Chapter 31: Wall-Banging Therapy
The silence after Mateo’s exit was profound, a vacuum filled only by the hum of the old refrigerator downstairs and the ragged symphony of their own breathing. Sera’s hand still lay over Dom’s on her shoulder. His skin was fever-warm.
She felt the change in him before she saw it. The penitent stillness shattered, replaced by a coiled, kinetic energy that radiated from his core. The vulnerability in his eyes hardened into something darker, more desperate. He was looking at her, but he was seeing the ghost. Seeing Letty on the balcony. Seeing the wreckage of the past week. Seeing his own failure.
“Sera,” he growled, her name a raw sound ripped from his throat.
It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration of war—on the pain, on the history, on the space between them.
His hand flipped under hers, his fingers lacing through hers with a crushing grip. In one fluid, violent motion, he stood, yanking her to her feet. The world tilted. Her hip jarred against the bedside table, a lamp wobbling. He didn’t notice. He backed her across the room, his steps predatory, until her shoulder blades hit the cool, unadorned wall beside the faded racing poster. The impact knocked a soft gasp from her lungs.
He crowded into her, his big body pinning her, his forearms caging her head. The scent of him—outdoor air, old leather, a faint trace of gasoline—was overwhelming. His eyes were black pits of need.
“That fuckin’ ghost,” he breathed, his voice low and ragged. “It’s in this room. I can taste it.”
Before she could speak, before she could even process his words, his mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim. A punishment. A desperate erasure. His tongue forced its way past her lips, hot and demanding. She tasted coffee and a bitter edge of anguish. She whimpered, a sound lost in the brutal consumption of his kiss. Her hands came up, not to push him away, but to claw at the back of his shirt, anchoring herself in the storm.
He tore his mouth from hers, his breathing harsh. “Gonna fuck this pain out of you,” he snarled, the words hot against her cheek. “Out of me. Gonna fuck until there’s no room for anything else.”
His hands dropped to her waist, bunching the soft fabric of her robe. He didn’t untie it. He pulled, and the belt gave way with a whisper. The robe fell open. Beneath, she wore only a simple cotton sleep shirt. He gripped the hem and yanked it up over her head in one fierce motion, leaving her bare from the waist up. The air, cooler than his skin, pebbled her nipples.
He didn’t admire her. He devoured her with his eyes, a hungry, possessive sweep. Then his mouth was on her neck, sucking a mark into the tender skin just above her collarbone. His teeth scraped. His hand came up, his rough palm abrading her nipple, pinching the hardened peak until she cried out, a sharp mix of pain and electric pleasure.
“You’re mine,” he grunted into her skin, his other hand fumbling with the button of his jeans. “That shit that happened… it’s dead. You hear me? It’s fucking dead.”
She believed him. Not because of his words, but because of the violent, absolute conviction in his touch. This was his liturgy, his form of absolution. A physical purge.
He got his jeans open, the denim scraping down his thighs. His cock sprung free, already fully hard, a thick, veined length that slapped against his stomach. He was flushed and leaking at the tip. He didn’t give her time to look, to think. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties—plain, cotton—and ripped. The sound of tearing fabric was obscenely loud in the quiet room. A cold thrill shot through her belly.
He shoved the remnants aside. His hand dove between her legs, his fingers sliding through her wetness with a crude, efficient stroke. She was already dripping, her body betraying her mind, responding to his aggression with a hot, shameful flood of arousal.
“Fuck,” he hissed, feeling how ready she was. “Yeah. That’s it. Give it to me.”
He grabbed the back of her thigh, hiking her leg up around his hip. The position arched her back against the wall. He didn’t guide himself in. He didn’t ask. He just positioned the blunt, wide head of his cock at her entrance and pushed.
The invasion was sudden, brutal, breathtaking. He filled her in one deep, claiming thrust, burying himself to the hilt. A shocked, guttural cry tore from her throat. It was too much, too fast. The stretch was intense, almost painful. Her nails dug into the hard muscle of his shoulders.
“Dom—” she gasped.
“Shut up,” he breathed, his forehead dropping against the wall beside her head. His whole body was trembling with the effort of holding still for that first searing second. “Just feel it.”
