ask saying "I am trying to find this fanfiction. These things happened in it, this a detail or two, this character" whatever you can remember! Then, I will post your ask. I'll ask my followers to reblog the post so it goes around until it's hopefully found!

Send an ask saying something like, "i'd really love to find a piece with Joel and a reader with a disability" or "Does anyone know a good Frankie series with low smut, heavy on plot" or "Is there a fic with Ezra and a foot fetish?". I'll post it, recommend any that I can, and ask people to RB for a wider reach!

I'll tag the posts with tropes and characters so you can search the blog too, and look through comments and RB's

That being said, I ask that if you send in an ask, if you find what you're looking for, please reblog and comment. I won't enforce because I'm not a cop or your dad, just keep in mind reblogging helps spread works, you have it permanently even if they delete, and helps people find via tags. Comments, even small, let writers know you liked it, and also what you liked!

Recommending

Did you read something really good? Send it over via an ask! Tell me what you liked about it! I'll post the ask and @ the author so they know!

The hope is that you've already reblogged and left a comment, but it's great if you're shy!

There is NO requirment for how small the fic has to be. Does it have 2000 notes and you think it should have 2000 more? Send it in! Does it have 5 notes and you're shocked, send it in!

If you follow me, consider reblogging these works even if you dont read, just to help build community!

BOTH OF THESE INCLUDE ART! Send art my way!

Basic rules

ONLY AO3 and Tumblr links. I will not be clicking random links around.

Kink friendly. Yes that kink. Everything will be tagged so be sure to filter some tags I'll have listed below if they trigger you. My job here isn't too police a kink.

That being said, since it's my blog I will impose a few small bans. No underage, no bestiality. This includes aging up a minor but does not include monster fucking. What's the line between a animal and a monster? Well, I'll have to decide, I guess. I don't anticipate an issue. Just go ahead and send your werewolves and aliens. If something comes up that makes me very uncomfortable I have the right to delete the ask.

I won't be policing headers or language used, unless there's a slur or something (slur meaning used in a bad way. A gay man can use faggot in a fic). I know there's a lot of talk that I agree with on keeping things inclusive. However, I am not a cop and not your dad. If you have an issue with someones header or whatever, talk to the person.

In that line, I won't be reading everything I post. I have a job and a real life. Posting a fic is not an endorsement. Like Archive of Our Own, this is a place to host fics, not police content. If there is something egregious, like something breaking the rules, racist or homophobic language ETC then send a DM.

Same goes for the author. Think the author is problematic? You can send the issue in my DM's. I don't want to platform someone horrible, but a lot of stuff has gotten blown out of proportion in this fandom. Like AO3, I'm here to post, not police.

Use of AI or plagerism. If something is plagerised, LET ME KNOW THAT WILL BE DELETED. If you suspect something is AI, unless the author said "THIS IS FULLY AI" I'm not the AI police.

Outside characters allowed if within the PPCU. In the spirit of community and overlapping fandoms, you may rec or search if it's related enough. More below.

Rules subject to change and my discression.

Tags to block, even if you don't follow this blog, if they trigger you. (parenthesis are not part of the tagged words)

TW incest, TW rape, DDDNE (which stands for dead dove do not eat), dub con, non con, emetophilia (puke fetish), piss kink, tw eating disorder, tw domestic violence

Not all TW's mean it happens in the fic. TW rape could mean reader is a survivor, or its a dark fic.

Know that any concerns can be brought to DM's. If you say "i dont like this in this fic" we can talk about whether it follows rules or not. You won't get blocked for asking. Even many times about different fics.

RELATED CHARACTERS

You may follow all above rules and processes for related characters. For example, Tommy x reader is ALLOWED. Tommy exisits with Joel. Santiago Garcia x Ben Miller is ALLOWED. Santi and Ben exist with Frankie. Adrian Chase x reader NOT ALLOWED. Adrian does not exist with anyone. Matt Murdock x reader... I'm gonna say no even though the MCU technically has them existing together...... until seen together I'll say no. However, Matt Murdock x Reed Richards, ALLOWED and I am CURIOUS who would even think to write that.

If you have questions if it count, just send it in or DM.

This is not a side blog so it can function in all normal ways.

“I know, I know,” he said, holding his hands up in that gesture that was so uniquely man-being-hassled-by-wife. It made you prickle with a sort of embarrassment. When he took another sip of his cappuccino, he grimaced. It was cold, probably, but the expression had your veritable hackles rising.

He set the mug on the counter and said, “This is a very important meeting. I can’t miss it.”

You turned your back on him so you could wash your hands. “You can’t reschedule?”

“No,” he said. “And since we still haven’t found a new babysitter–”

That was your fault, but you wouldn’t admit it. You’d interviewed a couple of girls in the past couple weeks, but none of them were right. The previous girl had been perfect, but now she was off to college. You knew you were procrastinating. The decision just felt so difficult. (There was also this not so small, paranoid part of you that began to worry about the suitability of babysitters from another perspective. It had been weeks since you and Dave had had sex. Could you trust him around a pretty, young girl? Were those late night meetings of his really just for work?).

He was still speaking. “Why don’t you just take the girls with you? I’m sure they could play with her son…”

“No kids allowed,” you replied. It was true. “Johnny’s dad gets him those days.”

A tense silence followed.

You leaned over the counter to grab his cappuccino mug, and took your time rinsing it out. Then, you pushed your hair back behind your ears and avoided his gaze. “Fine. I’ll cancel.”

He let out a breath but you made yourself busy putting the mug into the dishwasher. The rattle of the tracks must have covered up his footsteps. When you stood back up, he was right there. He took your shoulders in his hands. “Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll make it up to you, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” you said, and shuffled a bit. You needed to finish the lunch boxes. The corners of his eyes tightened and he released you.

“Okay,” he said. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” you said, and watched out of the corner of your eye as he kissed your daughters and entertained them with long, drawn-out goodbyes. When the door finally shut behind him, your shoulders slumped a bit. You remembered when the barest touch of his fingers used to light you up.

.

I can’t make it tomorrow 😢 you texted Jane the next day, the book club host and your fellow mom-friend, about the bi-weekly book club meet-up that usually had you jittery with excitement for days in advance. (It was kind of sad, really. You imagined your college self deriding how boring you’d become.)

Noooo, Jane replied an hour or so later. Y not?

Dave’s got a meeting, you said. No babysitter. Let me know how it goes?

Ofc, she texted. Jane was a firm believer in abbreviations and in texting like she was a lot younger than she actually was. Then she sent a link with the message, to tide u over, bb.

You flushed when the link opened. A website you now recognized well, with a story of approximately four-hundred thousand words displayed on your screen. You squirmed in your seat as you read over the summary and the tags.

See, the book club was legitimate. A rotating group of about ten to fifteen neighborhood stay-at-home-moms/house-wives/particularly literary working-moms – the last type must have really loved to read otherwise you weren’t sure how they made the time – that got together every other week to gush over the most recent book of the group. Yes, they usually read romance novels, sue them. But those romances were also usually high quality, verging on literary even. This week’s meet-up was about The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. You loved Kristin Hannah. You had finished that book within three days of it being assigned – crying all the while – leaving you bereft of reading material for the next week and a half. (Part of the reason you were so bummed to miss the discussion).

