“You’re not going to throw up,” Casper told me calmly. “You do need to calm the fuck down though.”

I raised my head to call him every name I could think of for being so insensitive, but when I saw the look he was giving me, I paused. His eyes were filled with concern as he searched my face.

“I’ve heard the way Dragon calms you down,” he answered the question in my eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You listen to authority. If I tried to comfort you, it would have made things worse…be glad I didn’t threaten to spank your ass,” he told me with a lopsided smile.

I made a small chuckling noise in my throat and shook my head. I did feel a bit better now, but I wasn’t sitting back down on that couch. We were going to have to move it or something. Maybe if we rearranged the furniture it wouldn’t bother me as much.

The doctors had talked to me about post-traumatic stress disorder. They’d warned me that I might have some of the symptoms, but I’d brushed them off. I’d been in pretty bad situations with Tony before, and I hadn’t had flashbacks or anger problems. They thought the fact that he had violated my sanctuary might change things though, and I guessed they were right. If that little memory on the couch hadn’t been a flashback, I was the Queen of Sheba.

I decided I was going to lie down for a while, and I asked Vera to make sure the window in our room was closed before I stepped inside. I didn’t think I could deal with any more reminders. When I climbed into bed, I was instantly comforted by the scent of Dragon on my sheets, and I inhaled until my ribs protested. It was exactly what I needed.

“I didn’t wash your sheets,” Vera told me from the doorway. “When we were younger, Slider was inside for about six months. I didn’t change the sheets until I couldn’t smell him anymore.” She laughed. “Probably couldn’t smell him anymore ’cause they were so rank from never getting washed!”

I smiled back at her in thanks before she left the room, closing the door behind her. I wasn’t tired. I just wanted to lie in our cocoon and pretend that Dragon was in the living room with Trix, playing Legos and letting me take a nap. I missed my family. After everything that had happened with Tony, I needed Dragon’s arms around me. I needed the reassurance that the life we’d built over the last couple of months wasn’t just a dream.

I tried to stay strong, to tell myself that he’d be home soon, and that I didn’t have long to wait. But, within ten minutes of Vera closing the door, tears were running down my face and soaking into Dragon’s pillow.

I fell asleep at some point and woke up to Casper calling my name from the doorway of my room. When I opened my eyes, he told me that the attorney was in the kitchen and walked away. He seemed a little abrupt, but I was in a hurry to talk to Dragon’s attorney, so I did a quick check of my clothes and hair and headed toward the voices in the front of the house.

The attorney, I thought his name was Duncan, was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with Vera when I walked in, eager for news. I sat across from him and tried to read his face, but it showed little emotion. I didn’t know if he had good news or not.

“Mrs. Richards, I hope it’s okay that I stopped by—” He started speaking, but I cut him off.

“Brenna,” I gritted through my teeth.

We’d had this conversation before, and the douche continued to use my married name whenever I saw him.

“Brenna.” He nodded his head once. “I have a couple of things to speak to you about. First, let’s get the questions you left on my voice mail out of the way. I can’t get you in to see Dragon this week.”

“Why?” I interrupted him again. Pop and Slider seemed to think he could move mountains. It seemed like a very little thing to get me into the jail.

“Well,” he paused. “I’m just going to tell you. I talked to Daniel White today, and he doesn’t want to see you.”

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, and the absolute lack of compassion on his face made it ten times worse.

“Why?” I asked again.

“Mr. White didn’t give me his reasons, but he was adamant that if you showed up, even during regular visiting hours, he wouldn’t see you,” he told me impatiently. “Now, regarding the custody suit, that’s been dropped due to the death of the plaintiff.”

“What?” I cried.

He was going too fast; the information he was giving me was making my head spin. I felt Casper come up behind me and lay his hand on my shoulder as I looked at the attorney in bewilderment. He acted like we were wasting his precious time, like he had better things to do than sit and try to explain things to me.

“Mr. Tony Richards was found dead in a hotel room on the California border this morning. Of course, nothing is legal yet, but without a plaintiff, it’s all a matter of paperwork at this point,” he told me offhandedly, gathering the paperwork on the table into his briefcase. “I’ll still work on getting those birth certificates changed though, but I don’t foresee any problems with that.”

I looked over to Vera for verification, and her face was like stone. I opened my mouth to say something, I didn’t know what, and she shook her head at me once. Not while the lawyer was there. That little shake of her head reminded me of Pop’s visit the morning before. He’d said he was going hunting. Holy God.

Dragon never changed his mind about letting me visit.

I had to learn about how he was doing from the brothers who visited him every Thursday and Sunday. I gathered their news like a hoarder, thinking about it over and over again, as I lay in bed at night with Trix cuddled into my side. The attorney was still a complete asshole, but he seemed to be doing his job. Dragon got three months, and by the time they’d decided, he’d already finished a month.