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My stomach heaves so hard I actually have to swing my legs off the bed and put my head between my knees.

I can’t blame anything other than myself. I knew exactly what I was doing and there is no version of this where I get to look in the mirror later and pretend I didn’t.

I slept with the man who kidnapped Seraphina Santoro.

I slept with him.

On his kitchen counter.

Voluntarily. Enthusiastically.

I initiated it.

I ran my nails down his back.

I bit his lip.

I moaned in his ear.

I said his name into his shoulder.

I writhed against him.

I came. I came for the man who is holding a two-year-old hostage.

I put my hands over my face and I make an inhuman sound. My stomach is churning.

My eyes are hot and wet and no amount of trying to will the tears away will work. It’s like my body is trying to remind me that something happened.

And something did happen. Something I’m so fucking ashamed of.

I wince as I move my legs. My inner thighs are sore and there’s a dull tender ache in between my legs. My mouth still feels bruised, even though I know that’s not possible.

There’s a tingling sensation on my neck that I just know is a hickey. I am covered in the evidence of what I did, and my body is refusing to let me pretend I imagined it.

You stupid, stupid idiot, I berate myself, my hands still over my face as I fight back the tears. You pathetic, stupid woman.

A sob manages to escape me and I bite my lips so hard I’m pretty sure I taste blood.

“What is wrong with you?” I tell myself angry, saying it the same way I would say it to a patient who came in for the third time with an infected wound because she stopped taking the antibiotics her boyfriend told her she didn’t need, a true story. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Katerina?”

I don’t have an answer for that.

Eventually I make myself stand up and my legs wobble.

Bathroom. I need to go to the bathroom and rinse all this off.

Forcing my legs to move, I walk the length of the room toward the en suite and flip on the light.

When I see myself in the mirror over the sink, I actually flinch.

I…I do not look like me.

My face is pale and my hair is standing in all directions.

My lips are chapped. I gasp as I see the hickey low on my throat, close to my collarbone. “Fuck,” I mutter as I press my fingers to it without meaning to.

Immediately, a memory of Nico’s lips closing over my skin flashes in front of my eyes and I cringe, pulling my hand back like I’ve been burned.