Closes it.
Tries again.
"Are ya... is this goin' somewhere specific, or?—?"
"I'm saying I can't do Position Tertia tonight," I blurt out. "I can't do any more Positions. I can't do the altar, or the prayers, or the beautiful ritualized worship-sex you've got planned, because my entire nervous system is still keyed—pun intended—to a completely different operating system and I need to gohome."
The word cracks on the way out.
Home.
To a dungeon.
To a man who punishes me.
To rules I keep breaking, and notebooks full of my failures, and a throne where I kneel between his legs while he ignores me.
That's home now.
And I can see on Lorcan's face that he already knows what I'm about to say next.
"Lorcan, I—" I start, but my throat's doing that thing where it closes up when you're trying to say something important and your body's likeactually, no, we're not equipped for emotional honesty right now.
Deep breath.
Try again.
"You helped me. Like—genuinely helped me. Gave me space when I was unraveling, punishment when I needed it, aftercare that actually felt like care and not just... strategy." My hands are shaking. "Last night was incredible. You're incredible. Position Secunda is going to live rent-free in my brain forever, probably show up uninvited during every moment I'm trying to focus on literally anything else for the rest of my natural life."
Lorcan's mouth quirks slightly at that, but his eyes stay sad.
"And the thing is—" God, why is this so hard? "—you feel like a new best friend. Like someone I could actuallytalkto about books. and mythology. and whether Declan Cross is secretly a hack who just plagiarizes better, smarter books. You'regood, Lorcan. Like, genuinely good in a way that should probably disqualify you from the mob entirely."
"Em—"
"But I need the monster," I finish quietly. "I choose Giovanni. I choose the chaos and the broken tumblers and the Tasmanian Devil destroying my house. Because he doesn't make me better—he just makes memore. More broken, more honest, more whatever the fuck I actually am under all the damage. And I can't—I can't do the neat rectangles anymore. You'll live in my fantasies forever," I blurt out. "The chapel thing? The prayers? That's going in the spank bank for eternity. But?—"
Lorcan doesn't argue.
Doesn't try to convince me Giovanni's worse for me, or that I'm making a mistake, or that I should give the healthy option more time.
He just looks at me with this profound sadness that makes my chest hurt.
Then he walks over and takes both my hands in his, cradling them like something precious and breakable.
"Luv," he says, and the word sounds even more devastating in Irish. "Let's sit down for a moment."
My entire nervous system goes into Red Alert.
"Why?" The word comes out sharp, panicked. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Lorcan guides me toward the couch, still holding my hands. "A stór." We sit.
He looks at me and I see it—the exact expression burned into my memory from seven years ago when the social worker sat me down in that hospital waiting room and explained that the car accident had been instantaneous, that my parents hadn't suffered.
"No." The word comes out sharp, defensive. I start shaking my head, pulling my hands back instinctively. "No, no—Lorcan, don't?—"
Because Iknowthis look. I've lived through this look. It's the look of someone who's about to tell you that the world as you knew it ten seconds ago no longer exists. It's the look that precedes words like "I'm so sorry" and "there was nothing anyone could do" and "you need to prepare yourself."
