Page 20 of Bram

The room was trashed. The coffee table was at a forty-five-degree angle, two throw pillows on the floor, the silk robe crumpled near the leg of the sofa. His shirt was somewhere behind us, cut draped over the backrest. My hair was a mess, my mouth tasted like blood and sweat and the ghost of his cologne, and my asshole would never be the same. I’d want that again and again.

He lay beside me, one arm behind his head, looking at the same ceiling I was. The silence was a living thing, warm and heavy and absolutely true.

I said nothing. Neither did he. The air was thick with it.

The old order of things was gone, replaced by something I couldn’t name. I tried to measure out the words, tried to find a place for them, but there wasn’t one.

My pussy throbbed in a way it had never before. He’d fucking ruined me, shattered everything I thought I knew about men. Bram was different, and that’s all that mattered.

I closed my eyes, breathing him in. The new world didn’t have to be defined. Not yet.

“I can’t tell you everything will be okay,” he said, “but I can tell you I will fucking kill any man who lays a hand on you.”

I believed him. I believed the world was where it should be.

And then it wasn’t.

nine

Julie

The living room was still wrecked from what we’d done to it. Throw pillow face-down on the hardwood. Lamp on but askew, two bulbs out of three, making everything look jaundiced and off-balance. My work blazer crumpled in a heap near the couch, silk robe hanging off a lamp, Bram’s leather cut draped over the sofa arm like an animal pelt. A glass of water, half empty, had left a nervous little ring on the coffee table. The air smelled like sex, whiskey, and a trace of blood.

The phone rang loud enough to shatter every echo in the room.

“Now what?” I said.

Bram laughed and checked his own phone.

I bolted up off the rug, not caring about the cold or the way my bare skin creaked against the nylon pile. I snatched the phone off the table before the second ring, which was a mercy, because my hands were already starting to shake.

On the screen, the name said MOM. In reality, it was Sally. Nothing about her ever softened into the word mother.

I answered. “Hello?”

There was a click, and then the kind of silence that meant something was already wrong. When the voice came, it was sharp, raw, the sandpaper version of calm. “Heard you had a late night.”

“Is this really the time, Mom?” I moved, grabbing for underwear, not breaking stride. I one-handed the panties, stepped in, yanked them up. Jeans next. It wasn’t a performance. It was autopilot.

“It’s always the time, Julie. Listen to me.” The voice dropped lower, urgent. “Your sister—Emma—she’s gone. Two of them took her from the rec center. Desert Scorpions, patches on their vests, faces I didn’t recognize.”

For a second I couldn’t breathe. Not like the books say, not a dramatic clutch at the throat, but a hot, sharp absence in my lungs, as if I’d sucked all the oxygen out of the room and left myself with nothing.

“How long ago?” I said. The words were coming from somewhere outside of me.

“Twenty minutes. I tried to call you twice. She’s probably already—” she bit it off. “Listen, you need to—”

I hung up. Not on purpose. My hand just closed on the phone so hard the touch screen lost its mind and cut the call.

I moved faster. Socks, then boots, laces dragging. I found my bra by the couch and shrugged it on, then a ratty tee. I found Bram’s cut on the arm of the sofa, and for a second, I just stared at it, thinking nothing at all, then I turned away, found my keys on the kitchen counter, snatched them up along with my phone and a jacket.

“Julie, what’s going on? Stop.”

“Can’t,” is all I said.

“Who was on the phone?”

I was in motion before I knew what the plan was. Go to Mom’s? The police? The rec center? All of it at once?