He pulled back, almost all the way out, the friction dragging a ragged moan from her lips. Then he drove back in, harder, deeper. He set a punishing rhythm, each thrust a piston-driven assault aimed at the core of her, at the memory of his hands on another woman, at her own tears on the sheets. The wall rattled behind her with every slam of his hips.
“This is us,” he grunted, his breath hot in her ear. “This is what’s real. This tight, wet fucking cunt. My cock in it. You taking all of me.” His language was filthy, degrading, and it electrified her. It stripped away everything else, reducing them to primal, warring entities. “You think about her? You think about anything right now?”
“No,” she sobbed, the truth of it blinding. There was no room for thought. There was only the slam of his body into hers, the slick, wet sound of their joining, the burn in her muscles, the mounting coil of pressure deep in her belly.
“That’s right,” he panted, his pace becoming frantic, losing its measured brutality in sheer, desperate need. “Only this. Only me. Come on my cock, Sera. Do it. Fucking come with me.”
His hand slid between their sweat-slicked bodies, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing rough, tight circles. It was the final catalyst. The world narrowed to that point of contact, to the relentless, deep grind of him inside her. The coil snapped.
Her orgasm ripped through her, violent and convulsing. She screamed, a raw, unfettered sound she muffled by biting into his shoulder, tasting salt and denim. Her inner muscles clamped around him in rhythmic, desperate pulses, milking his length.
Feeling her convulse around him tipped him over the edge. With a roar that was more anguish than triumph, he buried himself as deep as possible and let go. His hips stuttered, then drove in one final, seismic thrust as he emptied into her in hot, rushing jets. His big body shuddered, every muscle locking, then going slack as he collapsed against her, pinning her to the wall.
They climaxed together, fused by sweat and come and a pain so deep it had become indistinguishable from pleasure.
He stayed inside her, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor. His face was buried in the hollow where her neck met her shoulder, his breaths deep and shuddering against her damp skin. The frantic heat of him was everywhere—pressed against her belly, slick between her thighs. She could feel his heartbeat, a wild percussion slowing into a heavy, exhausted rhythm against her own chest.
Her body sang a confused hymn of overstimulation. The violent, clenching waves of her climax slowly receded, leaving behind a deep, muscular tremble and a raw, open feeling. Her inner walls, still fluttering weakly, cradled the thick, softening length of him.
She felt the warm, wet proof of his release begin to seep out of her. A slow trickle traced a path down the inside of her thigh, a visceral signature. Cum fills her. The phrase echoed in her head, crude and absolute. It wasn't just biology. It felt like a furious, desperate brand. A claim staked in the only territory he felt was unquestionably his.
“Jesus,” he finally mumbled, the word muffled against her skin. His voice was shot, stripped bare.
He shifted, his softening cock slipping from her with a wet, intimate sound that made her flinch. He didn’t move far. He kept her pinned against the wall with his hips, his hands coming up to frame her face. His thumbs, rough and calloused, swept under her eyes, wiping away the remnants of tears and sweat.
“Look at me,” he said, his tone quieter now, but no less intense.
She opened her eyes. His were dark, endless pools of remorse and a possessive fire that hadn’t yet banked.
“I’m here,” he said, each word a deliberate hammer-strike. “Right here. Nothing else gets in this room.” He searched her face. “You believe me?”
The ghost was gone. Exorcised, or simply smothered under the physical weight of what they’d just done. She didn’t have an answer, not a clean one. Her body believed him. Her heart was a bruised, uncertain thing.
Before she could form a word, a high, delighted shriek echoed up the stairs, followed by the clatter of a bowl. Letty’s voice, surprisingly light, carried up. “Okay, chef! A little less flour, more mix!”
Reality, mundane and relentless, poured back in. They were naked, marked, standing in a pool of their discarded clothes with their children just a floor below. Sera closed her eyes, a different kind of exhaustion seeping into her bones.
“We have to get down there,” she whispered.
He nodded, the practical Dom reasserting himself. He bent, picking up her torn panties and wadded robe. He handed them to her without a word, his eyes avoiding the ruined cotton. He pulled up his jeans, buttoning them over his spent flesh, his movements efficient.
Sera dressed mechanically. The robe provided cover, but the sticky evidence on her inner thigh remained. She needed the bathroom. She needed to wash him off. The thought felt like a new betrayal.
