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She lets go and looks toward the back hall. “You still went into my bedroom.”

Jamie opens his eyes.

She reaches her bedroom before either of us.

The door is still open. One dresser drawer hangs crooked from where Jamie slammed it shut, the nightstand is half emptied onto the rug, and several pieces of clothing have been dragged out far enough to disturb the careful stacks beneath them.

Heather stands in the doorway. Jamie stops behind her. I stop because he does.

She turns around and takes Jamie’s face in both hands. The swelling along his cheek is darker now, and a red mark near his temple is already beginning to spread beneath the skin. Heather touches each one.

“One.”

Her thumb passes beside his lip.

“Two.”

She turns his head and studies the other side.

“Three.”

Then she comes to me. Her fingers settle beneath my jaw and tip my face toward the light. She finds the cut at my mouth, the bruise beside my cheekbone and another forming lower along my jaw.

Her expression barely changes. “You damaged each other.”

She releases me, walks into the bedroom, and opens the closet. She reaches behind a row of dresses and pulls down a plain leather strap. Dark leather, worn smooth near one end, with a simple buckle removed so only the doubled length remains.

Jamie’s face loses whatever was left of Heather’s praise.

She points to the foot of the bed. “Both of you.”

Jamie obeys instantly. I don’t.

Heather looks at me and waits.

I move.

She puts Jamie on the left and me on the right, close enough that our shoulders touch. Then she steps behind us. “Oliver left three marks on Jamie’s face. Jamie left three on Oliver’s.”

Jamie glances sideways at me.

“Eyes forward,” Heather says.

The first strike lands across the backs of my thighs. Pain flashes hot enough to force my knees against the mattress. The second catches slightly higher. By the third, I can’t stop the sound I make.

Heather moves to Jamie.

He takes the first without sound. The second makes his hands tighten in the blanket. The third pulls a sharp breath through his teeth.

Heather steps away.

Jamie starts to straighten. The strap cracks across him again. He jerks.

“That one,” Heather says, “is for going into my bedroom.”

Jamie lowers his head.

Her gaze travels over the open dresser, the nightstand drawer and the clothes on the floor. “You touched everything.”