Hoyt would— The sudden thought of him and what he would and wouldn’t do about my behavior—like a cancer in this new Febreze-scented world of mine—galvanized me, sent new steel running down my back.

I’m not Annie. I’m Layla. And fuck Hoyt.

“Why?” I asked, noting there was a change in my voice, too. As if there were a sort of intimacy between me and this stranger who asked about my safety in a lifetime of people not caring.

“There’s a trailer, two away from you. To the north. You can see it out your window.”

I twisted and pushed aside the curtain on the north-facing window.

“Did you look?”

“I did.”

I heard him breathe into the phone and something electric pulsed over me. An animal instinct made all the hair on my neck stand up.

“An old man lives in that trailer,” he said. “Megan kept an eye on him for me.”

“Is he sick?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Does he need help of some kind?”

Again that rumbly dark laugh, again that weird reaction of my heart. “No. He doesn’t. In fact, I made it real clear to Megan that she shouldn’t get to know him at all.”

“So, she just spied on him?”

“She did. And I paid her well to do it.”

“Did she do anything else for you?” I asked. It hardly seemed a job a person could get paid for.

In his silence I realized what he might be thinking, and I felt blood pound through my body in horrified embarrassment.

“What are you asking me, Layla?”

Oh, his voice was suddenly thick with intimacy and now I could not pretend otherwise. Somehow this had gotten sexual. It was the Layla thing that had started it and it was a stupid thing to start. I did not play this kind of game. Didn’t understand it. Was completely embarrassed by it.

Suddenly restless, I stood up. My skin felt far too keenly the rub of my clothes against it.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just seems like something a person should do without being paid.”

“Are you offering to look in on him for me?”

“Sure.” I picked up my bag and walked down the hallway to the tiny bedroom in the back. The double bed was stripped. A stack of clean sheets sat at the end of the faded flowered mattress.

“That easy?”

“That easy.”

“When’s the last time you said no to someone?” he asked.

“Why does it matter?”

“I have a sense, Layla, that you give away your yeses without thinking.”

Oh, he was right. So damn right.

“And you want my noes?”

“I want something you don’t give away.”

My knees buckled and I leaned back against the wood-paneled wall, feeling light-headed. How…how did we get here? What has happened to me?

“Tell me no, Layla,” he murmured.

No was dangerous in my old life. A red flag in front of a murderous bull.

I wasn’t brave enough.

“No.” It was barely a whisper. A breath. A rebellion that screamed through me. It was like Les Misérables in my chest cavity.

“Do you remember my name?”

Inherently, somehow I knew what he was asking. Say my name.

“No, Dylan.”

The sound he made—half sigh, half groan—was easily the most erotic sound I’d ever heard, and suddenly there was no more wondering, no more innuendo. He wasn’t asking what I was wearing, but the effect was the same. The intent was the same.

This is…oh my God, this is phone sex. I’m having phone sex with a stranger in a shitty trailer in the middle of nowhere!

I pulled myself away from the wall. My hands in fists.

“Don’t call me again.” My voice sounded firmer than I’d expected. Firmer than I’d sounded my entire life, and I was proud of myself.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Promise.” Why I expected him to keep that promise I had no idea, but having acted so stupid I felt the need to at least attempt smart behavior. God, that lie about cleaning the trailer was so see-through. He knew where I lived. He could find me in the middle of the night, break through those flimsy locks—“I promise. You’re safe. Goodbye, Layla.” And he hung up.

I hung up a moment later, staring down at the phone as if I’d never seen its kind before.

It’s just a phone, I thought, despite its near pulsing heat in my hand. Its strange aliveness. It echoed in me, a foreign nature that was not entirely my own. Something hot-blooded and impulsive.

Don’t be stupid. Or stop being stupid. Or…something.

I walked back into the kitchen. Turned off the phone and threw it up in a high cupboard. A phone would be a handy thing to have in case of an emergency, and when he stopped paying for the service, I’d find a way to get my own.

My hands were shaking. My whole body quaked like an aspen leaf. I stepped sideways into the tiny bathroom and turned on the faucets. Cold water blasted out, ricocheted off the sink, and sprayed across my body, soaking through my white cotton blouse.

I sucked in a shocked breath.

“Damn it,” I muttered and cranked the water back off.

I pressed cold hands to my eyes and cheeks and then opened my eyes to stare right at the woman in the mirror. My shirt, thanks to the water, was see-through, and I could see the pink of my flesh beneath it. A white bra. My nipples…there. Painfully, obviously, there.

Slowly I unwound the sheer, floral scarf from around my neck.

The bruises under my chin and at the sides of my neck were turning yellow at the center. Green at the edges.

The one at the corner of my mouth was still dark and ugly and red.

This is my body. Those are my bruises.

The hands shaking on the sink, those are mine, too.

Those words I said to that man.

Dylan.

Those were mine. My words.

This is me.

I took a deep breath, feeling overwhelmed by the empty space around me, usually filled in with so much fear. Without that fear, without the rules—said and unsaid, implicit and explicit—I felt undone. Unmade. As if I’d been pruned, allowing—God, please, please allow—new growth.

My hair, the thick, pretty red curls replaced by a lopsided cut I’d given myself and then dyed black in the Tulsa bus station, made me unrecognizable to myself.

“So,” I said out loud to the reflection in the mirror. That stranger staring back at me. “Who are you?”

DYLAN

Make no mistake, Dylan Daniels was the beast. He was the bad guy in the stories. Some other asshole could be the hero, save the day and get the girl.

Alone and gruesome, he’d stay up on his mountain with his money and his work, as far from people as he could get because that was how he liked it.

It was better. For everyone.

But every once in a while he got to worrying about the monsters that lived off the mountain and he called to check up on Ben.

Carefully, like it was a bomb with a lit fuse, Dylan put the phone down on the workbench in front of him.

Pencils rolled onto the floor, but he barely noticed.

For five years he’d had the old man looked in on. By six different people. Four women, two guys.

The first question any of them asked was what was in it for them.

And that worked for Dylan. The voices on the other end of the phone belonged to people who were all disinterested and influenced only by the stupid amount of money he paid them. The six people he’d hired didn’t get invested. They didn’t give a shit about the old man or why Dylan wanted him watched. And Dylan didn’t have to worry if they got hurt. Or if they vanished without a word, which was what happened more often than not in that crappy trailer park.