I picture her face. Not the terror in the alley—the stillness in the laundromat. The way a strand of her hair had fallen across her cheek. The impossible delicacy of her bones. The softness of her skin.
I brace one arm on the tile. The water beats against the back of my neck as my hand moves up and down my cock, stroking almost angrily, like my body is betraying a perimeter my mind has established.
The image sharpens without my permission—her throat, pale and exposed. Her arms crossed over the duffel bag. Her large, frightened eyes.
My grip tightens. My breathing goes ragged. I think about the way her pulse kicked when I held her in my grasp, and what it would feel like to press my mouth to that pulse point—to feel her heartbeat against my chest to taste her lips. To trace the line of her throat with my tongue and feel her shiver. To hear the sound she'd make if I?—
“Ugh…fuck…” I come hard, jets of semen spurting on the tile wall. My forehead drops against the wet tile, her name bitten off behind my teeth.
I remain that way for a long time with images of her playing through my mind.
After my shower, I still can’t sleep. I should go down to the basement and do what I always do to burn off extra energy—hit the bag. Bleed off the anxiety that's been building since the laundromat, since the alley, since the moment I saw her face in grainy security footage.
Jerking off to thoughts of her in the shower was probably not a great idea. Instead of getting rid of the desire flowing through my veins, it’s now seeping into parts of me I thought were armored against these things.
I sit on the edge of my bed in the semi-darkness, wrapping my hands with tape before heading down to the basement—left, right, methodical, like a ritual.
My phone is on the nightstand. No missed calls. No messages. She has a few hours left.
I think about the laundromat again. The way she rubbed her wrist after I let go—compulsive, disbelieving, like her skin couldn't stop replaying the contact. I watched her do it.
I glance at the phone again.
If she doesn't call, I'll have to make a different kind of decision. The kind I've made a hundred times. This time it will feel different.
Finally, my phone lights up on the nightstand.
Her number. The number of a phone I gave to a girl I should have killed.
The screen glows in the dark room. It rings once. Twice. My hand doesn't move toward it—not due to hesitation, but something has my muscles seizing so completely I'm not sure my body is taking orders anymore.
It rings a third time before I pick up.
Chapter 5
Saoirse
The clerk at City Hall has a coffee stain on his tie and the enthusiasm of a man counting minutes until his lunch break.
“Do you, Saoirse—” He squints at the form. “Saoirse Keane, take Declan Michael O’Rourke to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.”
My voice comes out thin and flat. The blouse I’m wearing—thrift store, three dollars, the cleanest thing I own—is buttoned wrong. I noticed in the bathroom mirror twenty minutes ago and couldn’t make my fingers cooperate to fix it. They’re still shaking. They’ve been shaking since I walked through the front doors and saw Declan standing at the end of the hallway in a dark suit that fits him the way dark suits fit men who own the world, his hands loose at his sides, his face giving me nothing.
He says “I do” the way he’d confirm the time or the day’s weather. Flat. Factual. Then it’s done.
Finn—the only witness, a broad, red-haired man with a neck thicker than my thigh who nodded at me once and hasn’t spoken since—signs where indicated. I sign where indicated.My handwriting looks as though it belongs to someone having a seizure.
Declan doesn’t touch me during the ceremony. Not my hand, not my arm, not even a guiding palm on my back. He signs his name, pockets the pen, and that’s it. No kiss.
I’m grateful. But something underneath the gratitude registers the absence of contact the way you’d register a phantom limb. My body had braced for his hands. It was prepared for the weight of his palm, the heat I remember from the laundromat. The preparation happened below conscious thought, and the fact that I was ready for his touch without deciding to be ready is kind of strange.
We walk out into a gray afternoon. He holds the door but doesn’t guide me through it. The gap between his body and the doorframe is wide enough for me to pass without brushing against him, and I understand he did that on purpose. He is managing his own body around mine with a deliberateness that communicates safety and care.
His car is black, expensive, and silent. He drives west without announcing the destination. I watch the city scroll past and note landmarks out of habit—the intersection at Ashland, the left on Division, the blocks narrowing into residential streets. Working-class brick and iron and corner bodegas with faded awnings.
This is O’Rourke territory. I know it the way feral animals know boundary lines—not from signs but from the quality of attention on the street. People clock the car. A man on a stoop straightens. A woman sweeping her front steps watches us pass with the careful neutrality of someone who knows whose neighborhood she lives in.
