Chapter 4: Unhinged
The squealing of the bedsprings died away, replaced by the sound of their breathing—harsh, ragged, two discordant rhythms slowly finding a common, exhausted pace. Lisa collapsed forward, her forehead pressing into the damp hollow of his shoulder. Her skin was slick, every muscle trembling with a spent, liquid feeling. The smell of sex and old dust was thick in the air.
Beneath her, Jake was still. His hands, which had been gripping her hips hard enough to leave marks, now rested loosely on her lower back. She could feel the steady, heavy thump of his heart against her chest.
For a long minute, neither spoke. The silence of the farmhouse rushed back in, a living thing that pressed against the fragile bubble of heat they’d created. A floorboard creaked somewhere downstairs. The wind picked up outside, moaning through a crack in the window frame.
“Christ,” Jake finally muttered, the word a rough exhale against her hair.
She didn’t move. She was afraid to. Afraid that if she lifted her head, the spell would break and she’d have to see what they’d done in the stark, unforgiving light filtering through the dirty glass. His hands on her body weren't gentle. They were possessive. She’d loved it. That was the terrifying part.
“You okay?” he asked. His voice was low, devoid of its earlier growl, just a man in a quiet room.
Lisa nodded against his skin. “Mmhmm.” It was all she could manage.
Slowly, he shifted, easing her off him and onto her side. The stained quilt was rumpled beneath her, scratchy and cold where it touched her bare skin. He sat up on the edge of the bed, his broad back to her, a landscape of muscle and old scars in the pale light. He reached for his jeans on the floor, fished out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
The rasp of the lighter, the first intake of breath. The smoke smelled acrid, cutting through the other scents.
“Did you mean it?” she heard herself ask. Her voice sounded small. “What you said before? About good girls?”
He glanced over his shoulder, a plume of smoke streaming from his nostrils. “Every word.” He turned back, staring at the wall. “You are a good girl, Lisa. That’s the whole fucking point.”
She pulled the quilt up to her chin, a feeble barrier. “I don’t feel very good right now.”
“That’s because you’re not at home,” he said flatly. “You’re not thinking about what to make for dinner. You’re not folding a goddamn towel. You’re here. With the consequence.”
Consequence. The word hung in the smoky air. It wasn’t a regret. It was a fact. A thing she had chosen.
She watched the muscles in his back work as he took another drag. “What’s your consequence?” she asked.
He was silent for a beat. “Company,” he said, finally.
It was such a simple, lonely word. It gutted her. She pushed herself up, ignoring the ache between her legs, and shuffled across the mattress on her knees. She pressed her front against his back, wrapping her arms around his torso, resting her cheek between his shoulder blades. He went still, then relaxed incrementally, a tendon in his neck loosening.
He didn’t put his arms over hers. He just let her hold him, smoking quietly.
“I have to go soon,” she whispered. The words were ashes in her mouth.
“I know.”
“My kids… they have a soccer thing at four.”
“I know.”
Of course he knew. He saw her at the school gates. He knew the schedule, the uniform, the make of her minivan. He’d been watching. The thought should have chilled her. Instead, it felt like a form of recognition.
“This can’t happen again,” she said, testing the sentence. It felt false.
He took a final drag and stubbed the cigarette out on the bare floorboards. “Okay.”
He said it too easily. A part of her, a stupid, hungry part, wanted him to argue. To tell her he’d burn the world down to have her back in this rotting room. But that wasn’t him. He was the consequence, not the fantasy.
She released him and slid off the bed. Finding her clothes was a comic, degrading scavenger hunt. One sock under the bed. Her torn yoga pants in a heap by the door. Her sweater smelled of smoke and him. She dressed quickly, her fingers fumbling with buttons.
When she turned around, he was watching her, still shirtless, one arm draped over a knee. His gaze was calm, assessing, like he was memorizing her.
“You’ve got a… here.” He gestured to his own neck.
Her hand flew to the spot. A hot, tender patch of skin. A mark. A brand. Panic, sharp and chemical, shot through her. “Shit. Shit.”
“Scarf weather,” he said, a ghost of a smirk on his lips.
It wasn’t funny. This was the part the stories left out. The logistical horror. The evidence. She spun, looking for a mirror, but there was none. Just the warped, darkened glass of the window. She walked over to it, peering at her blurred reflection. The mark was high on her neck, purple and angry. Unmissable.
“I can’t go home like this.”
“You will,” he said, standing up. He pulled on his jeans, not bothering with the button. “You’ll think of something. You’re good at that.”
The comment stung. He was right. She was already running through a list of lies in her head: a clumsy curl from the curling iron, an allergic reaction, a pulled muscle she’d tried to massage. Pathetic, transparent lies for a man who barely looked at her.
Jake walked to the door, pulling a worn flannel shirt from a nail on the wall. He shrugged into it. “C’mon. I’ll walk you out.”
The journey back through the house felt like walking through a dream, or the aftermath of a crime. Every stain on the wall, every shattered piece of china on the floor, seemed to accuse her. The whiskey bottle still stood by the dead fireplace. Her purse, normal and sensible, looked like an artifact from another planet sitting on the broken-backed chair.
At the front door, the bright, ordinary afternoon light was shocking. It felt aggressive. Her silver minivan sat in the overgrown driveway, a symbol of her other life waiting to swallow her whole.
She turned to him. She didn’t know what to say. Thank you was wrong. I’ll call you was a lie. That was incredible was too small.
Jake solved it for her. He reached out, not to pull her in, but to tuck a stray piece of her blonde hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed the sensitive skin near the bruise. “Drive safe, Lisa.”
Then he stepped back, leaning against the doorframe, already receding back into the shadows of the house.
She walked to her van on unsteady legs. The leather seat was warm from the sun. She started the engine, the familiar chime of the warning lights a comforting noise. She didn’t look back as she reversed down the rutted lane.
But at the stop sign where the farm lane met the paved county road, she finally glanced in the rearview mirror. The farmhouse was a gray smudge in the trees, nearly invisible. Her own eyes stared back at her, wide and strangely alive. The mark on her neck pulsed.
She fumbled in the console for her tube of concealer. She dabbed it on, blending frantically, watching the purple become a faint, sickly yellow. It would have to do.
She checked her phone. Three missed texts from Mark.
How’s the movie?
Pick up milk if you’re out.
Everything ok?
She typed, her thumbs sure and steady. Sorry, phone was on silent! Movie was great. Crying with Sarah over coffee. Home by 3. Will get milk.
She put the van in drive and merged onto the road toward town, toward the grocery store, toward the milk. The ordinary commands of her life re-engaged one by one, like systems rebooting after a power surge. But beneath them, a new program was running. A quiet, relentless loop of memory: the sound of a rusted bedframe, the smell of smoke on skin, the feeling of being utterly, dangerously seen.
She drove the speed limit, her hands at ten and two, a good girl heading home.