She took a step toward the door.
His hand shot out, wrapping around her wrist. It wasn’t restraining. It was grounding. “Sera.” He waited until she looked back at him. “It’s you. It’s always been you.”
It was the simplest truth he had, the only one left that wasn’t fractured. She gave a slight nod, pulling her wrist free. The tenderness hurt almost as much as the violence had.
Downstairs, the kitchen was a whirlwind of controlled chaos. Flour dusted the table like first snow. Letty stood behind Mateo, her hands guiding his small ones on a mixing bowl. Her posture was stiff, her eyes averted from the staircase.
The air was thick with the smell of vanilla and the unspoken. Letty’s gaze flicked to Sera, then away, taking in her disheveled hair, the fresh love bite purpling on her collarbone. A muscle in Letty’s jaw tightened. She’d heard them. She knew.
“We’re making smiley faces!” Mateo announced, oblivious, his face beaming. He held up a spoon dripping with batter. “Aunt Letty says mine is happy.”
“It’s perfect, mijo,” Letty said, her voice tight. She ruffled his hair, but her eyes were on Dom, who now stood at the foot of the stairs like a sentinel. A silent communication passed between the two old friends—sharp, sorrowful, and final.
It was an ending. Sera saw it. A door closing in Letty’s eyes, a resignation that was worse than anger.
“Smells good,” Dom said, his voice gravelly. He walked to the coffee pot, his back to the room, presenting a wall of casual indifference that was paper-thin.
Sera moved past the table toward the hallway bathroom. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Inside, she locked the door and leaned against it. She turned on the faucet, the sound masking the sudden hitch in her breath. She wet a washcloth with cold water. Looking in the mirror, she saw a stranger—flushed skin, swollen lips, a bruise already blooming. She looked thoroughly, carnally fucked.
She pressed the cool cloth between her legs. She wiped away the sticky residue of him, her motions clinical. The water in the basin turned milky. Proof, swirling down the drain.
A faint tremor started in her hands. Not from the sex. From the aftershock. She had used her body as a weapon against his history. He had used his as a battering ram against her grief. In the quiet of the bathroom, the raw act felt less like a cleansing and more like a mutually assured destruction.
A soft knock on the door made her jump.
“Mommy?” It was Mateo. “Daddy says the first pancake is ready. It’s a happy one.”
She closed her eyes, gathering the pieces of herself. “Okay, baby. I’m coming.”
She dropped the washcloth in the sink. The ghost was gone from the bedroom. Now she carried its echo, and the wet, stubborn feeling of his claim, inside her.
The happy pancake, a lopsided circle with berry eyes, sat congealing on her plate. Sera moved syrup around with her fork. The kitchen chatter—Mateo’s exuberant narration, Letty’s monosyllabic replies, Dom’s low interjections—washed over her like radio static from another room. Her body hummed with a deep, spent ache. Between her thighs, the ghost of his thrusts echoed. The sticky claim had been washed away, but the sensation lingered, a phantom possession.
She watched Dom lean against the counter, coffee mug dwarfed in his hand. He was watching Letty show Mateo how to flip a pancake without splatter. His gaze was analytical, distant. Assessing a threat that had already been neutralized. Letty felt the weight of his stare. Her shoulders, usually so defiantly set, were rounded. She looked small. Defeated in a way a street fight could never accomplish.
“Gotta piss,” Dom said abruptly, pushing off the counter. The casual vulgarity was for Letty’s benefit, a reminder of the new, brutal intimacy he’d just forged upstairs. He brushed past Sera’s chair. His hand, rough and warm, grazed the back of her neck for a second. A brand of a different kind.
The hallway bathroom door clicked shut behind him. The lock didn’t engage. He stood for a moment in the quiet, the cheerful noise from the kitchen muffled. His own reflection in the mirror looked back, a man hollowed out and stuffed back with raw nerve endings. He saw the faint red scratches Sera’s nails had left on his neck. He turned on the cold tap, splashed water on his face.
Then he saw it.
In the white porcelain sink, a dark blue washcloth lay in a sodden heap. It was the one he’d used yesterday. It was wadded, damp. And across its center, a stark, spreading watermark, pale and milky against the blue.
He froze, water dripping from his chin.