But more than just those quality literary romances, the book club brought something even more exciting to your life. A little pre-meeting pre-game had started forming. Jane and yourself and a couple of the other moms who arrived early to gossip about stories of a… different type. Before the rest of the members joined, the five of you would huddle in Jane’s kitchen, prepping the cocktails while giggling all scandalized over the illicit stories you’d been reading on the side.

The story Jane had just sent you? The tags were certainly illicit. Extremely dubious consent, they said, dark romance, captive/captor, Maledom/Femsub, a little bit of…, daddy kink, choking, non-consensual spanking.

And several even more explicit ones.

The girls were off at school for another couple of hours and you needed to do the laundry badly, but you were immediately sucked in.

Omfg, you fired a text off to Jane only once you’d surfaced enough to get a glass of water.

ikr!!! tell me when u finish

It wasn’t the first story of its type that you’d been caught up in. Far from it. Even touching, quality books like The Great Alone couldn’t quite manage to absorb you like one of these dark, explicit, free-to-read stories published online for anyone to find. Maybe it was the taboo. Maybe it was that you were sick inside. In the moment, though, you didn’t care.

You were already on Chapter Three by the time the alarm dinged that it was 2:30.

You tried not to be but you were admittedly a little bit irritable picking the girls up from school. A long night was ahead, your daughters still young enough that they demanded all of your attention.

First snacks and homework, then off to the backyard where you were absolutely required to participate – today, your eldest daughter played a knight fighting off the evil dragon that was your youngest, all in protection of you, the princess, crouched up in a much-too-small playhouse. Your thighs burned for it, and you bleated rhythmic cries for help as the girls giggled and shouted.

Unfortunately, the internet connection in the yard was pretty spotty. When you reached the end of Chapter Four – read in piecemeal bits when and where you could manage, the toilet being your favorite hideaway – the next chapter would not load for the life of it.

You resigned yourself to it. Told yourself the anticipation would only make it better.

It was about this time that Dave texted you: Late tonight. Don’t wait up.

You swiped away the bubble of the text without really processing it. Then you went into the thread and thumbs-upped it. Usually that sort of thing ticked you off – for more reasons than you really cared to list – but that night, you were kind of relieved. More time to read your story uninterrupted.

You let the girls eat dinner in front of the TV – something Dave didn’t really approve of, but it’s not like it was the norm – and somehow managed to get them both showered and teeth-cleaned and hair-brushed with minimal fussing. Your youngest went out like a light as soon as she hit her little pink bed. Playing an evil dragon really must have taken it out of her, you thought with a smile as you kissed her sweet-smelling hair.

Your eldest was a little whinier. She wanted a story before sleep (same), so you obliged, climbing in bed beside her even though you were way too tall for it. Even she was getting too tall for it. You sensed a big girl bed upgrade might be on the horizon. You would have to talk to Dave about it.

You read the story in a hushed voice to not disturb your slumbering baby daughter on the other side of the room.

Eventually, she fell asleep and you managed to crawl out of the little bed without waking either of the girls, biting back a groan. It really was all downhill for the joints after thirty. Playing princess in that little house hadn’t done you any favors.

You cleaned the kitchen a bit haphazardly and then treated yourself to a long, hot bubble bath with a glass of wine in one hand and your phone in the other. Maybe your eyes strained over the small black text but you hardly noticed. What you did notice, however, was the pleasant warm bubbling of arousal behind your navel. In the story, the male lead had just taught the girl how to suck him off. She choked and cried but he didn’t care, just stroked her hair and pushed her down until her nose was buried in the hair at the base of his cock. He came down her throat and called her a good girl after.

“Fuck,” you muttered, draining your glass. The story, the wine, and the hot water were getting to your head. You were a little dizzy as you drained the tub and crossed the bathroom to the glass-door shower. A bit weak-kneed as you rinsed yourself off. Mid-wash, you leaned against the slick shower wall and slid your fingers between your legs. You knew there was a risk of the hot water tank running out but were willing to risk it.

Blissed out, you felt the stream of the water over your skin, the cresting feeling in your belly, and replayed the scene from the story over and over. A girl’s forehead to a man’s belly, throat straining. Your free hand travelled up to your throat, a soft pressure, eyes clenched shut–

“Having fun?”

Your eyes shot open and your fingers yanked away from their spot between your legs. First you spotted your empty wine glass and your black-screened phone by the floor of the tub. Then, through the steam–

“Dave! You scared me.”

Your husband stood in the open doorway. The bathroom was an ensuite, opening directly into the master bedroom, and you’d left it open during your bath to better disperse the steam. Now, he was home sooner than you expected, and you fought to lower your heart rate.

“Sorry,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. His tie was already discarded. “Finished ahead of schedule. Mind if I join you?”

“It might get cold,” you warned him. “I took a bath.”

He shrugged and stepped out of his pants and briefs. He slid open the glass shower door and stepped in. Your pulse pounded in your throat. Steam rose from your overheated skin. You watched him as he ducked his head under the water, eyes closed. Your breath caught when he opened his eyes again and pinned you to the wall with his gaze.

His hands hooked over your hips. “Got yourself ready for me?” he said, smirking a little.

You rolled your eyes, but easily spread your legs a couple inches when his hand took the place yours had been. Your belly fizzled. It had been several weeks since you and your husband had done anything more than give each other a kiss goodnight.

He rubbed your clit with precision, a result of several years of marriage, and several years before that of committed dating. You stroked his cock quickly to fullness and soon you were spun around to face the damp shower wall. Dave kissed your neck and then pressed into you. You gripped the shower wall, shivering when he continued to kiss your neck. He slotted all the way inside, and began to thrust.

The crux of the problem was this. The sex wasn’t bad. Dave knew exactly what buttons to press to get you an orgasm, and he still appeared to be somewhat attracted to you even after two babies and the fact that you were approaching the northside of thirty.

Not all of your mom friends were so lucky. The sex with Dave was pleasant. Good even, whenever it happened, which was admittedly kind of on the rare side. It was nice to be touched, and it was nice to be able to clench around something while you came.

The sex was just… nothing special.

It used to be. When you had first been with Dave, his very touch sent electric crackles up your spine. It was as if he could reach inside you and tug at your very nerve endings. And he had been all over you. Learning your quirks and your body and making you sing.

Now, it felt rote. Your orgasm approached all too soon. His fingers sped up their perfect circles, and he ground his cock into just the right spot, and you came with a couple internal spasms and a moan.

Hardly earth-shattering. You slumped into the wall and ground your ass back against him dutifully. It wasn’t long before he was coming inside you.

The hottest part of it all was how tight his hands held your hips. Idly, you wondered if there would be bruises in the morning.

“Needed that,” he said, and kissed you.

At least you had your story waiting for you.

.

The next day was a sludge. A combination of actually having things to do that couldn’t be put off – taking Dave’s clothes to the dry cleaner, an appointment at the bank, an interview with another potential babysitter – as well as the bone-deep tiredness of staying up way too late to read small font on a glowing white screen in the cool, dark stillness of night.

To add insult to injury, it was also the day of the book club. As you watched the excited texts pile into the group chat, not for the first time you griped to yourself why the meetings couldn’t be done during school hours. The working moms wouldn’t have been able to make it then, you knew, but still.

At least it was Friday.

