Page 68 of The Wicked

“You looked as if you had a good time,” he said in the car on the way back to Johannes’s apartment.

“I did. I really did.”

“Marlie’s a great kid.”

How could Gracie abandon her?The words were on the tip of my tongue, but of course I didn’t say them.

“The sweetest, but you need to have eyes in the back of your head.”

“Tell me about it. When she was six, she loved to play hide-and-seek, and the day she snuck into a delivery driver’s truck, we thought she’d been kidnapped. Dad called the police, and apparently the guy nearly had a heart attack when he got back to the depot and found her.”

“I bet he did. You need to handcuff her to—” I clapped both hands over my mouth. “Shit! Sorry! I didn’t mean to say that. Your kinks are a bad influence.”

“If it helps, all I’ve been able to think about for the past three hours is you naked and tied up in my bed.”

“Tied up? Like, with rope?”

“Would you object to that?”

“With you, I’ll try anything once.”

24

SARA

And so the roller coaster continued with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. After Garrett had stroked me and teased me and sucked me and kissed me and fingered me and spanked me and finally fucked me as I lay bound beneath him, I fell asleep in his arms, sated, shattered, and just a tiny bit in love.

Thenhecame.

The monster.

He’d stayed out of my dreams for a week, which was a record, but as I settled into life with Garrett, that beast pushed his way back into my subconscious. It was the same as always. The crash, the blood, the fear, the gun. The panic as he pushed the pillow over my face. The whispered threats.

But it was also different.

Because instead of sobbing to myself in the dark, I was shaken awake in a room bathed in the soft glow of a bedside lamp with Garrett’s worried face watching over me.

“Are you okay?”

I tried to offer a reassuring smile, but it didn’t work out. “Just a nightmare.”

“Do you get them often?”

No lies.“Yes.”

“Anything I can do to make it better? Do you want a glass of wine? Milk? Should I leave the light on?”

Last night, he’d turned my ass delightfully pink, but now he was back to being sweet again. “There’s nothing you can do. They’ll just keep coming. If…” I squeezed my eyes closed to clear the tears. “If it disturbs you, I can sleep in another room.”

“I’m not worried about me; I’m worried about you. Have you tried seeing a doctor? Taking sleeping pills?”

“No, no, no. No doctor.” Several years ago, I’d pilfered a handful of prescription pills from Marianna’s medical cabinet and discovered that the only thing worse than a nightmare was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. “I just… I’m used to it.”

“Is it always the same dream?”

“Always,” I whispered.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

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