It wasn’t just water. The consistency was wrong. It had a clouded, viscous quality. He knew that substance. He’d just pumped gallons of it into his wife minutes ago. He’d felt it spill out of her when he withdrew. His mind processed the scene with brutal, lightning clarity. Sera coming in here. Locking the door. The sink running. Her taking this cloth, pressing it between her legs, wiping him out of her.
Cleaning away his claim.
The image detonated behind his eyes: her face, determined and devastated, scrubbing at her skin as if his come were a contaminant. A stain. Like the stain of his infidelity. He’d fucked her against the wall with the fury of a man trying to rewrite history, and her first act after was to erase the physical proof. His proof.
A cold, sick understanding flooded him, colder than the tap water. This wasn’t about hygiene. This was an excision. She wasn’t just washing; she was trying to scour the memory of Letty’s body from his, from theirs. Every thrust upstairs, every filthy word he’d growled, had been screaming I choose you, I choose you. And her silent response, left here in the sink, screamed back I know what you chose before.
His stomach turned. He braced his hands on the edge of the sink, head hanging. The wet, crumpled cloth was a confession more articulate than any sob. It spoke of a hurt so profound it had become a physical ritual. She had to remove him. She had to try. The violence of their coupling hadn’t reconciled a thing. It had just given her a new, more immediate mess to clean up.
He stared at the evidence of her pain, left carelessly behind because in her distress she hadn’t thought to hide it. Or maybe she had. Maybe she wanted him to see it. A blunt, silent accusation he couldn’t argue with.
From the kitchen, Mateo laughed, a pure, bright sound. The dissonance was physical, a nail gun to the temple. Dom’s breath came short. He reached out, hesitated, then picked up the cold, damp cloth. It was heavy with water and what he’d put inside her. He could smell her on it, a faint trace of her soap and something deeper, muskier, mixed with the scent of his own spend.
“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room. The word was a hollow shell.
He dropped the cloth back into the basin as if it were burning. He couldn’t leave it there. He couldn’t walk out and pretend he hadn’t seen it. He ran the hot water, hard, and watched as it swirled the proof down the drain. He was destroying the evidence of her attempt to destroy his evidence. The circularity of it made his head pound.
When he finally emerged, the hallway seemed longer. The kitchen light was too bright. Sera was clearing plates, her movements economical. She glanced at him as he re-entered, a flicker of her eyes. She saw something in his face, a shift in the bedrock. His aggression from upstairs was gone, incinerated by a cold, ash-like guilt.
He walked to her, took the plate from her hands, and set it back on the table with a soft click. His touch was different. Not claiming. Pleading.
“I saw the cloth,” he said, his voice low, for her alone.
Her spine straightened. She didn’t deny it. She just looked at him, her eyes a well of that quiet, cleaning hurt.
“Sera—” he started, but had no language for this. I’m sorry was a pebble against a mountain. I love you felt like a lie she’d wipe away too.
Letty watched them from the sink, her hands still in soapy water. She saw the communication pass, the new wound laid bare. She dried her hands on a towel, the gesture final.
“I’m gonna take Mateo to the park,” Letty announced, her voice stripped of all texture. “Give you two some air.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an exit. A permanent one. Dom opened his mouth to object, to say something to her, the woman who was his other ghost. But no sound came. He just gave a single, grim nod.
As Letty helped Mateo into his jacket, chattering about swings, Dom stood rooted, his eyes locked with Sera’s over the wreckage of breakfast. The gunshot roar of his engine, the screaming pitch of a chase—he knew how to navigate those. This silence, heavy with the image of that sodden blue cloth, was a terrain where he was utterly, dangerously lost.
This silence, heavy with the image of that sodden blue cloth, was a terrain where he was utterly, dangerously lost.
The front door clicked shut behind Letty and Mateo, severing the last tether to normalcy. The house seemed to swallow its own quiet. Sera turned from him, picking up the syrup bottle with a hand that trembled slightly. She wiped the lip with a methodical precision that felt like an indictment.
He crossed the room in three long strides. His hand closed over hers on the bottle, stilling it. “Don’t,” he said, the word rough.
She didn’t pull away. She just went very still, like prey sensing a shift in the air. “Don’t what?”
“That.” He took the bottle, set it down. “That… cleaning. I saw it. In the sink.”