So you went about your day. Breakfast for the kids and Dave, lunches packed. Dropping the girls off at school, then dropping the clothes off at the dry cleaner. The lady there was always a bright spot in your day, that morning passing you a free box of Japanese candy as thanks for being a years-long customer. You had enough time to swing into a cafe and pick up a pastry and a coffee for courage before the bank appointment (you hated the bank) which lasted approximately one and a half hours.

By the time you got out of that, your stomach was grumbling, so you headed right home to whip up a sandwich and prepare for the interview. The girl who arrived (five minutes late) was bottle blonde and smart as a whip. 4.0 GPA and juggling approximately a bajillion extracurriculars. You weren’t sure how kids did it these days. When you were in high school, you had attended a couple clubs here and there, but you’d gotten into a good college just fine without killing yourself over it.

But you felt that the prospective babysitter was distracted. She wore denim cutoff shorts – too short for the situation – and couldn’t meet your eye for much longer than a couple seconds.

When the interview came to a close, you bid her goodbye and thanked her, and promised you would be back in touch in a couple days. (You would let her down gently; you weren’t a monster.) She was gone at 1:45 pm which gave you approximately forty-five minutes to get to the grocery store and pick up a couple essentials before heading to school to get the girls.

Thoughts of the story accompanied you as you drove and as you power-walked down the grocery store aisles. You thought of it forlornly. You had managed to get a single chapter in that morning, still laying crusty-eyed in bed while Dave shaved in the bathroom.

“Late night, hm?” he asked you. He’d woken up at some point in the early hours of the morning to see you staring at the small, glowing screen, and made some sleepy comment about it before falling back asleep.

“Mmph,” you replied, rubbing your eyes for a moment before they were glued back to the screen.

You made it to the school pick-up line with five minutes to spare and whipped out your phone immediately. You were inching close to the halfway point, and things were really heating up. You suspected the girl was pregnant, or would be soon, and the man was beginning to show some signs of heart-melting vulnerability (in his own way, of course; he was still a really bad guy, just maybe not evil).

Dave’s car was in the driveway when you pulled up at home. With sparkly backpacks dangling from either of your arms, you corralled the girls out of your SUV and into the house.

“Dave?” you called once in the foyer, the girls already leaving you in the dust as they ran screaming into the house: Daddy, daddy, daddy!!!

You heard your daughter’s excited talking, and Dave’s lower register in response. He then appeared in the walkway, your youngest propped up on his hip and your eldest glomming onto his leg like she never wanted to let go. He smiled.

“Hey,” you said. “I thought you had a meeting tonight.”

“Still do,” he said, “But I’ve got a couple hours. Wanted to say hi to my girls.” He wiggled the little one on his hip until she giggled. A smile crept up over your lips.

“I can make you an early dinner,” you offered, and hung the backpacks over the hooks above the credenza. You turned toward the front door. “I’ve got groceries. Be right back.”

You were opening the hatchback of your car when Dave appeared at your side.

“Here,” he said, scooping up most of the bags.

“Thank you,” you said, grabbing the rest and shutting the back.

In the house, you went about putting the groceries away while Dave helped the girls get started with some snacks and homework.

“So,” you called, “Early dinner?”

“Thanks, but no,” he said. “It’s a dinner meeting.”

“When do you have to leave?”

“Around five,” he said, coming to stand at the other end of the counter. “How was your day?”

“Okay,” you said, shoving a bunch of plastic grocery bags into a bin. You wiped your forehead and felt disheveled. “The banker I met today wouldn’t let me start the college funds for the girls.”

“Why not?”

“Needed you there, I guess,” you grumbled, going to attack a couple of the dishes in the sink. You disliked the bank in general, and in particular when your typical contact was on maternity leave without notice. That day, an old stodger had taken her place and he’d thought you were trying to swindle your own husband. Never mind that you were on the main account in the first place. At least you were able to get the bank statements sorted (there had been an e-banking issue).

He sighed. “I’ll call them.”

“Thanks.”

“The babysitter?”

Your shoulders tensed. You shrugged. When you looked up from your sudsy dishes, Dave was watching you over the counter.

“She just… wasn’t right,” you finally answered.

He hummed, and turned to go check on your daughters. Your shoulders released. You scrubbed a particularly persistent spot on the pan. The hot water scalded your hands but you were used to that by now.

.

By the time Dave left, the girls were (miraculously) already zonked of all energy. You got them fed – wild-caught salmon fillets, in a garlic lemon sauce, with rice and avocado on the side; it was nutritious and they actually liked it, praise the lord! – and washed up pretty easily. The three of you cuddled up on the couch for a little while watching Moana. You really like that movie, actually, and despite the soul-sucking intensity of the story open on your phone’s browser, you kept being distracted by its catchy songs and pretty visuals. The girls sang along and, occasionally, got you to as well. Your bitterness about missing book club softened a little. It wasn’t always that the girls liked your company so much, afterall.

About a little bit over halfway through the movie – your youngest was already splayed out on the couch, snoring – you felt a prickle at the back of your neck. You looked around. Your firstborn’s eyes were wide, glued to the screen, and reflecting the bright colors of the movie. You realized you’d left the front hallway light on.

Standing with a stretch and a sigh, you tucked your phone in your pocket and walked over to the foyer. You flicked off the switch and peered out of the glass panels on either side of the front door. Dark street, lit in regular intervals by glowing yellow street lamps.

You turned on the porch light, just in case, and headed into the kitchen for some water. You were zoned out, holding your glass against the fridge dispenser as it filled, when you felt a gust of cool night breeze over your skin.

You frowned briefly. The window that looked out over the backyard was cracked open. The pale yellow curtains fluttering against the wind. You didn’t remember opening it, but you wouldn’t have been surprised if you had.

You shut it with a snick and secured the lock, shaking your head. Yawning, you returned to the couch.

By the time the credits for the movie were rolling, your baby daughter had woken up grumpily – she was sour she’d missed the movie – and your other daughter had begun to feed off that energy. They did not go to bed easily that night. They fought you, but at least they were tired out from playing with Dave out back earlier. You were tired too, having not had a lot of sleep the night before, and a big day of errands to boot. Still, you read them as many stories as it took for them to drift off into their slumber.

Sighing, you tucked the blankets around them and left their door cracked. You checked the clock. Nearly ten. You were yawning every other minute as you wandered to your own room. You played some music on speaker – not loud enough to bother the girls – and took a long shower.

When you got out, your phone was lit up with notifications, the majority from Jane. You smiled as you scrolled through her messages, mostly updates from the book club meet-up.

the girls missed u tonite!! and hows the reading going? 🤠👀

You responded, I missed them!! What’s the next book? and No words! I’m halfway through! I don’t think anything can top this!

Once dressed, you wandered downstairs for some water. You were half distracted – looking up the next book club book on Goodreads and also wondering when Dave would be home that night. At the bottom of the stairs, you tripped over the edge of the rug.

“Shoot!” you cried, catching yourself on the bookcase – it wobbled ominously – before you could fall flat on your face. Luckily, you managed to keep your phone safe in your hand.

You were collecting yourself from your neat fall when motion in the corner of your eye caught your attention. The stairs descended into a hallway just off of the living room. From where you were, you could see the reflection of the TV’s shifting colors on the wall.

You must not have turned it off like you thought.

“What’s wrong with you?” you grumbled to yourself, yawning. You weren’t usually so scatter-brained. You went to the kitchen to refill your glass of water.

