I don’t give them an inch. I don’t twitch. I stay steady, even as my brain is still stuck on that ridiculous image of a rabbit shoving a carrot up its own ass.I hear bitter calls.
“You are fallen!”
“Repent!”
“Come back to the Lord!”
The Children of the Cross have shown up in numbers. They’re clustered beyond the press line, signs raised high with scripture painted in violent strokes. Words like SIN and DAMNATION and REDEEM HER scream up at us from cardboard and wood. Their rhetoric cuts through the media noise with a kind of sharpened zeal that makes something dark twist in my chest.
I feel it the second Sera does.
Her fingers tighten in mine. A hitch in her step. Almost imperceptible to anyone else. Not to me.
I shift without breaking stride, angling my body slightly in front of hers, blocking what I can from her view. Shielding. Always shielding.
The SUV is waiting. Engine running. Door open. Ten steps away.
Ten steps through this quagmire of acid.
“Did you brainwash her?” someone shouts.
Yeah, bro, a good dicking does that.
I glance over, smile widening just enough to look effortless.
“People in glass houses, shouldn’t be throwing stones.”
A ripple moves through the crowd—laughter, outrage, more flashes.
That was positively biblical.
“What you are doing is a crime!” I hear a woman say.
That one earns a snort of derision from me.
Motherfucking madman stabs me in a basement and I’m the one committing crime? Yeah. Fucking right.
“If loving my wife is a crime,” I say lightly, tightening my hold on Sera’s hand as I guide her forward, “then call me guilty. Here’s an idea—go touch grass.”
More chaos. More noise.
The Children of the Cross begin shouting scripture at Sera directly. At my wife.
“Jezebel!”
“She’s been led astray!”
My smile never drops. Not once.
But inside, something violent uncoils.
Security closes rank tighter as we reach the SUV. I guide Sera in first, my hand never leaving hers. Only then do I duck in after her, pulling the door shut behind me.
The sound cuts the outside world off in one solid, definitive thud.
The shouting dulls instantly, reduced to muffled vibrations through tinted glass. Cameras flash uselessly against the windows.
I exhale slowly.
