In a cerebral way I understood that I didn’t deserve that. But I had a set of mixed-up scales in my head that told me over and over again that what I deserved was what I got. This awful belief was reinforced every day with Hoyt. Every moment.

And I couldn’t shake it. In my lowest moments, when everything was stripped away, that was all I had left.

I got what I deserved.

No, I thought.

I am better than this, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. I’d run so I wouldn’t feel this way.

But somehow I couldn’t quite stop it.

The shame was old and familiar.

And unstoppable.

A tide that rolled and rolled and rolled, over me.

DYLAN

Dylan was a rich, distrustful son of a bitch. So rich he owned the mountain where he lived and worked. So distrustful his employees—just to get to work—had to pass through an iron gate.

Clients were dealt with by Blake, who did all the face-to-face stuff. Dylan handled steel and engine schematics. The garage employees.

All of which meant it had been a very long time since Dylan had been surprised.

And tonight he had no fucking idea which surprised him more.

That Layla had called him for phone sex.

That she’d just gone from never having touched herself to having what sounded like a pillow-biting orgasm.

Or that she’d hung up on him.

Despite the raging hard-on nearly boring a hole in the zipper of his jeans, he tipped his head back against his chair and laughed.

What the hell just happened?

Part of him was suspicious, as he’d been taught to be, over and over again by hard experience. No one was that innocent, and that eager at the same goddamn time.

But somehow he knew, down in his gut, that this wasn’t an act with her. Or a game. And she was undoubtedly sitting out there embarrassed by what they’d done. Maybe punishing herself.

The thought just brought him to his knees.

Because what he heard in her voice told him everything he needed to know about her. That she was scared, but she was trying; in order to get what she wanted she was pushing past her own bullshit fears and being brave. In her voice, he could hear every dark and forbidden thing she craved. And he wanted to give it to her. Everything she wanted and the things she didn’t know to want, yet.

How far would she go?

She wanted dark? He had all the dark. All of it. And he’d show her every midnight corner of it.

The shiny surface of the phone in his hand reflected his face, macabre and twisted, back at him.

He wanted to call her. Well, that was bullshit. What he really wanted was to drive down off his mountain and find her in that shitty trailer park and get a front-row seat for what he’d just heard. He wanted to see her in action.

But that would never happen.

She’d take one look at him and this would be over. She’d run for safety.

There were rules, after all. And those rules were there for a reason. When he broke them, people got hurt.

Someone pounded on his office door.

Tonight, he and his team were working out in the warehouse on the engine build and he was sitting in the smaller office attached to it. It was a windowless box, dark and closed, the way he liked it. The only light was the lamp next to his computer. No one would dream of coming in here without knocking.

He’d been short-tempered and impossible and basically every single kind of a dick he could be. But he paid his guys a small fortune to offset his strangeness, and the glory helped too. His gearheads loved the glory.

“What?” Dylan yelled and Blake opened the door. He and Blake had been together since the beginning. The good years before the fire. The better years since. Blake rarely came to the garage anymore; that was Dylan’s kingdom and Blake didn’t like to get his manicured hands dirty, but today had been that kind of day.

“We heard you laughing,” Blake said. He’d traded in his suit for a red tee shirt with a black smiling skull on it and 989 Engines beneath it. Their company logo. “Thought the world might be ending.”

“Hilarious,” he said. “How’s it going in there?”

“We got the planetary gearbox working.”

“How’s it look?”

Blake’s bottle green eyes lit up. “We will be gods and people will bow before us.”

“Well, that is the plan. Be there in a second,” he said.

“I wanted to thank you for giving my brother a chance. Mom appreciated it.”

“I’m sorry I fired him without talking to you first.”

“The garage is your world. You did what you had to do.”

Blake was a good guy, one of the best. And his mom was Margaret and both of them deserved better than that shit-bag Phil. But whatever; if everyone got what they deserved, Dylan would be dead a few times over.

“How did he leave?”

“Like a dick, spewed some hate at me and Mom before he finally got in his car.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Back to whatever rock he lives under, I guess. It’s not like he keeps us up-to-date on his address changes.”

“I don’t know why the hell you bothered.”

“Some of us can’t just leave our family behind, man.”

“Yeah, well, that’s too bad for you.”

“Mom wanted one last try,” Blake said, making it clear he wouldn’t have done it on his own. Blake had inherited his father’s darker skin, green eyes, and business brain. He got Margaret’s blond hair but none of her soft heart. “And it’s done now. For good. Come check out the gear set,” Blake said and without another word he left, closing the door behind him.

Dylan remained in his chair, staring first at the door and then at his phone. Without thinking about the consequences, because after all, he was a god, Dylan grabbed his phone and sent Layla a text message.

Call me.

She might be embarrassed. But she was innocent, and she had no idea how fucking compelling, how addictive, what they’d just shared could be.

Dylan was a patient man and it might take her a while, but she would learn.

And she would call back.

ANNIE

A few days later, I walked the field for the last time before mowing. The tall grass touched my legs just under my shorts and my thighs were wet with dew. It rolled down into my socks. I pushed and shoved the big boulders into the brush along the edges, shoving a long stick in the ground next to the ones that were too big to move so I didn’t accidentally hit them when I mowed.

I worked until my body hurt and my muscles were twitching. My hands, despite the gloves, were raw.

I worked until what happened with Dylan on the phone seemed to be something I’d read. Maybe in that dirty book. But not something that happened to me.

Stuff like that didn’t happen to Annie McKay.

Walking back to the trailer after locking up, I saw Ben in his garden, taking bricks out of a wheelbarrow and struggling under the weight.