When you headed into the living room in search of the remote, you were yawning again. A big one – eyes scrunched, mouth wide open, hardly covering it. When your eyes opened again, there was a voice.

“Mrs. York,” it said.

But the voice was not just a voice – it was a man.

Fear choked you. Your glass slipped out of your hand to crash on the ground (water splashing all over your feet and shins, glass shattering all over). The strange man in your living room sat very still on the loveseat, his face shadowed in night. It was Dave’s usual seat. The light of the TV – a local news station – flickered over him and he rested a gun on his knee.

Pointed at you.

“Take a seat, Mrs. York,” the man said, gesturing with his free hand to the sofa across from him.

Your face was numb. Your tongue, too. You looked fearfully up the stairs.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “Your daughters are safe. Now, sit down.”

His gun flexed and you were an animal of prey, stumbling over the couch to sit. Nobody had ever pointed a gun at you in your life. It felt all too real. Your vision tunnelled, your breath too fast. You wrapped your arms around your torso, suddenly freezing. You hardly noticed the sharp pain in your feet from having stepped on the glass.

“Calm down,” the man said. He was thin, and very tall. You could tell even though he was sitting. “You can call me John. I don’t intend to hurt you tonight. I just want you to send a little message for me.”

You found your first words. Your teeth chattering around them. “H–how–did –y–you–get–past the–the–alarm?”

“How precious,” John replied, completely still.

Your voice was slightly stronger on the next try. “W– what do you– you want?”

“I told you,” he said calmly. “I need you to send a message for me.”

“A message?”

“Yes, doll. Got your phone?”

He knew you did. It was clutched in your hand. Why hadn’t you called the authorities as soon as you saw this man, this intruder in your house? A message. What the fuck was happening? Your thoughts raced, mind spiralling.

“Good,” he said. “Call your husband for me.”

What, you thought. You blinked, shaking. “W-what?”

“Call your husband,” he replied. “Before I lose patience with you. And don’t try anything funny like calling a certain three-number code. Show me your screen when you press the call button. Go on.”

Your thoughts were sticky in fear, and so were your fingers. You fumbled with your phone, pulling up Dave’s contact clumsily. Dave? Why did he want you to call Dave?

“Show me,” he reminded, and you turned your screen to face him as you pressed the little phone icon next to Dave’s name. The screen changed to fill with the photo you’d set for his contact – a picture of him with the girls from a couple years ago – and six circular buttons overlaid at the bottom.

“Put it on speaker, and put the phone on the table,” John said, as the phone began to ring. You quickly tapped the speaker icon and set it on the coffee table between you. Your heart was in your throat. Your pulse pounded in your temples, your ears even. You stared at this man’s gun. The phone continued to ring.

Then it suddenly cut off and your mouth went dry. The voice that came from the phone was not Dave’s but the familiarly cool automated one: “You have reached the voicemail box of…”

The man across from you tutted and your face flamed.

“Poor dear,” he said, looking at you with large, dark eyes. “Try again. Let’s see if two calls will get him to pay attention to his little wife.”

“W-what am I supposed to say?” you whispered, stuck suddenly on the idea that if you said the wrong thing he might kill you right there and then. Maybe you weren’t supposed to say anything at all, maybe–

“If he answers–” John said, a thin smile picking up the corner of his mouth, “–You can say what you like. But let’s hope he answers because otherwise I’ll have to send a message in a more… obvious way.”

This chilled you. What would he do to you? To your daughters? Tears flooded your eyes as you fumbled to press the call button again. Your entire body rattled as you listened to the ringing phone. It felt like a death knell. Your doom coming closer and closer. You didn’t understand. How could this be happening–

Dave’s voice saying your name snapped you out of it. “Is everything okay? I’m a little busy–” His voice was tinny over the line, but you could hear the edge of frustration to it. He was out of breath.

Your eyes caught the man’s across from you. Dark eyes, like oil slicks. They seemed to pin you there in place. You trembled.

“Dave?” you whimpered. “Dave, th–there’s a man here–”

“What?” His voice was sharp.

You were crying now. “There’s a man. He–he’s got a gun. He told me to call you. He– he’s sitting–”

“That’s enough,” John said, loud enough to be heard through the line. He leaned forward, gun still trained casually in your direction.

“Who are you?” Dave demanded over the line. His voice was very cold.

“You know who I am,” John replied. “You need to get yourself and your dogs out of my employer’s business. Consider this a quid pro quo. He won’t touch your toys if you don’t touch his.”

Dave was silent on the line. You were sobbing now. The line then seemed to click back on, as if he had been on mute.

“If you’ve hurt them–” he said harshly.

“Not yet,” John replied. “I told you my terms. Goodbye now.”

Before Dave could say anything else, John reached forward to tap the end-call button with one long, slender finger.

The silence in the room killed. On the TV, an otter swam on its back at the local zoo.

“It’s going to be alright, dear,” John said, finally standing. He picked up your phone and tucked it in his trouser pocket. His gun, he still held by his side. Such long legs, like Daddy Long Legs, meandered toward you. You tensed, cowering against the couch cushions.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” he said, pressing a cool hand to your shoulder. You flinched, and for the first time realized how little you were actually wearing – just a loose camisole and thin, blue linen pajama pants. The contact lasted too long.

“Your husband will be back soon, so don’t do anything silly like get the neighbors involved. For your husband’s sake, really.”

Then the man released you, stepped over the shattered glass in one long step, and walked right out the front door.

.

Outside of the girls’ room, you crouched in the dark upstairs hallway, shaking. You weren’t sure how long had passed since you’d sprinted up the stairs to Dave’s bedside table to pound out the safety code to the gun safe. Weapon in hand, you sprinted back down the upstairs hallway. Glass-bleeding feet forgotten, heart thundering, you had enough wherewithal to open your daughters’ bedroom door quietly.

You must have been a sight. Crazed eyes, tear-streaked cheeks. Blood trails down the stairs. Clutching a gun you only knew the bare basics of how to use. But the girls were safe. Sleeping peacefully, completely unaware that a stranger had just broken into their house to threaten their mother and father.

You did not hear the front door opening nor did you hear footsteps ascending the stairs. You first became aware of another presence when it passed in front of the window at the top of the staircase – blocking the ambient midnight light.

Terror flooded you.

“Stay back!” you shrieked, jumping up. You pointed the gun.

“Woah,” the man said. He, too, held a gun. A pistol. He wore black from head to toe. Heavy boots – how did you not hear them? That much you could see. But his face was shadowed in the dark.

His voice was tight. He said your name. “It’s me. It’s Dave. I’m going to turn on the light.”

Then the hallway light was flicked on, and your husband stared back at you.

You sobbed, lowering the gun.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he murmured. He tugged you into his chest at the same time as he pulled the gun out of your shaking hand. “Are the girls okay?”

“Yes,” you cried in answer, but he let go of you to go check himself. He flicked on the Tinkerbell lamp on the dresser and you watched, trembling, as he swept through the room, checking every corner. The girls slept on, despite your shrieking.

When Dave came back, he looked over your shoulder. “Ari, clear the rest of the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

You turned, blinking dumbly. You hadn’t noticed but Ari stood at the landing. Ari, your husband’s work friend who’d been over for dinner many times, who had the eternal loyalty and love of the girls because of his ability to play a superb pirate or prince or dragon.