Her eyes flicked to his, a flash of defiance drowned in a deeper shame. She said nothing. Her silence was a wall.
He couldn’t breathe against it. He needed to break it. He took her by the shoulders, his grip firm but not violent, and turned her fully to face him. “Tell me what to do. Just tell me.”
“What is there to do, Dom?” Her voice was flat, lifeless. “You fucked me against a wall. I washed you off. That’s the transaction.”
“It wasn’t a transaction.” He gave her a slight shake, desperate to rouse the fire he’d felt under his hands minutes before. “That was me. All of me. Trying to get back to you.”
“Through me,” she corrected, and the words were a scalpel. “Using my body like a battering ram. Like I was just… terrain. Something to conquer so you could feel clean.”
He released her as if burned. He paced to the window, staring out at the empty street. His reflection was a ghost in the glass. He braced his hands on the sill, the wood biting into his palms. The self-loathing was a live wire in his gut.
“You think I don’t know what I did?” he said to the glass. “You think I don’t see her face every time I close my eyes? Not from then. From today. From your face when you heard.” He turned back, his chest heaving. “But I look at you, and I see the hospital. I see you broken on that bed, holding our son, both of you so small. And I promised myself… I promised you…”
He stopped, the memory a physical clamp on his throat. He walked back to her, the distance feeling like a mile. He cupped her face, forcing her to hold his gaze. Her skin was cool under his fingertips.
“Remember what I promised you at the hospital, Sera?” His voice dropped, scraping bottom. “I promised you I would marry you the minute you and Leo were out of that place. On the spot. Anywhere. I promised you I would spend every second of the rest of my life making sure you knew you were mine. That you were safe.”
A single tear broke free, tracing the path his thumb had wiped earlier. “I don’t feel safe,” she whispered. The confession was barely audible. “I feel like a battlefield.”
The wound in his chest tore wide open. He pulled her to him, crushing her against his body, burying his face in her hair. He didn’t kiss her. He just held her, as if his arms alone could rebuild the ruined fortifications around her heart. “I know,” he murmured into the crown of her head. “Christ, I know. And I did that. I turned your home into a warzone.”
She stood rigid within his embrace for a long moment. Then, a shudder went through her, and her hands came up, fisting in the fabric of his shirt at his back. Not pushing, not pulling. Just holding on.
He walked her backwards, not toward the bedroom with its violent memories, but to the living room couch. He sat, pulling her down onto his lap. She curled into him, her face against his neck, her legs tucked beside him. He wrapped his arms around her, rocking them gently.
The anger was gone. The desperate, clawing lust had burned itself out against the wall. What remained was a vast, aching emptiness and the fragile, breathing truth of her in his arms.
His hand stroked down her spine, over the thin robe. He felt the knobs of her vertebrae, the tension in her muscles. His other hand came up to cradle the back of her head. His lips brushed her temple.
“I am so fucking sorry,” he breathed, the words soaked in a humility that cost him everything. “For all of it. For her. For using you like that upstairs. For making you feel like you needed to scrub me away.”
She shifted, just enough to look at his face. Her eyes searched his, looking for the ghost. She must have seen only him, raw and ruined, because her own expression softened into a desolate kind of pity.
“It felt like the only way to touch you,” he admitted, the truth ugly and bare. “To get past all the shit in my head. It was wrong. I was wrong.”
Her fingers loosened their grip on his shirt. They crept up to trace the line of his jaw, rough with stubble. It was the first tender touch she’d offered since before the balcony. It wrecked him.
“I didn’t want to wash you away,” she said, her voice thick. “I wanted to wash the place away. The feeling of being… second. Of being the consolation.”
“You were never that.” He captured her hand, pressing her palm hard against his lips. “You are the goddamn prize. The only one I ever wanted to win.”
He kissed her then, but it was nothing like before. It was slow. An exploration. A plea. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, and she opened for him with a soft sigh that was half-surrender, half-sorrow. The taste of her was familiar, a homecoming laced with salt.
The kiss deepened, not with hunger, but with a profound, weary need. His hands moved over her back, her shoulders, relearning her contours without violence. He found the tie of her robe and pulled it loose. The fabric fell open.
