I wait in the hallway as he wanders around, robotically closing windows. At the wall just inside the front door, he punches a code into a small keypad, and a red light flashes. I remember the security system from when I used to come here before.

I remember a lot of things about before.

Memories of days long gone, of innocence and first love, curl around my mind like tendrils, whispering softly, making me hurt. Part of me wants to get lost inside them for a while, but as Jase slams the remaining window shut and stalks into the living room, I’m jolted back to the present.

I follow cautiously, unsure if my presence is wanted. I hover awkwardly as Jase kicks back onto the end of the sofa that has a chaise extension. He crosses his legs and stares at his bottle of vodka, forlorn. A vibrating sound buzzes from his jeans pocket and he pulls out his phone, closing one eye to read it.

His face falls.

“What?” I ask quietly.

He throws the phone down on the sofa beside him. “Someone found Jimmy.”

Jimmy. Of course. In the commotion of everything, I’d almost forgotten the dead man whose blood had covered me from head to toe only hours ago.

“Dead?”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Yes, dead. That’s generally what happens when you blow someone’s brains out.”

I almost say, That’s generally what happens when your motorcycle blows up, too, but I bite that back. It’s not helpful right now.

I think about Jimmy, and it bothers me. At first, I’m not sure why, but then I realize … It was the casual, instinctive way that Jase placed his gun to Jimmy’s temple and pulled the trigger. No hesitation.

“Why’d you need Jimmy’s gun?” I ask suddenly. It’s not the question I really want to ask, but it, too, has been bothering me. Why did we have all that fanfare with the guns and Jimmy being offered a ringside seat to the Juliette rape and murder show? Why didn’t Jase just use his own gun? I mean, the likelihood of his gun—of Dornan’s gun—being registered is almost zero. They’re bikers, not members of the NRA. Now that my brain is functioning again, all of these questions are burning a hole in my brain, but it’s the unspoken questions that hurt even more.

Why did you wait six years, and never do a damn thing to hurt your father?

Why didn’t you kill him?

Why is your body covered in Gypsy Brothers tattoos? In family patches and club insignia?

Why are you even here?

I can kill a man and watch him die, but I can’t ask these questions. Not now. I’m too afraid of what the answers might be. So, instead, I stick with the safer question.

Why’d you need Jimmy’s gun?

Jase eyes me for a moment before responding. “Dornan’s gun was damaged when his motorcycle blew up beneath him. I doubted it would fire. Imagine if I’d tried to shoot Jimmy with a gun that didn’t work.”

My stomach roils at that image. Yes. Imagine indeed.

“Imagine what they’d do to you and to me.”

“You’re smart,” I say, feeling stupid that the thought didn’t occur to me in the parking lot. I was careless, and if it weren’t for Jase’s quick thinking and excellent acting, we’d probably both be dead.

I’d definitely be dead.

“I’m a details guy,” Jase says, leaning his head back and closing his eyes for a moment. I take a deep breath and sit on the other end of the couch, my thoughts troubling me greatly.

Why is he still here?

Elliot’s words come back to haunt me, a stab in the gut. I told him to go. I’m a horrible person.

He’s Dornan’s son. His blood runs through his veins.

I steal a glance at Jase, and my troubled mood turns into a barely muffled laugh as I see that he’s fast asleep, passed out sitting up against the couch, one hand still wrapped firmly around the neck of the vodka bottle.

I can’t be mad at him now. He’s adorable when he sleeps. I push those disturbing questions away. They’ll still be there in the morning for me to ask.

I stand and tiptoe over to where Jase is lying, gently unfurling his fingers from the vodka bottle. I return it to the fridge, and then pad silently into his bedroom. I grab the duvet from his bed and carry it to the living room, lightly covering Jase with it. He’s out cold, and for a moment I just watch him sleep, the lines on his face gone in sleep.

He looks younger when he’s sleeping.

He looks like the Jase I left behind six years ago.

Blinking back tears, I head back to his bedroom. My entire body is tired and aching, and I figure I may as well get some sleep while Jase is unconscious.

I crawl under the sheets, hugging a pillow close to me. It smells like Jase. Earthy, like fresh dirt and sandalwood with a hint of something spicy. It’s delicious. That’s the last thing I think of before I shut my eyes, and sleep drags me down.

Pain and darkness. Terror and despair.

My nightmare holds me under and pins me down. It leaves marks in me like a shark’s sharp teeth, even as I thrash in damp sheets, struggling to wake up.

It’s nothing new. My mother once told me that I used to have night terrors when I was a baby. That I would call out in my sleep, eyes awake but blank, and she would have to hold me up to the lights and shake me awake.

But when I was younger, my dreams were fluid, innocent, ever-changing. I might have looked panicked, but I always woke up and was fine. Whatever haunted me in my sleep never followed me through to my waking.

Not anymore.

Something completely disturbing, something that I have pushed away into the darkest recesses of my mind continues to trouble me as I lie panting, twisted in thin sheets, goose bumps and sweat lining my exposed skin.

I didn’t have a single nightmare the entire time I slept beside Dornan Ross.

All those weeks, the months I had lain beneath him as he drove himself inside me, enough to make me shatter. Then, afterward, the way he would lay a possessive arm over me, so that I couldn’t move away, pinned to the bed as his sticky fluid seeped from me and turned cold beneath us.

I slept like a baby every single night.

It disturbed me greatly, so greatly that I didn’t think about it, forced myself to turn off, but suddenly I’m reminded of those nights, and now I know why I wasn’t scared.

I wasn’t scared because I knew where he was. And I knew, that as long as I was with him, and he believed my lies, that I was safe. Not safe in the traditional sense—this was the man who beat me, who stabbed me for talking out of turn, who fucked me senseless, and choked me until I saw stars more than once.

But I knew where he was. And I knew he was under my spell. And I was feeding off his pain and grief like an addict, getting hit after hit as his sons fell like dominoes, victims of my treachery.

Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen. If he’s going to wake up. If he’s going to figure me out before I deliver his final death sentence.

If it’s going to be him that dies, or me.

If Jase really forgives me, or if he’s going to grow to hate me so much that maybe he’ll pull the trigger himself.

Tonight’s nightmare is a classic. I’m riding in the back of the car, on the way to my death six years ago. Dornan is in the driver’s seat, Maxi in the passenger seat, and Chad sits next to me, a smug smirk on his demented face. I try to open the car door, but there’s no handle. I bang on the window and suddenly, all three men turn and stare at me, but they don’t have faces. Only rotted flesh and shriveled white blobs where their eyes should be. Chad stares at me with unseeing white eyes and underneath a fat worm burrows out, making a hole in his cheek. Suddenly the car is covered in writhing maggots as Chad slides closer, caging me against the door with his arms.

I scream, and as I do, the maggots make a beeline for my mouth, crawling from everywhere to make their home inside me.