An enormous black rifle was strapped across his chest. He held it aloft as he swept through the hallway and entered each room one by one. He wore one of those heavy, dark outfits that was preferred by the covert operators of action movies.

Now that the hallway light was on, you could see that your husband wore the same.

“Dave, what’s going on?” you said thickly.

But he took your shoulders and looked you in the eye. “Did he hurt you?”

You shook your head.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, looking down at your feet.

“I– I dropped a glass,” you whispered.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Did you call anyone?”

You shook your head, tongue heavy. “He– he took my phone.”

Ari had returned. “All clear, boss.”

“Good,” he nodded. To you, he said, “Listen. We need to move fast. I’m going to pack a couple of bags and get the girls. We’re going somewhere safe for a few days.”

He didn’t wait for you to respond, but turned to Ari, “Take her to the car. Send Resnik up.”

“You got it,” he said, and slid the rifle to hang over his back.

“Go with him,” Dave said, turning into the girls’ bedroom.

You were numb.

“Mrs. York,” Ari said. “Hurt your feet bad? Can you walk?”

You nodded, and took a step forward. But you gasped. Your adrenaline had crashed, leaving you weak-kneed, and you could suddenly feel the sharp glass embedded deep into your feet. Putting weight onto them produced a sick crunching noise.

“I got ya,” he said, and swept you up with an arm under your knees and the other under your back. You made a startled noise and looked back over his shoulder.

“Just gonna get you safe in the car, Mrs. York,” he said, walking to the stairs. “Dave’ll be down with your daughters in just a minute.”

Your stomach turned when you saw the blood trail you’d left over the stairs. The glass shattered downstairs by the couch, glinting from the light of the TV, now on commercial.

Kovac, another of Dave’s colleagues, stood sentry by the front door. He had one of those rifles too.

“All clear,” Ari told him. “Just getting the girls then we’re off.”

Kovac gave a short nod. “The car’s to the side. Use the back door.”

When Ari stepped over the threshold of the back door, the fresh night air slammed right into you. Your teeth chattered non-stop. Your skin chilled. The car was as Kovac had said, pulled up to the side of the house. All the lights off. In the front seat, Resnik, who had also been over for dinners, waited.

It was not a car you recognized. It certainly wasn’t Dave’s. It was black and simple. Unobtrusive. Ari set you gently down on the grass outside the sliding back door and then rapped on the front window. Resnik rolled it down a crack.

“Boss wants you upstairs,” Ari told him. “I’m driving.”

As Resnik climbed out of the car, similarly outfitted and with another enormous rifle, Ari helped you into the back seat of the car. “Just sit tight, Mrs. York. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Being in the back of that car was like being in the vague landscape of a dream. The only light that filtered through was that of the dim dashboard and the yellow street lamps, seeming miles away. Through the window, you watched as the remaining lights in the house went dim.

“C-can you t–turn the heat -o–on, please?” you chattered from the back seat. Ari cranked it, despite the fact that it was a balmy summer night. It couldn’t have been comfortable for him, either. Not in that outfit.

The anxiety boiled inside of you, sitting there in the back seat of the van alone. You cycled between staring obsessively out of the window looking for Dave and your daughters and staring obsessively out at the street – would that man come back? Someone else? Would they hurt you this time? You didn’t understand what was going on. Had Dave gotten mixed up into something bad? Your mind skated over the idea of a mob… but no, that didn’t make any sense.

When the car door opened, you jumped out of your skin. There was Dave, holding both of your daughters, one on either hip. He passed the youngest to you while Resnik circled around to the trunk, carrying a large duffel bag. Over Dave’s shoulder, there was Kovac standing guard, rifle in hand.

The car was loaded up in a matter of seconds. Kovac settled into the front passenger seat while Resnik jumped in on your right. Dave, on your left side, held your eldest on his lap. When the doors were closed with a snick, he patted Ari’s headrest.

And just like that, the engine was rumbling to life and the car was maneuvering speedily onto the street.

Your youngest daughter was sniffling, and soon began crying on your lap. Your firstborn was frowning where she was still clutching onto Dave.

“Shh, shh,” you said, kissing the baby’s forehead. “It’s okay, honey.”

Dave smoothed the hair on both their heads. “We’re going on a little trip, that’s all. A little vacation, hm?”

“But..” your eldest daughter said, sounding confused. “What about school?”

“You get to skip,” Dave said, tickling her. “Isn’t that exciting? Go to sleep now, baby, and you can go swimming tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

Her eyes brightened a little at that. The little girl on your lap was still crying, but it quieted the more you rubbed your back.

“Heard that?” you murmured to her. “We’re going on a vacation. Gonna swim. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

She snuffled against your chest, and let out a warbly, high-pitched, “Yeah.”

When you looked up, your husband was watching you.

“What’s going on, Dave?” you whispered.

His eyes cut to the girls. “Soon,” was all he said.

.

You weren’t sure the car was on the road for more than fifteen minutes before it was pulling into a large parking lot, and then an even larger parking garage. The girls had already begun to drift off again, and the fear in your body had crashed into something bone-deep and weary. Your feet hurt enough that you couldn’t think of much else.

Relief coursed through you as the car rolled to a stop. If you could just sleep, you thought, you would survive this.

“Are we there?” you mumbled. You were clammy with sweat, almost feverish.

“Not yet. I’m sorry,” Dave said, sliding open the back door and climbing out with his snoozing daughter. “Have to change vehicles.”

A lump thickened your throat and you felt divorced from your body. A couple moments later, Dave returned to lift your youngest up off your lap next. You tried to climb out yourself, but the injury to your feet must have been worse than you’d realized. Dave picked you up instead, and brought you to the back of a larger van.

The white, windowless sides of the van displayed the logo for a construction company. But instead of construction equipment inside the back, there were seats lined on either side. There were an assortment of monitors and gadgets wired into the wall toward the cab. The girls were already strapped in, asleep.

Dave set you down on one of the seats and then closed the swinging doors, shutting your little family in. An overhead lamp cast sterile white light over everything.

A small partition toward the cab of the van slid open. It was like a privacy screen in a taxi cab. You caught a glimpse of Kovac in the driver seat, and ahead, rows and rows of parked cars.

“Ready, boss?”

“Yes,” Dave said, sitting across from you. A walkie talkie was in his hand. It crackled to life and Ari’s voice scratched out of it. “Decoy at the ready. Roger.”

“Roger,” Dave said.

The partition closed and your body wobbled as the van rolled into movement.

“Dave,” you said, but he held up a hand. Your teeth clicked shut. He clicked a button and the main monitor hooked up to the wall lit up. It was a grid of security feeds recording the outside of the van. You saw it briefly before he turned the screen away from your sight.

He watched it tensely for a couple of minutes before nodding, and sliding the monitor to the side. He turned to you then. His full attention, after the events of that evening, was intense and strange.

“I’m sorry this happened,” he told you, “It shouldn’t have.”

You swallowed. You looked at your lap. Thin pajama pants. Blood stained hems. You crossed your arms over your chest, feeling chilled again.

A rattle caught your attention. Dave dug under the chair to pull out what appeared to be a sturdy white box. A first aid kit. He set it on the seat beside him. “Here,” he said, pulling out a bottle and pouring out a tablet. He cracked it in half. “Painkiller.”

You took it hesitantly.

“Put your feet here,” he said, patting his lap.

“But you’ll get bloody,” you said.

