“Because I bury men,” he says, voice cracking, “but I can’t bury you and stay a man.”He exhales hard, honest and wrecked.“Training you is me choosing you.Even while I’m mad as hell.I don’t know how to be gentle and suspicious at the same time, but I’m trying.I’ll never stop choosing you.”
The ghosts go silent for that.Even the water hushes.He presses his forehead to mine, our breath dancing.I kiss him.Mouths salt-wet.This is what it means to be loved by a killer.
It means he teaches you how to survive what is meant to shatter you.It means he looks you in the eye and says,I will always come for you.But until I do, you do not break.
Is that love or is it madness?
It doesn’t fix anything, but it reminds me of mywhy.I drink my coffee each day and willingly go into that godforsaken basement because, deep down, I want to be the kind of woman who doesn’t break before he gets to me.This man will kill for me, die for me, and the least I can do is survive for him.For me.
It doesn’t erase the fear or the ghosts or the hurt.But it reminds me that I’mhereand that he’s right.Iambecoming.
The next day, in the basement again, the ghosts clock in like shift workers.I hear the bag thudding from upstairs and I beat him down there to see what it feels like to arrive first.I wrap my hands.My knuckles look small next to the letters on his.L I N D Y /// G I R L.I loved those slashes before I knew why he added them.Now I count them when the static starts.
“Good morning, Lindy girl,” he says behind me.“Where’s your breath?”
“In the odds,” I answer, and surprise myself by smiling.“Three.Five.Seven.”
He grins like I knifed the moon and pulled it from the sky just for him.“Good girl.”
The ghosts pretend not to jump as Cassius zip ties my wrists and lays out my choices.I pick friction cut and bicycle until smoke plumes up from plastic.The alley man watches my feet and looks impressed against his will.The kneecap ghost shows me a better angle with two fingers and a lift of his chin.I try it; it’s easier.I hate that he’s right.I love that he’s right.
A new one lingers near the weight rack.A woman in a red blazer, mascara comet-streaked and a rope-burn necklace ringing her throat.Don’t feel bad for me, she says, conversational, almost gentle.I earned it.She crooks a finger at my hands.Thumb under palm.Make the wrist smaller.You’re fighting yourself too much.
I tuck my thumb.The band bites, then gives.
She’s learning, the alley man says, almost bored, but I know it’s his version of praise.
She’ll end up like us, the grocery creep sings.
She’ll end up nothing like you, Gideon answers, tipping his brim toward Cassius this time.Not if he keeps his head.
Sometimes this scares me.Sometimes I scare myself.The part that wants a harder knot, wants to beat my last time, wants to see pride break his face.When those parts show up, the ghosts lean in.
We switch drills.Blindfolds.Gag removal.Somewhere between the second and third attempt, the woman in red shakes her head at my mouth and mimesjaw, not teeth.I angle the fabric; it slides.No, he doesn’t only kill men,she says without heat.He kills what needs killing.Her eyes cut to Cassius, then back to me.If you can’t stomach this, run.Or—she holds the bobby pin on the mat hostage with her heel—learn faster.
By the end of the first week in January, the numbers on his notepad are inked odd: 3:11.2:49.1:59.I like beating myself.I like the way he looks at me when I do, the waygood girllives in my bones hours after.
At night he smears arnica over the cord-burns and liquid silk on the parts that will hate me in the morning.He braids my hair loose so it won’t pull, tucks a heat pack across my shoulders, an ice sleeve over my wrist, pulls me into his chest and reads Monte Cristo until my breath evens.Sometimes the ghosts gather in the doorway and listen like it’s a bedtime story.
“I will always come for you, Lindy girl,” he tells me, forehead to forehead, voice low and fierce.“No matter who takes you.No matter what they do.”
I believe him.And also—I believe me.
The next morning, before he asks, “Again?”I beat him to it, already reaching for the rope.The ghosts take their places.The bag thuds.My breath counts odd.My hands don’t shake.
Watch me, I think, and aim it at all of them—dead and living both.
Watch me become.
Victoria is halfway through her salad when she sets her fork down and leans across the tiny patio table like she’s about to spill classified intel.
“So,” she says, lowering her voice, “what do you think happened to Wyatt?”
My stomach clenches, but I sip my iced tea like nothing’s wrong.“I have no idea.”
“He disappeared.Poof.Gone.”She waggles her fingers dramatically.“No text.No call.Didn’t even show up for the meeting with the author that’s starting their tour next week.There’s a theory he ran.Like,ranran.Maybe something shady came out about him.”
I force a small, curious-sounding hum, like this is just office gossip and not a ghost breathing at the edge of my vision.“That’s wild.”But he is.The alley man from the first night slides into the reflective glass behind Victoria’s shoulder, one clouded eye and that curious tilt of his head.The woman in the red blazer leans against the lamppost, rope-burn necklace pale today.Gideon touches his brim.The air shifts the way it does when a memory decides to sit down at your table.Too bad these are Cassius’ memories and not my own.
