Pinned to my walls, between my trinkets, are the Bargainer’s sketches. A couple of them are of me, but once I noticed I was a recurring theme in his art, I asked him if he could draw me pictures of the Otherworld. Originally, my intent had been to minimize portraits of me, but once he began drawing images of his world, I was ensnared by them.

Now my walls are covered with sketches of cities built on giant trees and dance halls nestled beneath mountains, monsters both terrifying and strange, and beings so beautiful they beckoned me closer.

“Callie,” Des says, pulling me back to the present. He’s sprawled across my bed, the edge of his shirt hitched up just enough to give me a glimpse of his abs.

“Hmmm?” I say, twisting my computer chair back and forth.

He hesitates. “If I asked you something right this instant, would you answer me honestly?”

Up until now, our conversation had been lighthearted, humorous, so I think of nothing when I say, “Of course.”

Des pauses, then says, “What really happened that night?”

I freeze, my chair coming to a stop.

He doesn’t need to elaborate just which night he’s speaking of. We both know it’s the night he met me.

The night I killed a man.

I’m shaking my head.

“You need to talk about it,” he says, tucking his hands behind his head.

“Are you suddenly a shrink now?” There’s a lot more venom in my voice than I intended. I can’t go back to that night.

Des reaches for my hand and holds it tightly in his own. The same trick that I’ve used dozens of times on him he now turns on me: touch.

I stare down at our joined hands, and damn but his warm grip makes me feel safe.

“Cherub, I’m not going to judge you.”

I drag my gaze up to his. I’m about to beg him to not push me any further. My demons batter against the walls of their cages. He’s asking me to unleash them him, and I don’t know if I can.

But when I meet his eyes, which stare at me with so much patience and affection, I say something else entirely.

“He came at me like he always did when he drank too much.” I swallow.

Shit, I’m really doing this.

And I’m not ready, but I am, and my mind makes no sense right now, but my heart is speaking through my mouth and I’m not sure my mind has anything to do with it. I’ve carried this particular secret with me for years. I’m ready to unburden myself.

My eyes move back to our joined hands, and I take a strange sort of strength from his presence.

“That evening was a long time in coming. It began several years before then.” Long before my siren ever had a chance to defend me.

To know the story, I have to go back to the beginning. Des had only asked me to explain a single night, but that’s impossible without knowing all the hundreds of nights that preceded it.

“My stepfather … raped me … for years.”

I drag myself back to that dark place, and I do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: I tell him. All the gory details. Because there really is no such thing as dipping a toe into this discussion.

I talk about the way I used to stare at my closed door, that I came close to wetting my bed watching that knob turn. How I can still smell the bite of his cologne and the sour spirits on his breath.

That I used to cry and sometimes beg. That despite my best efforts, it never changed anything. That eventually, I became complacent, and that’s perhaps the detail that hurts the most.

Will the fear and disgust ever go away? Will the shame? Intellectually I know what he did to me wasn’t my fault. But emotionally, I’ve never been able to believe it. And God, have I tried.

My knuckles are white from how tightly I grip his hand. In this moment, he’s my anchor, and I’m afraid when I let him go, he’ll drift away from me.

I’m a dirty, tarnished thing, and if he couldn’t see that before, now he will.

“That night, the night he died, I couldn’t take it anymore.” It was him or me in the end, and to be honest, I didn’t really care which. “Killing him wasn’t premeditated. He came at me in the kitchen, and he set that bottle on the counter. When I got the chance, I grabbed it, and held it out like a weapon.”

What are you going to do with that? Hit your father with it?

“I smashed it against the wall.” My eyes go distant, remembering that encounter. “He laughed at that.” A mean laugh, one that promised pain. Lots of it. “And then he lunged at me.

“I didn’t think. I swung the broken bottle at him.” It felt good to fight back. It felt like madness, and I gave myself over to it. “I must’ve nicked an artery.” My body’s shaking, and the Bargainer squeezes my hand tighter.

“He bled out so fast,” I whisper.

And the look in my stepfather’s eyes when he realized he was going to die. Mostly shock but also a healthy dose of betrayal. Like after all he’d done to hurt me, he assumed I’d never hurt him back.

I swallow thickly, blinking back the memories. “The rest you know.”

I expect a million terrible reactions, but not the one the Bargainer gives me. His releases my hand only to wrap his arms around me and pull me out of the computer chair and into his embrace. And I’m so, so thankful he’s touching me, holding me, giving me this physical comfort right when I thought I was incapable of being cherished.

I crawl the rest of the way onto the tiny twin bed we now share, and as the moon sets, I cry in his arms. I let myself be weak because this may be the only time I’ll ever get this.