He shook his head and helped you gingerly lift one foot and then the other onto his lap. He cleaned his hands with sharp smelling isopropyl alcohol before tugging on some blue latex gloves. It was this of all things that made you stare. He knew what he was doing. He was no stranger to injury. By the state of that first aid kit, bigger than you had ever seen before, with things like opiate pills and latex gloves and who knew what else, he had seen much worse injury, even, than this.

“This will sting a little,” he warned, “but we have to get the glass out.”

“Okay,” you said in a small voice, watching as he brought a pair of tweezers to the pads of your feet. His free hand circled your ankle, a warm hold that you forced yourself to focus on as he pulled the glass from your feet.

Some time passed like this, you wincing. The glass pieces clattered every couple of seconds into a small bowl. You rotated between trying to breathe evenly with your eyes shut and staring openly at Dave.

But he was intent on his task. He shifted his body with the movement of the truck. Not once did a pothole or a turn catch him unaware. He periodically checked the monitor with the security feeds you could no longer see, and you noticed he had gun holsters strapped to the outsides of either thigh. He had a scar on the palm of his hand. He’d had it since you met him. Kitchen accident, he had told you once. Now you wondered…

Finally, the glass was out.

“Not as bad as it looked,” Dave told you. “No stitches.”

The pill had begun to take effect. It stung when he cleaned out your injuries, but not as much as it could have. The pain was distant. His touch as he bandaged you up soon had a sort of tingling effect.

You swallowed thickly. You stared at your lap and murmured, “I thought you worked an office job.”

When you looked up, he was watching you. His eyes were incredibly dark. Your breath caught. For several long moments, the only sound was the rumbling of the tires beneath, the snoring of your daughters, distant honks, traffic noises.

Finally, with his hands circling your ankles, all he said was, “I wish I could have told you.”

.

You arrived at the safe house (Dave’s words) a little past three in the morning. The exhaustion was deep. The unease even more so. You took in the details of the house in a bleary rush to get your youngest into a bed before she woke up and cried again. With the glass no longer embedded in your feet, you could walk alright enough again, albeit a bit gingerly.

It was a two bedroom cabin. It was older, and unrenovated, but was decorated relatively nicely. The sliding back doors opened up onto a deck of slightly rotting wood and the tree-covered view of a large, placid lake.

The girls had curled up into the other. A bare bones room with a queen bed and a chair in the corner. The bedroom you walked into was much the same. You sat on the edge of it and looked down at the bloodstained hem of your pants. Dave brought in the duffel bag and set it at the foot of the bed.

“Are we safe?” you whispered.

“Yes,” he promised, and passed you a clean pair of pajama pants.

“Get some sleep,” Dave said, heading to the door and flicking off the overhead lamp. Moonlight shone enough to illuminate the space. He opened the door and more light flooded in.

“Where are you going?” you asked anxiously.

“There are a couple things I need to handle,” he said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Are you leaving?”

“For a couple of minutes, maybe,” he said. “But Resnik or Kovac will be here in my place.”

“Okay,” you said in a small voice. “Dave, on my phone… I had some passwords written in my notes app.”

He was silent for a moment. The backlight of the hallway obscured his face from you.

“It’s going to be okay. Get some sleep,” he said again. There was an edge to his tone that you could pick up despite your exhaustion.

He stepped out, shutting the door behind him. Tears pricked your eyes and you felt scared in the dark, so you flicked on the bedside lamp. At least Dave or the others would be out there. You quickly changed your pants and jumped into the bed as if there were monsters beneath it.

You fell asleep to the worry that you didn’t know your husband very well at all.

.

When you woke up next, you weren’t sure how long you’d slept. There was pressure on your ankle. You thought of that man in your home the night before – his hand on your shoulder for a little too long – and startled in that way you did when you dreamt you were falling.

“It’s just me,” a voice said.

Your heart pounded for a couple of moments, before your brain woke up enough to recognize that voice.

“Dave?” you whispered.

“Mm-hm.”

You moved to sit up, feeling heavy-limbed and exhausted still. “What time is it?”

“Little after seven,” he said. He sat on the side-edge of the bed. His eyes were tired, but nothing else about him gave that impression. He was dressed in a cleaner version of the same outfit from the night before. He was cleanly shaved. He smelled like the aftershave you bought him every year for Christmas.

“You can go back to sleep in a couple of minutes,” he murmured, letting go of your ankle. “But we need to talk.”

The room was filtered with thin morning light. The sun had not yet fully risen.

“Can you open the blinds?” you said scratchily, pulling the blanket up higher around your chest.

He reached over and tugged the cord. The slats of the blinds went horizontal and that pale light diffused over the room. The window faced the back of the house. There was a view of tall trees and then, a little in the distance, the lake. You could see the yellow light of the newborn sun beginning to stir into the water.

Your eyes skated over the view and across the room until they landed back on your husband. You thought of the sight of him with a gun you didn’t recognize, ordering a troop of men around like some military captain.

“Are the girls okay?” you asked.

“Out like lights,” he said, and your shoulders slumped, relieved.

He caught your eye. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but I don’t have a lot of time. The short version is: the man who broke in… he works for a very bad person. He shouldn’t have been able to find the house, or anything about our family.. I have a considerable amount of resources protecting your location.” He sighed. “I’m not sure what happened yet. But you and the girls are going to have to stay here until he’s put away for good.”

“Dave,” you swallowed, voice still scratching. “I– you’re not still in the military are you?”

“No. You know I work for the CIA.”

“But– I thought you were just an analyst, or– or part of the– I don’t know…” you frowned.

He looked at you with those dark eyes. “It was safer for you to believe that.”

You felt hurt at that. A lump rose to your throat. “I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

His hand settled on your knee. “I know, baby. But I had to minimize the risk to you as much as possible.”

“And now?” you said, wiping a little angrily at your eyes.

“Everything will go back to normal soon,” he said. “I just need your patience.”

“How long do we have to stay here?”

“It should only be a couple of days. Maybe a little longer.”

“Once it’s over,” you said, staring at your lap, “are we going to have to move?”

“I don’t think so,” he said after a moment’s pause. “But I can’t make that promise right now.”

You wanted to cry, to sob, to scream. You weren’t sure how this was your life. How this was the man you married. The smooth, clever man you had met at that bar not long after you’d graduated. White-collar if you had ever seen one. Sweet, successful. Who’d married you and promised to take care of you.

When he saw your expression, his lips pressed together. “I’m so sorry. This never should have happened.”

You looked awkwardly at your lap, fiddling with the sheets.

He let out a short breath, then dug out an old phone from his pant’s pocket.

He passed it to you. It was a clamshell Motorola. You’d had one of these in college.

“There are two numbers on there. Mine and Ari’s. Resnik is going to stay here with you until this is settled, but if there are any emergencies, call immediately.”

“You’re leaving?” you asked a little dully.

“Yes,” he said. “The sooner I go, the sooner we can get you girls back home. Resnik will show you the perimeter. You can bring the girls down to the lake but do not leave the property unless there’s absolutely no other option. I can’t protect you if you do.”

“Okay,” you whispered.

“Good,” he said, and pressed a hand to the side of your head. “I love you.”

Then, he sighed, and stood. And he was gone out the bedroom door as quickly as he had pulled you from your sleep.

.

