Ask Don’t Tell 

She could not find the words to speak to him, locked in her own shocked anguish, and he lifted her from the toilet, held her over the sink and brushed her teeth for her, before starting the shower, and stepping, bare, under the flow of water with her, holding her up against him whilst he washed the vomit from her.

Once they were both dry, he carried her out of the bathroom and curled around her in the bed. The contradiction was not lost on her that he was both her comfort and the source of her pain. “I am sorry,” he whispered. “It was not taken with the intention that anyone other than I ever saw it.”

She squirmed against his hold, the pain and shame too massive to be contained, her body contorting beneath its weight, the scream that built in her chest seeming to get stuck in her throat, choking her with it so that the sound that broke forth was a strangled sob of pain and betrayal.

She suddenly understood the sort of pain that would have inspired her mother to take her own life.

She curled tightly into herself, her fists pressed to her mouth, and wept until she slept.

It was late in the morning when she woke, and she knew that the job that she had won the day before had been lost in sleep, and that was another cut to add to the multitude of tiny wounds that she bled from that small hope pinched out like the flame of candle beneath the cruelty of others.

Baron slept next to her, his eyes shadowed, the stubble dark on his jaw, and his hands held onto her even in his sleep, holding her to the bed where he had photographed her spent and soiled by his f-king, and then shared it, so that now, it appeared that everwerewolf had a copy on their phone.

that, but she could hear both their phones vibrating with

his

jeans that she normally only wore when she was sick and staying home. When she walked out of the closet, he was sitting on the side of the bed, the

him. “The person who took this image from my phone will be punished, and I

He rose to his feet, gloriously naked, but his beauty did not arouse her, the taste in her mouth bitter, and her body

he murmured and waited, seeming to expect a response, but

released her and began to dress. “Stay inside today, Jane,” he said

into the tightest corner in the closed, dark space, her heels tucked tightly

to her phone vibrate on the floor where she had dropped it when she

the door to the sitting room open, and someone in the bedroom and bathroom, cleaning, opening the curtains, making the bed, and then, a while

Heathridge called hesitantly.

yelling from downstairs. Angelique and Baron’s voices raised in anger, distracting Heathridge, and he ran out

fell asleep, curled onto the closet floor, with the argument

he carried

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