“When will you send my things over?”

“Never. You’re not going.”

He sinks down on the sofa beside me. I can suddenly see how tired he is. It feels so very right to have him close to me. “I love you. I don’t want to fight. Please, don’t leave.”

“You hurt me.”

He swallows. “I love you.”

He inhales sharply, lies his head back against the cushion and closes his eyes. He looks so despondent, so weary, and so young. It’s so unfair that he can shift effortlessly into someone who melts my heart. It makes me want to curl into him, hold him, even after the horrible things he’s done.

“I’m so tired, Chrissie. Tired of the bullshit. Tired of everything. I just want one thing in my life not drowning in shit. I just want to be with you and be happy, be with you and let all the other fucking shit go.”

His lids lift just enough so he can look at me. Gently, he tugs my hand from beneath me, where I’d buried it so he couldn’t take it. He places a feather-light kiss in my palm.

“Can we just go to sleep and finish this later, Chrissie?” He sets my teacup on the table. “Never argue when you’re tired. It’s not good. And I won’t be able to sleep unless you are next to me.”

I hesitate. Alan picks me up and carries me to my bedroom.

* * *

Reluctantly, I open my eyes. I don’t want to wake. I don’t want round two of the fighting. I don’t want to end us. And I don’t think I should go any farther with Alan. I’m at a point where I can exit. Only I don’t want to exit, though I know deep down I should.

I check the clock. It is 10 p.m. We’ve slept fifteen hours straight, and I have not moved from the tight ball on the edge of the bed where I deposited myself after Alan released me. I didn’t argue with him about postponing our fight or lying down with him to sleep, but I wasn’t about to lay down with him as if everything were normal. I don’t know where we are, but we are not in normal. Not that we are ever in normal, not really, not in the way I used to think normal would be. Alan and I together are a lot of things. Normal just isn’t one of them.

I carefully turn to look at him. I want to get up, but I don’t want to wake him. He is wrapped around me in that warm, surrounding way that feels as though he is holding onto me, even in sleep. His flesh is warm. His breathing is quiet.

How do I get out of here without waking him? I need a little distance so I can think through what I should do.

Suddenly, my panties are gone and I am pressed into Alan in a perfect, side-by-side fit, and he is in me without foreplay or stirring touch or kisses. He’s just in me and this is different. It feels dark and angry as he slams into me, filling me, even more so than it did being pounded against the bedroom door.

His groans are different. His touch is different. His fingers on my breasts are different, the way those callused tips roll my nipples, tugging and pinching. He is something beyond angry, I can feel it, and I close my eyes, absorbing him, part afraid, a greater part hungrily savoring. The sensations through my flesh push me higher, too quickly, so right.

He grasps my hip firmly, eases out of me slowly, and then again, harder this time, slams into me.

“Don’t ever leave me.”

I lie panting beneath his touch, feeling his intense anger, knowing he’s going to get rougher. My femaleness courses through my veins. It is messed up, but my insides quicken, excited by my femaleness and his temper.

I’m about to surrender to the heat of my own flesh. A ragged whisper penetrates my near exploding senses.

“Did you fuck him?”

What? No! My senses halt in their march toward climax.

“Did you fuck him?” he repeats fiercely.

He stays still.

“No,” I hiss furiously, the shock of him asking me that leaving me breathless and flashing with anger. “No.”

He closes his eyes, there is a ragged shudder through his limbs, and the feel of him is different, frenzied and possessive. He starts again, a brutal, divine rhythm. I hear his groan, a guttural thing, desperation, relief, sadness. He moans low in his throat and I can feel the tension change, as his adrenaline runs through his veins, a different type of current.

“I’ve been out of my mind since you walked out the door with him,” he breathes, his face buried in my hair. “Don’t do that again. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t make me feel like I don’t matter to you. I can stand anything, Chrissie, except not mattering to you.”

And then the words are lost. Alan is letting go, calling my name, and I surrender and explode with him. I sink to the bed. I sleep.

* * *

Alan gazes at me, assessing my expression as I stare up at him.

It’s morning and I don’t have a clue where we go from here. Last night was different. I don’t know what is happening beneath his surface, but there is something and I can feel it. I should be furious that in the cease-fire between the rounds of our fight, he decided to have an extremely rough “did you fuck him” fuck.

His anger issues. I’ve seen them, but last night I felt it in his body, in the way he had sex with me. Did I fuck him? God, Alan, how could you ask me that?

I try to rally my anger, fortification for today’s round of fighting, but I’m slightly disappointed in myself. I realize that I am less angry with him because I really got off on the angry “did you fuck him” fuck. It was weird, consuming, and a turn-on.

His anger is dark, complex and layered, just like mine. But unlike me, he lets it surface, in his music, in his impulses, and in his body when he fucks instead of making love. Maybe that was why it was a turn on? I fight my anger, I struggle to keep it contained, but last night my anger ran with his through my flesh and it was a sensory right sort of thing.

I stare at him. So what’s up today, Alan? Are we going to continue talking? Are we going to continue having angry fucks? Or are you just going to lie there staring at me as though everything is fine, perfectly normal in this alternate universe of not normal.

“Do you want to go on a date-date today?” Alan asks.

Oh crap, how did he remember that? Date-date. How lame.

He starts to move my hair from my face. “I owe you a date-date.”

So, it’s going to be door number three: act like everything is fine. What do I do? Do I roll with it? What did Jesse say? Guys hate conflict. Act normal and so will he. But is that what I want? To act normal and just leave it all alone?

I don’t answer.

He climbs from the bed, naked, and completely comfortable in whatever we’re doing now.

I sit up in bed against the pillows.

Alan is sorting through his clothes on the floor. “Are you hungry?”

Normal conversation in not normal context. I take a deep breath, willing myself calm.

“I’m starving. We didn’t eat yesterday.”

He gives me a look that makes me quicken all through my flesh.

“Do you have any clothes here other than the shorts and UGGs? Maybe jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and some kind of closed toe shoe?”

Why is he asking me this? “I don’t know. I’ll have to look. Rene left a lot of junk.”

He makes a face and continues to rummage through his things.

I frown. “How did you get into the apartment yesterday?”

“I have a key.”

You do, do you? I stare.

“You left the extra key on the entry table.” He is distracted and looking for something. “Not smart, Chrissie. Anyone could have just come in here, a delivery person, taken it, and then where would you be?”

It’s not worth pointing out, but just anyone did take it and look at where I am. With you, Alan, sore after a night of angry fucking.

I watch Alan disappear into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on. He doesn’t ask, he takes my hand and pulls me into the shower with him.

As I stand beneath the warm streams, his damp body pressed against my back, his gentle hands wash me from behind. “Did you ever finish Ivanoff?”