“Wait, did you stop filming?” Hael asks, clearly talking to Callum. I don’t hear his response because Vic chooses that moment to spank me a seventh time, smoothing his hand over the burning flesh of my ass. He’s putting a lot of force into it, so that each impact of his palm on my cheeks walks that fine line between pain and pleasure.

“After this, Bernie …” Vic starts, but I just wiggle in response, and he can’t help himself. He finishes spanking me, and then laughs as I struggle violently to my feet, backing away from him and yanking my pajama pants up. If only the neighbors had seen … I mean, Aaron’s next-door neighbors already think we’re weird enough. Wouldn’t this just top their suburban sundae?

I turn around to find all five men fixated on me. Even Oscar doesn’t do much to hide his expression. They each think they’re getting something, but I’m not sure they’re ready for a group session just yet. They all look at me like maybe I’ll choose them for the night.

“After this, what, Victor?” I ask, turning to look at him and then backing toward the sliding door. Aaron lets me slip past, his arms still crossed over his chest, attention focused solely on me.

Vic stands up, like he thinks he’s about to get laid, but I just turn and flee into the house and up the stairs, slamming and locking Aaron’s door behind me.

Instead of giving any of those bastards an encore performance, I use my own hand to pleasure myself into sleep, my ass smarting and aching against Aaron’s flannel sheets.

We all decide to take a day off and chill at Aaron’s place, but the girls still have to go to school, so I end up yawning in the passenger seat of the Bronco, wearing pj’s and one of Cal’s hoodies. Aaron drops Kara and Ashley off first before heading toward Heather’s school.

“Are we going home soon?” she asks when we’re about halfway there.

The word home triggers something in me, and I shudder, despite myself. That duplex, with Pamela and Neil, it was never home. Speaking of … I can only imagine what Pam’s doing without her partner-in-crime by her side. I’m honestly shocked she hasn’t so much as reached out to me.

Kind of freaks me out a little.

The money Vic gave her will only last so long, and then she’ll be after me for more, extorting me in exchange for my keeping Heather with me. I know that woman, and she is nothing if not a selfish, manipulative bitch.

“Why would you want to go back there?” I ask, hoping like hell she doesn’t say something terrible like I miss daddy. I always monitored their interactions as best as I could, but the Thing was nothing if not manipulative. I’m not sure that Heather was ever aware that she was in danger around him.

Aaron and I exchange a look when Heather doesn’t answer, the silence stretching thick and uncomfortable between the three of us.

“We can get your things, and move them into my house,” Aaron suggests, tattooed hands squeezing the wheel so hard that his knuckles pale. “Would that help make it feel like home? We can even get you a bed and you can share a room with Kara and Ashley.”

I look back to see Heather staring at her lap. She’s picking at the glittery skulls on her leggings, her brunette hair hanging forward and hiding her face. My heart clenches at the sight because I can tell she’s horribly, desperately sad about something.

“Our house,” she starts, and then sighs. “With Mom and Dad, that was the last place I saw Penelope alive.” My vision flickers with white splotches, and my heart plummets into my stomach like a comet, leaving a crater that I’m not sure I know how to fill. “Plus, her room is there, and all of her things …”

“Which we’ll pack when we go back for our own stuff,” I say, breathless and trying my very best not to cry. I stare out the windshield as Aaron holds out a hand for me to take. I squeeze his fingers in my own and thank the fucking universe that he came back to me, that he’s mine again, that I never truly lost him at all. “We’re not staying with Mom or Neil anymore. Are you okay with that?”

Heather doesn’t respond for a minute, and when I glance back to look at her, I see teardrops falling onto her leggings. I wish I could let her read Pen’s journal. When I open it, and I see the loops and twists of her pretty handwriting, I can hear her voice in my head. But how can I let Heather read it when it’s so awful? How can I let her crack those pages and find out that when Penelope was fourteen, she dressed up in a cute outfit and went out with her friends. She had a single beer. Not unusual for a student at Prescott High, to start drinking early.

How do I let Heather read about what happened when she came home, how the Thing amped up his assaults from molestation to rape. How Penelope tried to seek help. How they blamed her skirt and that beer on Neil’s twisted, fucked-up depravities.

“Penelope is always with us, Heather,” I say instead, my hands shaking. Like I said before, I’m pretty sure I have PTSD or something. But it’s not like I can go to a shrink and tell them all my problems. Hey, yeah, so, I’ve always had panic attacks when talking about my dead sister, but they’ve increased in intensity after I buried her rapist alive in a bloodred satin-lined coffin. “If you think about her, and you remember her, and you love her even though she’s gone, it doesn’t matter where we live or if we even have any of her possessions. She stays alive through our memories.”

Heather doesn’t say anything as we pull into the circle drop-off lane in front of her school. She shoves the back door open and slams it behind her. When she takes off running, her backpack bobs against her skinny body, and I just lose my shit.

I drop my face to my hands as hot, salty tears stream down my cheeks.

“Oh, Bernie,” Aaron murmurs, reaching out and brushing hair back from my face. I can hear in his words how much he hates to see me hurt. So even though parents are honking behind us, and we really should get moving, he unbuckles his seat belt so he can lean over and give me a hug that’s so tight it almost hurts.

That’s what I love most about him: he always has the emotional capacity to give when I’m feeling empty inside.

“Hey,” he says after a few minutes, when most of the other cars have zoomed around us cussing and screaming and flipping us off. No joke, parents of school-age kids are fucking cray. “I have something I want to give you.”

I look over at him, and I see on his face that this is something serious. It’s not like when Hael tells me he wants to ‘give me something’ and then flashes his dick. Which, I might add, he’s done twice in the last week.

“What?” I ask, but Aaron just shakes his head, running his fingers through his chestnut hair as he sits back in his seat and puts the Bronco in drive. It starts to rain on our way home, fat droplets that turn into hail about a half a block from the house.

The Harley and the Camaro are still parked out front which tells me everyone is still here.

I like that, the rain and the company and feeling cozy in Aaron’s house while Heather is safe at school.

I wipe my tears away with the sleeves of Cal’s sweatshirt, but as soon as Aaron and I walk through the front door, Oscar’s eyes snap to mine and I can tell he knows I’ve been crying. Dick-face, I think at him, because I just don’t have the energy to argue.