The Tuesday after the Fourth of July, my phone rings at exactly four in the afternoon. I walk out and climb up onto the leather seats of the big, white, jacked-up truck with mud on the tires that sits in front of my house. It’s oddly comforting to find him there, behind the tinted windows of the Escalade, hidden behind his mask. Somehow, not seeing his real face makes it easier, this life we’ve carved out together.
“Did you have a good Fourth?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Did you see anyone from Willow Heights?”
I glance sideways at him. Does he think I went out and partied? That I have a boyfriend somewhere out here?
I turn to the window. “No.”
He drives the rest of the way in silence. At his place, I sit on the pale grey sectional while he makes homemade pesto pizza and salad. We each have one glass of wine. We don’t talk during dinner. After we shower separately, he comes to the bed and stands over it. I push the blanket off and start to turn over, but he stops me.
“Get on your back and spread your legs. I want to watch you while I fuck you tonight.”
I lie down and open my legs. He kneels up between them, stroking himself with one hand and touching me with the other until he’s hard and I’m wet. He pushes his cock down, positioning himself at my entrance.
“Condom,” I remind him.
“Not tonight,” he says. “I want to fuck Royal’s bitch raw tonight. When he wants you back, I want him to always know that I’ve felt your cunt with my bare cock and cum inside you.” He pushes into me, no lube, no condom.
He knows Royal.
A chill races through me.
Of course he knows Royal. He knows I was Royal’s. Who was the football player who said something on the night that never ended, the one I never think about, when they came back with the twins? Something about being all in for running a train on Royal’s plaything. It’s got to be the same guy. I think of him as my rescuer, as someone apart from that night, but he’s not. I don’t have to tell him that when they came back, they brought friends, and they took turns, and they didn’t stop until I prayed for death. And then, when that didn’t work, I gave up. I gave up everything, even the will to live.
He already knows.
“Dawson?” I ask when he’s halfway done. I no longer know if he’s familiar because we’ve been together so long, or if I knew him before.
“What?” he asks, pushing up on his hands to look down at me. His eyes are the same color blue, but one of them is blank and unseeing, like he’s blind. Around it, his skin is red inside the eyehole of his mask. I’ve wondered which of the Dolces’ friends would come looking for me in the swamp, someone with enough of a conscience to save me. None of them had scars. Dawson is blond, but he lives with his parents and sisters. This isn’t some empty place where he brings girls, or the mistress apartment where a married man comes to fuck on occasion.
It’s a home.
Home to a man with scars on his face and letters inked into his knuckles, a swan inked onto his arm, words in Latin scrolled across his skin.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I can be anyone you want me to be, baby doll,” he says, as if he read my mind.
I wish I could really remember what Dawson looked like. I never looked too closely. The Dolce boys drew all the attention. The rest of the guys are paper dolls in my head. With a mask, they could be anyone. I pull my gaze from his strange eyes, focusing on the swan tattoo on the inside of his forearm, an odd reminder of where I came from, while he glides in and out. It seems a lifetime ago that a secret society could mean something to me.
He watches my face while he cums inside me and says it’s beautiful. That used to mean something, too, but I can’t remember what.
He curls around me afterwards, holding me while we fall asleep. In the morning, while he showers off after sex, I look around like it’s the first time I’ve been here. It’s everything my old home, my old life, was not—clean, open, bright, and simple. One entire side of the loft apartment is made up of windows, not just the living room but the bedroom, too. The trim is all glass and wood and stainless steel. It’s sparsely but tastefully furnished and decorated.
I take in the white brick wall of the kitchen, the island where we eat separating it from the spacious living area with an entire wall of windows overlooking the untended field—an empty lot before a stretch of trees. There’s the standing desk where he works and a treadmill where he runs, looking out over the field. He lifts weights on a setup he has next to the treadmill. Looking around, I realize he must be rich.
I go back to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed and watch some news story without really seeing it, Jackie going on about someone overdosing on this Lady Alice drug. The Phantom comes out of the bathroom with a towel hung around his neck and one around his hips, his mask in place. I avert my eyes while he dresses.
He drops me off after breakfast and says he’ll be back Thursday. I don’t say anything, but I wish I didn’t have to leave his apartment. As I watch him drive away, my body grows heavier and heavier with dread. I stand on the sidewalk, rooted in place. Only when I hear Olive’s high voice singing out back do I move. I’m seized with a sharp certainty that I don’t want to see her or Blue. It’s so deep it’s almost physical, and I rush into the house and close the door behind me, my heart hammering.
He said he’d keep me safe. But I’m not safe here. So why did he send me home?
nine
Royal Dolce