The cabin, in the light of day, was a sweet thing. Minimally decorated, but small with cozy touches. Throw blankets on the yellow sofa. A plush rug. An old, unrenovated kitchen with vintage-looking appliances. The fridge was filled with a week’s worth of produce, eggs, milk, the staples. The pantries, shelves lined with yellowing, bubbling floral tacky paper, were stacked to the brim with non-perishables.

Everything was aged. In the living room, there was a rickety bookshelf in the corner with torn paperbacks – Stranger in a Strange Land, Murder on the Orient Express, Dune – and a bowl of thumb tacks for whatever reason.

In the other corner hulked an ancient computer. Monitor the wide, tank size from the early 2000s, it ostensibly connected to the internet by dial-up. But Resnik warned you off of using it – it was so slow it barely worked – in between his trips in and out of the house to check the surroundings.

“How will you sleep, keeping that up?” you asked sourly on the first day, as he came back inside and set the security alarm for what felt like the fifth time since you left your room that morning.

“Don’t you worry about me, Mrs. York,” Resnik said, and his boots were heavy as came around into the kitchen where you were making breakfast for the girls. They had woken up blearily, and confused. They sipped orange juice, now, at the table by the front window. Their feet swung, too short for the chairs. You’d had to stave off a couple tantrums by promising french toast and then a day of swimming.

“Got any extra?” he asked.

“Course,” you said.

The days passed in what, to an outside observer, might appear as a simple vacation. Your feet still ached, but you kept them cleaned and bandaged and just walked carefully and it was mostly okay. The hours were filled with sleeping and eating and heading down to the lake to swim with Resnik always, always in your periphery. Watching reruns of SVU on the old, dusty box TV on the old, dusty sofa. You couldn’t be bothered to clean more than you had to – washing the dishes at least so that there were dishes to use. Clothes were flung around both bedrooms. You noticed that the kitchen floor needed sweeping. The curtains needed beating. But it wasn’t your house. You didn’t care.

The girls got away with murder during this time. Their good behavior took a nosedive and you let it happen. You’d be paying the price when things ever returned to normal. If they ever did, the cynical part of your mind reminded. They shrieked and whined and complained and demanded. Where’s Daddy? Can we swim? I want to see Daddy! I want to watch Moana! Now, now, now!!

Oh, to explain the workings of cable TV to a five year old.

You couldn’t really blame them. You felt the same. A barely suppressed feeling. Unpleasant and intense. They may have been ignorant to what was going on – Daddy got called away to work, but we’re going to finish our vacation together, okay? – but truth be told you didn’t feel like you were much more in the loop than they were.

Resnik, when you asked, gave non-answers. The old Motorola was almost always in your hand. You opened it when you were watching TV, when you were on the toilet, as soon as waking up, right before falling asleep. Dave didn’t once call. When you tried to get the computer to run, it just sputtered and whined.

“Told you,” Resnik had said.

You wondered who would notice you were gone. Who would notice you weren’t answering your phone. Whether the stranger who took your phone had looked through it. Had categorized all your friends and family members. Had found your search history.

You felt cut off and unmoored. You floated on your back in the lake as the girls splashed along the shore. Your feet stung but you enjoyed it. Your ears submerged under the surface of the water and you stared up at the skies of each day – bright blue one day, thick with cotton-candy clouds the next, or overcast and dreary to fit your mood – and heard only the thoughts in your head and the thin tinkling sound of the sand shifting under the current.

Resentment bubbled.

In the end, it was only four days of this before Resnik found you in the kitchen with a bright smile on his face.

“Pack your bags, Mrs. York,” he told you. “Time to go back home.”

You were bleary on the drive back. Your skin was tight from the days under the sun. You were on edge. It didn’t help that you and your daughters were put in the back of a van with blackout windows. There was no telling where you were or where you had been for the past several days. You thought it was probably purposeful.

Dave wasn’t even at home when Resnik unlocked your own front door for you to enter. You were disappointed and also, somehow, a little relieved. The girls were upset, but Resnik chucked them under their chins and promised their dad would be home soon – he was just wrapping a couple of things up.

You assumed that you were back home meant that the stranger, John, had been dealt with. Arrested, you figured. Awaiting trial. Threat neutralized and all that, like was said in those action movies.

Resnik left not long after that. It was just you and the girls and a pristine house. The shattered glass by the couch had been picked up. A new alarm system had been installed. The girls went down for a nap soon after, tuckered out from the morning of playing by that lake. They were sun-kissed and sleepy. And you… you poked around with nothing to do. Restlessness threatened to overwhelm you.

The longer you spent alone in the house, the more nervous you became. At half past four, the sky rumbled and thickened and soon rain was pouring over your little world. Hammering on the roof and on the windows. The sky grew dark long before sundown. The threat had been neutralized, but a deep-seated anxiety took root.

Dave arrived home a little before six, when the girls were eating dinner – a frozen pizza that night for lack of any real energy on your part. They perked up as soon as they saw him, screaming his name like he had been gone for a year.

You smiled tightly at your plate as he greeted them as he always did – a kiss to each cheek and a hug. He was a good father. But what good father, especially one in such a dangerous profession, apparently, left his house to be broken into and his children threatened? He was back in his usual clothing – a sharp button down with a tie and pressed trousers. You could almost believe you had imagined it all. That tac suit, those guns, the safehouse, his dark, intense eyes.

Your own thoughts took you aback. You swallowed and pushed it away, standing up to greet him when it was your turn. He smiled at you and pulled you into a hug and he smelled like he always did at the end of the day – faint aftershave, something purely chemical that made him him, and that day, the spice of rain. His hand pressed to the back of your neck and he squeezed. “Are you okay?”

“Mm-hm,” you promised, pulling back and busying with the dishes on the table. Instead of what you really wanted to say, you asked, “Did you eat? There’s some leftover pizza.”

“I had a late lunch,” he said.

“Okay,” you said, not looking at him. “Well, it will be in the fridge.”

Your heart was hammering in your chest when you made it to the kitchen, hands piled with dirty plates and cups. You heard the delighted sounds of the girls as they spoke with their dad. You moved on autopilot to load the dishwasher and run it (it was beginning to have an unpleasant smell after having been left with dirty dishes for so long) and wrap up the pizza. The window overlooking the backyard gave a view of gray wet nothingness. The weather blotted out anything beyond the end of the yard.

“Was the drive okay?”

You startled.. Your heart rate was back in your throat.

“Sorry,” Dave said, holding up his hands. He’d entered the kitchen when you weren’t paying attention. “Was it?”

You wiped your forehead and finally shrugged. “It was fine.”

He hummed.

“So–” you started, voice wavering a little. You fiddled with the hand towel hanging off the oven handle. “So– is it settled?”

Those intense eyes were on you. “Yes, completely.”

“We don’t have to move?”

He shook his head. “You’re safe here.”

“How can you be sure?” you asked.

“This is what I do for a living,” he told you. “I would not leave you exposed.”

“But you already did.”

His eyes changed. You weren’t quite sure how, but they did. They might have widened, or narrowed, but that was too simple of an explanation. Your pulse fluttered and you looked down at your feet.

A beat of silence, and then he said. “That was an oversight. It won’t ever happen again.”

“Okay,” you whispered.

You heard him shifting. The sound of fabric. He sighed, and said, “Here. I was able to get it back.”

On the counter he had set your phone. Not the Motorola which Resnik had collected from you before leaving the lakehouse, but your actual phone with its blue-purple case and the lockscreen a picture of the girls in princess dresses playing in the park.

