It simply is.
It’s everything I need to do and all I’ve promised never to try again. It’s boiling like lava and freezing like liquid nitrogen. It’s the atom-wide space between nothing and everything, the chasm between individual cells of my body.
My need to cut is more compelling than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. I need the scalpel more than I need a light on when I sleep. More than I need Granny’s smile. More than food, air, water.
“Jesus Christ!”
The sound comes from a million miles away, warping across time and space. It presses in on me from everywhere at once. It’s a feeling, a sense, a knowledge jacked into the core of my cells, echoing one simple truth: I’m not safe.
I push deeper with the blade. I need to protect myself. I need to escape.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Those arewords. They carry meaning. They warn of threat.
“Drop it! Dammit, Kate. Drop. It.”
And those arefingers. Gripping. Pinching the small bones in my wrist. The threat made real.
Those fingers aren’t the perfect sharpness of the knife. They aren’t the searing proof I crave. They just hurt.
So I relax my grip on the scalpel. I let it fall to the floor. I watch as the knife bounces on the rug, as it comes to rest beside my foot, silver gleaming against the crimson and blue of hand-tied silk.
Everything’s moving too fast around me. Someone kicks away the scalpel, sends it spinning into a corner of the room. Someone grabs a pillow from my side, stripping it out of its ice-blue case. Someone presses a wad of fabric—that same ice blue—against my thigh. Someone swears when crimson blooms against the frozen cloth.
My entire leg aches, not just the flaming line I’ve carved to eternity. I try to shift my weight, to pull away, to open that path to salvation once again.
“Stay still, Kate.”
It’s an order, cold and steady. That’s Wolf’s voice. Those are Wolf’s fingers clamped to my thigh. That’s Wolf’s weight, leaning into me.
I stay still. The animal part of my brain responds to the certainty in his words. He’s the alpha. He sets rules.
My job is to follow. I don’t have to think. I don’t have to make any choices. I only need to do as Wolf says—stay still.
So I don’t move as he raises the heel of his hand from my thigh. As he checks my cut beneath the crumpled pillowcase. As a panicked bird flushes from the back of my brain—there’s too much blood on that cloth.
I cut deeper than I ever have before. Maybe that wasbecause I was slicing into an old scar. Maybe that was because I needed greater punishment than I ever have before. Maybe that was because I lied to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.
The Andersons have something I’ve never seen before: A real marriage. A happy marriage. They love each other and they support each other and they’re there for each other in a way Wolf and I can never hope to copy. The Andersons are honest and true, and I sat at their dining room table for hours, pretending to be Wolf’s beloved bride.
Me. The woman Wolf won’t even fuck.
He says, “You need stitches.”
“I don’t.” My protest is automatic.
“We’ll let Patel decide that.”
“I’m fine.”
But he’s already tapping his phone. And when he’s through summoning the doctor, he calls Nilsson, instructing him to wait at the gate.
I feel guilty about that, about dragging Nilsson back to work on his night off.
I’m a terrible person. I’m broken. I’ve been broken since the Bad Men took me.
Larissa said it was time to head home. But I ran all the way across the playground. I climbed onto the merry-go-round, even though we had to leave, even though Breagha was ready to go back for supper and storytime and bed.