Page 118 of Reckless Seduction
They are also quickly making up for it with the number of orgasms they give me each day.
Sex isn’t our answer for everything, but when we run out of words, when pain knots too tight for language, it becomes the place we go to find each other again. A language of mouths and hands and trust restored in gasps and trembling limbs.
Drew and Brittany are dead.
Good riddance.
“It happened by accident.” Vas shrugs unapologetically from where he lounges across the leather sofa, one ankle hooked over his knee like he isn’t discussing homicide over whiskey. “He was reaching for something under the covers. Thought it was a .45. Turned out to be his little .22, if you know what I mean.” He winks at me.
“I really wish I didn’t,” I deadpan.
That sends him barking with laughter, loud enough that Ava throws a cushion at his head from across the room. He ducks it easily and grins wider. The man is a menace.
I also know he is lying through his teeth. Drew had been shot more than once and in a few strategic places no accident would ever find.
Ava never seems bothered by his death, but whenever Brittany’s name is spoken in the weeks that follow, she flinches almost imperceptibly. Her smile goes brittle around the edges. I wonder sometimes if she regrets pulling the trigger. If regret and relief can live in the same chest.
Richard Crowe was stabbed in his jail cell.
Repeatedly.
There are no leads on who did it. The papers speculate. Politicians posture. News anchors mourn the tragedy of violence in institutions that thrive on it.
But every time the story runs, I catch the glint of satisfaction in my father’s face.
I know he did it for revenge.
He was the one who started it all, whether by cowardice or greed or selfishness too deep to name.
I wonder if he did it solely for my mother, but when he looks at me now, eyes full of pride and something painfully close to remorse, I know he also did it for me.
To give me peace.
As Crowe’s daughter, I never once felt protected. Never once felt safe.
As Toph Eriksen’s, I feel only love and acceptance.
My new therapist says it is his way of trying to make amends for the things he failed to protect me from before. She says I need patience with him, because men who carry guilt often mistake control for care. That he will likely begin displaying an overprotectiveness and possessiveness I have never experienced before.
I am surprisingly okay with that.
It feels good to know someone cares enough to feel those things at all.
Shaking off the thought, I gaze out at the city that gives me more than I ever imagined, even if the seas are stormy getting there. Seattle glitters below in steel and glass, rain-slicked streets catching the light like veins of gold.
It is time I give something back.
Being an investigative reporter was my life. I loved the hunt. The truth dragged screaming into daylight. But there is only so much the written word can do. Some monsters don’t fear exposure. Some only understand force.
Now it is time to take up the mantle of the legacy I was always meant to inherit.
“You ready?” Yelena calls.
I turn and grin. She looks adorable in full leather gear, black helmet adorned with cat ears she glued on herself. She dared anyone to laugh and nearly broke Vas’s nose when he did.
“More than ready.”
I pull my own helmet on and secure the strap beneath my chin before circling one finger in the air.
