I took a longer shower than I had planned on, taking the time to shave my legs and carefully wash my face before I got out. Long showers were a luxury that I hadn’t had in four years, and it was kind of nice to take my time. I eventually stopped dawdling, knowing that if I took any longer I’d look like a coward. I climbed out of the shower and got dressed in a summer dress that I’d found in the boxes Vera brought over. It was a little tight across the chest, but I thought it looked okay anyway. It was loose and flowing, perfect for a hot summer day. I also liked the irony of dressing up a little when my face looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The swelling on my cheekbone hadn’t gone down much, but I was pretty sure the brunt of the trauma was when I’d hit the wall. Dragon’s slap had just added the little bit of extra it took to make me look like a monster. I didn’t even try to cover it up with makeup; nothing was going to help.

When I got to the kitchen a few minutes later, I took a deep breath and tried not to look at Dragon sitting on the couch, alone, with his elbows resting on his knees. He looked how I felt, uneasy. I got my cup of coffee and turned around, leaning against the counter, to catch my breath. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know what to do in this situation.

When I was with Tony, the beatings were nothing like this. He liked to hit me. There was no purpose, no anger in it. He got off on it. The next day would be business as usual, and he would expect me to act like nothing happened. With Dragon, he’d hit me once. He hadn’t beaten me. He’d been angry and devastated, and the underlying reason was still stretched between us like a foul-smelling moat that I didn’t know how to cross.

He didn’t say a word to me. He just sat there, looking at the floor, like he had all day to do so. The tension in the air finally caused me to take a few steps in his direction, and when I did, his head snapped up. All at once, I saw everything he was feeling. He wasn’t angry anymore. There was no censure in his gaze, no fury in the lines of his face. The pain I saw was enough for me to take a ragged breath and another step forward, but it was the guilt in his eyes that led me to sit next to him on the couch.

When I got there, he turned toward me, and I flinched as he raised a hand to my swollen face.

“God, baby. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and I knew that he was.

I knew he was sorry, but whether that mattered or not remained to be seen.

“I know,” I told him quietly, but I couldn’t tell him he was forgiven. I couldn’t tell him it was okay, and I was fine. I wasn’t fine.

“I don’t know what the fuck I was doing. Fuck. Fuck!” He searched my body as if looking for any more bruises, and I knew the exact moment he noticed the ones on my arms. “Shit, look at your arms, baby.” He rubbed them gently with his fingertips as if to finger paint them away.

“Those will be gone by tomorrow,” I told him, and they would. I bruised easily. I always had. “I’m like a peach. I bruise easy. Those ones aren’t the problem.”

“I know,” he told me as he wiped his hand down his face. “God, I was fuckin’ dyin’ when you told me about him. I was so fuckin’ angry with you. I thought, maybe there was an accident or somethin’, you know? Like maybe something happened to him. That’s why I waited, why I let you sleep. I thought we’d just talk about it. I knew it had to have been fuckin’ bad for you. I knew. But fuck, when you said you knew he was dyin’, and you never fuckin’ told me.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Fuck, Brenna. I never got to hold my son.”

He looked at the floor again, not touching me, not moving, and for a while, I just sat there, staring at him.

“I’m sorry.” I was so sorry that I hadn’t had a chance to tell him, to soften the blow as much as I could.

“What are you sorry for, Brenna? I hit you in your goddamn face for Christ’s sake!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to hold him. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I told you before that all that shit was over. I told you that you were fuckin’ safe here. That nobody would lay a hand on you as long as you were with me. Fuck. I blew that all to shit, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you did.”

I could feel a lump in my throat growing as I watched him berate himself. Did I want him to be sorry? Hell yes, I did. But I didn’t want him to take all the blame for the clusterfuck that was our lives. I’d done my part, and my part was a doozy.

He must have heard something in my voice because when I finished speaking, he put his arms around me and gently pulled me into his lap. The action was enough to put my overused tear ducts to work again, and I could feel my cheeks getting wet as he buried his face in my throat.

“I’m so sorry, baby. Fuck. I’m so sorry. I won’t hit you again. Ever. Fuck me. I can’t believe I fuckin’ hit you,” he repeated again and again into my throat, kissing me between words.

I didn’t know who moved first, but our lips met, and everything from there was a frenzy of movement. I slid my leg around, so I was straddling his hips, and his hands slid underneath my dress, pulling at my underwear until the strings holding the sides snapped and he pulled them away. I was equally as impatient, digging my fingers into his belly, as I tried to get his jeans unbuttoned. When we were both finally naked from the waist down, I lifted up with my legs and brought him inside me in one move that had us both groaning. We weren’t making love. It wasn’t sweet or soft. We were fucking, hard. Every movement was rough and needy, and for once, Dragon wasn’t talking me through it. We just needed to be as close as we possibly could before the world came tumbling around us again. I was headed for climax, my body stiffening with impending release, when he grasped my hips and slowed me down.