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  “No, but when we first met, he said that that’s where they went before their last fight. I didn’t think anything of it, but… but…” Her teeth chattered, and her whole body shivered again. She couldn’t stop staring down at the dead body.

  “It’s okay,” I said, pulling her close to me. “It’s okay. It’s all over now.” I looked up at Vale. “Right?”

  Vale licked his lip, staring first at the body, then up at me. “Sure. Yeah. Right.”

  I turned Sara away from the operating room table. I led her into the waiting room, out of sight of Mr. Steadhill. She sank wordlessly into a chair.

  “Stay here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Her pale face stared up at me. All of her strength seemed to have left her. Her arms hung loosely at her side.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  I left her sitting there and went back to the operating room. Vale had taken a pair of pliers and was yanking a molar from the mouth of Mr. Steadhill. He put the bloody tooth in a ziploc and tucked it away in his back pocket.

  “Thanks for the proof,” he said. “Next time make it a little cleaner, okay?”

  “Yeah. Are we done here?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. I walked him out of the operating room and to the door.

  “I can’t believe she killed him,” Vale said. He shivered. “Just a swipe of the blade, and—”

  “I can believe it,” I said. “You goaded her. A civvy. She thought she was going to die.”

  “Yeah, well, like you said, it’s all over now.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” I said. “Would you really have killed her, though?”

  “An innocent girl? You know me, Rien. I’m a sucker for pretty faces.”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t know if I believed him. Good as I was at telling faces, Vale was a pro at concealing his thoughts.

  “I would have killed you for sure, though,” he said. “Don’t lie to me again.”

  “Don’t send me the wrong person and I won’t lie to you.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I’ll let you know once we have the other body,” Vale said.

  “I don’t care. Just let me know once you have another client for me. If we’re still working together.”

  “We’re still working together. Rien?”

  “Yes?”

  Vale shook his head, putting his gun away in his jacket.

  “You have fucked up taste in women.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

  Sara

  I sat in shock in the waiting room. There was a body in the room next door. I’d killed him. I’d killed Mr. Steadhill. Bile rose in my throat and I turned my face away from the door.

  “Sara?”

  I jumped in fright, but it was only Rien at the doorway.

  “Will you give me a second?” he asked. “I’m going to clean up, okay?”

  I nodded mutely. He closed the door. I could hear him moving things around. Was that the sound of him wheeling the body somewhere? I wondered how he would get rid of it.

  All of my system was in shock. I couldn’t feel anything. There was a buzzing in my ears. I stared at my feet. The broken shards from the glass globe were swept up in a neat pile in the middle of the floor along with the little plastic pieces. He hadn’t thrown any of it away yet.

  Minutes passed. Then the door opened again. Rien’s hands were clean but there was blood on his shirt, a dark stain near his heart.

  “It’s okay now,” he said.

  “There’s blood on your shirt.” I pointed to his chest.

  He immediately unbuttoned his shirt and turned to go back into the other room. I heard the sink running. When he came back, he was wearing a new shirt, crisp and clean.

  “Better?” he asked.

  I nodded. He walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulders as though I was a fragile piece of glass. Despite myself, I leaned into his embrace.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  I opened my mouth, but no answer came out.

  “You don’t have to leave, Sara,” Rien said.

  “It’s just… there’s nobody I can talk to about this,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. My skin burned. I had nobody to talk to outside of here. My mother didn’t know anything about me. Neither did my sister. I’d kept my life a secret from them. I’d kept my true self hidden away for so long that there was nobody left to share it with.

  “You can stay for as long as you want.”

  Stay? Stay? What was I thinking? But every part of my being longed to stay here, with him. In this moment, he was a comfort. A known danger. And, heaven forgive me, he looked at me like he wanted me to stay.

  “I feel like I’m going insane,” I said. “Am I going insane?”

  “No, you’re not. The first time… it’s hard.”

  I began to cry, hiccuping back my sobs. Rien held out a handkerchief and kept his arm tight around me as I sobbed into the white cotton square.

  “It’s alright,” he said. His hand rubbed my back, and oh! I wanted to melt into his warm strong palm. I wanted to melt away completely. The image of blood filled my mind and I struggled to fight it. There was so much blood. I clutched the handkerchief to my face as I cried and cried and leaned into him.

  “I did it,” I moaned.

  “It’s alright.”

  “I did it. I killed him.”

  “He had to die. One way or another, he would have died.”

  “But…”

  “I’m not going to tell you not to feel bad about it. You’ll feel however you want to. You’re the one who killed him.”

  Killed him. Killed him. Killed him.

  “Sara, listen to me.”

  I snapped back to attention. Rien’s eyes settled on mine, searching.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m a murderer now. Do I look different?”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “You did what you had to do, Sara.”

  “I couldn’t— I couldn’t—” I choked on my sobs. My body collapsed against his and he held me so tightly that it didn’t matter that I was falling.