“Oh,” you said, reaching for it. “Thank you. I thought this was lost for good.”

You inputted your passcode automatically and then paused. “There’s not… he didn’t put any surveillance… stuff on here, did he?”

“No,” Dave assured. “All clear.”

You offered a tight, awkward smile. Watched as Dave rubbed his knuckles over the countertop, watching you. You weren’t sure what to say. The rain roared around the house, renewed. When he finally broke the silence between you it was with the same softer voice, suggesting you go relax upstairs if you wanted, while he watched the girls.

You didn’t need to be told twice, smiling another one of those stiff smiles, booting it up the stairs, phone in hand, brain fizzing like a shaken bottle of soda.

.

You were showered and in bed before you opened your phone properly. The emotional grime of the week seemed to have seeped into your skin and you felt better being clean. With your sore, healing feet wrapped in your favorite fuzzy socks and your skin slathered in your preferred moisturizer, the weight lifted slightly.

Wet hair against the pillow, you plugged the phone in – it was at 18% charge – and typed in your passcode once again.

There weren’t any notifications on your dashboard, which took you at first by surprise – you at least usually had a bunch of marketing emails despite your best efforts, if not texts from friends – but then you reasoned that the stranger who’d broken in might have also gone through your phone. Or maybe Dave had. You frowned, navigating to your texts and opening up the first couple of threads.

Jane had texted twice, two days apart. Once with gossip about something that had happened at the book club and the second with another link. You huffed a little amused as you clicked on it. At least some things were the same, you thought, and remembered how you’d not had a chance to finish the other story. You hoped your place was still saved in your browser.

The new link brought you to the same website, but to a shorter story. It was about fifty-thousand words but, from the tags, it appeared equally filthy.

Thank you!! You texted. I still haven’t finished the other one yet 😩

She texted back a couple minutes later, after you had already read and replied to a message from your mom.

omg yyyy?? It dinged in.

So busy this week! You replied for a lack of something else to say. Resnik had briefed you on the cover story in case someone asked. The girls would remember being at a lake house and spending the days floating around, so you weren’t allowed to say anything that would contradict that. But, he’d stressed, don’t bring it up unless there’s no other option. Leave it vague.

Get to it girl! She texted, and you rolled your eyes fondly.

You sighed and closed your eyes for a moment and imagined yourself floating on your back in the lake, listening to only the cool tinkle of the sand beneath the waves. When you opened your eyes again, you remembered what Dave had said about not telling you his true profession.

What had it been, exactly? For your own safety.

Can CIA agents tell their family what they do? Was what you typed into Google’s Incognito Tab.

You held your breath as the results loaded. From what you could find the answer was yes and no. CIA agents could tell their spouses (i.e. you) and their adult children that they were CIA agents, but a CIA agent could not tell their family what they actually did in that job. It made logical sense. But there was this hurt about it. Dave could have told you but had chosen not to.

You shook it off. If it was just a matter of safety, you supposed you could see the reasoning behind that.

The next thing you looked up was several combinations of the following words and phrases:

John plus boston, massachusetts, government, businessman, politician, trial, CIA, assistant, homeland security, important people named john, CIA current targets.

Nothing. It was useless.

Frustrated, you realized that without his last name, there was not a lot you could do. A first name alone, especially one as common as John wouldn’t exactly help narrow the search. It probably wasn’t even his real name. You sighed and closed your phone. You lay there for a bit staring at the ceiling, hair dripping all over the pillow. You could hear the sounds of the TV downstairs. It was still pretty early but you decided you wanted to go to sleep so you could just get this day over with already.

Downstairs, the girls were cuddled up to Dave watching Moana again. They were half asleep and he was looking at his phone to the epic, bubbly tune of ‘How Far I’ll Go.’ You almost could have laughed – that idea of him reading through sensitive, CIA, secret agent documents while Maui danced around the screen.

He looked up as soon as you entered the living room.

“Hey,” you said. “Think I’m gonna go to sleep. Can you put the girls to bed?”

“‘Course,” he said, and looked down at them. “Should probably start getting them ready anyway. Hey, buttercup, pumpkin. Wake up and say goodnight to your mama.”

You knelt on the carpet and exchanged sleepy hugs and kisses with your daughters. Dave touched your shoulder and made as if to kiss you too, but you stood really fast. You were busy over his shoulder so you didn’t catch his expression. Instead, you awkwardly said, “Thanks, Dave… for the girls. G’night.”

“Good night,” he said. But you were already at the foot of the stairs and scurrying up. Your pulse, once again, thundered.

When it came time to crawl into bed and close off your eyes, you couldn’t. You were exhausted, bone-deep. The whole week had felt like your world getting turned over on its head, and back home, Dave wanted to pretend that everything was fine? That he could just be normal, like nothing had even happened?

You heard the sounds of the girls getting ready for bed, their whining and their laughing. Their higher-pitched chattering against the backdrop of Dave’s lower voice. Normally, you handled bedtime. Dave got home late enough some days that the habit had just stuck. You thought anxiously about whether he knew to use the new toothpaste you had got for your eldest, whether he would be able to get them to sleep, or if you would need to get up and help.

Tears stung the back of your eyes the longer you couldn’t fall asleep. Eventually, you declared it useless, and grabbed your phone to pull open your browser. Both of the stories Jane sent you were waiting for you, but you were only interested in the first. You clicked in and went back to the previous chapter, to refresh your mind on what was happening (a lot). The first climax of the story approached, and the kidnapped girl had to face an antagonist even more terrible than the man who had captured her.

Soon you were sucked right back in, only a little niggling feeling in the back of your mind reminding you of your real life.

You barely noticed when Dave entered the room some time later – maybe a couple hours. The lights were all off and you were reading on your small bright screen. The rain had reduced itself to a trickle. A tinkle on the roof like the sand under the lake.

“-- not good for your eyes,” he was saying.

“Huh?” you said, blinking away from the screen.

He was in the closet, changing out of his work clothes. He directed a pointed look at the phone in your hand. “Not good for your eyes to be looking at that in the dark.”

You shrugged, noncommittally. “Girls went down okay?”

“Perfectly.” He had stripped to only his boxers and now flicked off the light of the closet. He climbed into the covers and said, “What are you reading anyway?”

“Just a book Jane sent me,” you mumbled.

“On your phone? Do you want, what is it… a Kindle? Better for your eyes.”

“Oh. No, it’s okay. Thanks.”

You could feel the warmth of his body on the other side of the bed, but he maintained his distance. You began to curl back onto your side, facing away.

“What are you reading anyway?”

You tensed slightly. “Um. Just a romance, I guess.”

“Is it good?”

Your eyes were fixed on your screen although none of the words could pierce the veil of your brain. “Yeah,” you said.

He shifted somewhere behind you. “Mm. Okay. Goodnight.”

“G’night.”

Soon Dave was asleep, that quiet sleep he had where he was completely still. Your husband didn’t snore. From talking to your friends you knew that was unusual, their husbands apparently all snoring like a chainsaw until they could hardly sleep. You were always pleased about that – that you had lucked out enough to have a husband unobtrusive in sleep. That night, you felt uneasy. You cycled between phases of immersion into your story, forgetting him entirely, and then into the over-awareness of him breathing quietly behind you. He could have been watching you for all you knew.