He broke the kiss, looking down at her body in the diffuse living room light. Not with ownership, but with reverence. He ran the back of his knuckles over the curve of her breast, feeling her nipple pebble under his touch. “So beautiful,” he murmured, almost to himself. “How did I ever…”
He lowered his mouth to her breast, taking the peak inside with a gentleness that made her gasp. He suckled softly, his tongue circling, his hand cupping the weight of her. This was different. This was worship.
She arched into his mouth, a low moan escaping her. Her hands tangled in his hair, not to guide, but to hold him there. The sharp, purely physical need began to coil again, but it was twined now with something else—forgiveness, perhaps, or just a shared, exhausted wanting.
He laid her back on the couch cushions, his body following hers. He shrugged out of his shirt, the fabric catching on his arms before he tossed it to the floor. The bare skin of his chest met hers, a shock of heat and contact. He settled between her thighs, which parted for him willingly.
He didn’t rip anything. He didn’t slam into her. He propped himself on his elbows, looking down into her face. His hard length pressed against her belly, a blunt, hot demand.
“I need you,” he said, his voice ragged. “Not to prove a point. Just… I need to be inside you. To feel you around me. Please.”
She reached between them, her small hand wrapping around his cock. He hissed, his hips jerking involuntarily. She guided him to her entrance, already slick for him. She was so wet, her readiness a revelation after the earlier brutality.
He pushed in, an inch, then two, with excruciating slowness. He watched her face, every flicker of sensation. Her eyes fluttered shut, her mouth falling open on a sharp intake of breath. He filled her gradually, a slow, deep claiming that felt more intimate than any frantic coupling. There was no violence here, only a desperate, merging closeness.
When he was fully sheathed, he stopped, buried to the hilt. He dropped his forehead against hers, both of them panting. “Sera,” he whispered, her name a prayer.
Then he began to move. A slow, rolling grind of his hips. A deep, circling penetration that sought not to dominate, but to connect. Each thrust was a promise, each withdrawal a confession. His pace built gradually, a tide rising, not a storm crashing.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels locking at the small of his back. She met his rhythm, her own hips rising to meet his slow, deep drives. The sound was different now—a wet, sensual slide, the soft creak of the couch, their mingled, ragged breathing.
“Look at me,” he panted.
She opened her eyes. Their gazes locked. In that moment, there was no past, no Letty, no ghost. There was only the present friction, the building pressure, the sight of his own desperate love mirrored in her wet, dark eyes.
“This is yours,” he grunted, punctuating each word with a deep thrust. “This cock. This heart. This fucked-up, broken life. All yours. You feel it?”
“Yes,” she cried out, her head tipping back into the cushion. The coil was tightening, deep and low. This wasn’t the sharp, frantic peak from before. This was a slow, rising wave, pulling her under.
“Come for me,” he urged, his voice dropping to a guttural rasp. “Let me feel you come on me. Let me feel you take it all back.”
His thumb found her clit, applying a perfect, insistent pressure. It was the key. Her body seized, convulsing around him in a series of long, deep pulses that seemed to pull the orgasm from her very core. She cried out, a sound of pure, unadulterated release, her inner walls clutching at him rhythmically.
The feel of her climax triggered his own. He drove into her one final, deep time, his body locking as he spilled inside her with a broken groan. He poured into her, his release a hot, endless flood, a different kind of claim—one of sustenance, not conquest. He collapsed onto her, his weight a comforting press, his face buried in her neck.
They lay tangled, slick with sweat, his softening cock still nestled inside her. The aftershocks trembled through them both. He didn’t pull out. He didn’t want to. The wet heat between them felt like a seal.
After a long time, he shifted just enough to speak, his lips moving against her skin. “The second Leo’s cleared,” he whispered, the words a vow etched into the quiet room, “we’re getting married. On this couch if we have to. With a judge and Mateo holding the ring. I meant that promise, Sera. It’s the only true thing I’ve ever known.”
She turned her head, her lips finding his in a soft, exhausted kiss. She tasted of salt and sex and something like hope. She didn’t say yes. She didn’t need to. Her hand came up to rest over his heart, feeling its steady, pounding rhythm against her palm.
Outside, a car door slammed. Letty was back with their son. The world, with all its complications, was waiting just beyond the door. But for now, they held each other in the spent, sticky quiet, the ghost finally laid to rest between their heaving chests.