  “What is it?” he whispered. His arms felt warm around my shoulders, his chest broad and sturdy. I leaned against him and let my tears fall. My fingers twined blindly around his, and he kissed the tops of my knuckles. My cheeks were hot and wet and I could barely get the words out.

  “I couldn’t… watch you die.”

  Rien

  She stayed to talk. I put another log on the fire, and we sat on the rug together in front of the flames. She cried. I held her. As the flames burned down, her eyelids fluttered, drooping.

  “I can’t fall asleep,” she said.

  “Is it because you’re not in bed? ”

  “No. I feel like if I fall asleep, something terrible is going to happen. I’ll wake up and everything will start all over again from the beginning.” She looked down at her right hand, the one she’d killed Mr. Steadhill with. Her fingers flexed.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I know,” she said. “I still worry. Would you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you inject me with a sleeping sedative?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I thought you were afraid of needles.”

  “I was. I’m not anymore.”

  “No?”

  “Maybe I am, but sometimes you have to do what has to be done.”

  “Is that right?” I asked, squeezing her on the arm.

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s right. I just want it to go away, Rien. Just for a while.”

  “Then let me carry you to bed, and I’ll inject you with whatever horse tranquilizer it takes to chase the bad dreams away.”

 
“Alright,” she said. She yawned when I picked her up, her eyelids drooping shut. Her head knocked against my chest as I walked, her hand clutching my bicep. And by the time I rested her head against the pillow, she was already sound asleep.

  Sara

  The next day, I woke up in an empty bed. Rien was gone. I wandered around the house, but he wasn’t anywhere. I went to the front door and tried the knob.

  Unlocked.

  The door swung open, and I squinted into the brightness of the Los Angeles sunshine. I could hear the roar of the freeway in the distance.

  I closed the door.

  Rien found me sitting in the waiting room, putting his sculpture back together. I’d gotten rid of the glass shards, and I was trying to rebuild the artwork piece by piece. Without the globe to hold it together, it was hard to figure out how it could work.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a tube of superglue. “Let me help.”

  We worked side by side in silence. The little pieces built up one by one, and with the glue we were able to remake the globe without the glass around it. Rien put the last piece on top, holding it until the glue dried.

  “It’s not quite perfect,” I said, rocking back on my heels to look at the sculpture. The broken pieces made it look like the top of the artwork was flying off in all different directions.

  “No?”

  “It doesn’t look trapped anymore.”

  “That’s fine,” Rien said, squeezing my hand. “That’s better than perfect, my love.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “My love? What else should I call you?”

  I shook my head wordlessly.

  “What else but my love, my dearest, my beautiful?”

  Tears welled in my eyes. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t.

  “Rien, don’t—”

  “You are my everything. My indescribable pain and my everlasting pleasure. My passion and my fear. My angel. My joy. My little psycho.”

  “Rien…”

  “You are mine, all mine, every last bit of you, no matter when you decide to leave.”

  I turned to him, tears welling in my eyes. He bent and kissed me, his lips asking softly for permission.

  “My love,” Rien said. “Do you want to leave?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “Then stay,” he said, and kissed me again.

  EPILOGUE

  Sara

  It’s been three weeks, and I haven’t gone home. I still have dreams at night, bad ones. When I kick and scream, Rien puts his arms around me until they stop. Sometimes he cries out in his sleep, and I’m the one who comforts him.

  He asked me if I wanted to leave the day after I killed Gary Steadhill. He’s asked me every morning since then. And every morning I say no.

  Why?

  Out there, out in Hollywood, I was a fake person. I had fake friends and fake ambitions. Here, though, all of that drops away. I’m only real when I’m with him.

  His lips draw real pleasure from my body. His fingers caress my curves and I know without a doubt that he wants me and that I want him. His mouth makes mine scream.

  He holds me down, his hand on my throat. He ties me up whenever he wants to, and teases me until I beg him to take me. He makes me scream until my throat is hoarse and my body aching for release, and then he throws me off the edge of the abyss and comes along with me.

  If I ever want to leave, I know that he will let me. But right now, I’m still deciding what I want. Really, truly want. And it might be that what I want isn’t a Hollywood ending. It’s not perfection, because nothing perfect is real, and I can’t be fake anymore.

  It’s not a prince and his princess, and it’s not a happy ever after. It’s two people with nothing to lose and everything to gain, holding onto each other for dear life, their bodies trembling together in the darkness.

  And maybe that’s all I ever wanted.

  The End

  Thank you for reading MINE

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  LICENSE NOTES

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the seller website and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  MATURE CONTENT

  This story contains sexually explicit material, and is intended only for persons over the age of 18. By downloading and opening this document, you are stating that you are of legal age to access and view this work of fiction. All of the characters involved in the sexual situations in this story are intended to be 18 years of age or older, whether they are explicitly described as such or not.

  Table of Contents

  Rien

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE