10. Cara
— ? —
Cara
The apartment door is unlocked.
I notice it the moment I reach the landing - that sliver of darkness between the frame and the wood. The way the door sits slightly ajar, like someone forgot to pull it all the way closed.
I didn’t leave it like that.
I always check. Always double-check. Lock the door, test the handle, check again. A habit born from months of paranoia that turned out to be justified.
Don’t go in. Call someone. This is how people die in horror movies.
But my feet are already moving. My hand is already pushing the door open. Some part of me needs to see - needs to know what they’ve done.
The apartment is destroyed.
My clothes are shredded, scattered across the floor like confetti. The couch cushions are slashed open, stuffing spilling out like intestines. Every drawer has been pulled out and dumped, contents smashed and broken.
And on the bathroom mirror, written in what looks like red lipstick:
WHORE
The scream tears out of me before I can stop it.
Damien is there in thirty seconds.
He must have been downstairs. Must have been close. He bursts through the door like a battering ram, takes one look at the destruction, and goes absolutely still.
“Who.” His voice is barely human. “Did. This.”
“I don’t know.” I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering. “I came back and the door was open and everything was-”
He moves through the apartment like a predator. Checking corners. Closets. The bathroom with its hateful message scrawled across the glass.
When he’s satisfied we’re alone, he comes back to me.
“Amanda?” His voice is tight with barely restrained violence. “Someone Marcus hired?”
“I don’t know.” I can’t stop looking at that word on the mirror. WHORE. “I don’t-”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Damien-”
“This is beyond the line.” He’s pacing now, a caged animal. Running his hands through his hair. “This is terrorizing you. In your home. I’m going to-”
“That’s what he wants.” I grab his arm. Force him to look at me. “He wants you to do something stupid. Give him ammunition. Prove you’re violent and dangerous.”
“Right now I don’t care what he wants.”
“I do.” My voice cracks. “Because if you go after him, he wins. If you lose your temper, he wins. The only way we beat him is by being smarter.”
He’s trembling under my hand. I can feel the rage rolling off him like heat from a fire.
“Please.” I step closer. “Stay with me. That’s how you protect me. Just… stay.”
Something shifts in his expression. The rage doesn’t disappear, but it banks. Like a fire forced down to embers.
“Okay.” His voice is rough. “Okay. I’m here.”
The police come. Take photos. Ask questions I don’t have answers to.
No fingerprints. No witnesses. The building’s security cameras conveniently malfunctioned - footage corrupted, no backup available.
“Without evidence of who did this…” The detective spreads his hands.
“My ex-husband has been stalking me for weeks.” I hear my own voice, flat and tired. “He’s been having me surveilled. He has motive, means-”
“I understand your frustration, ma’am. But frustration isn’t evidence.”
They leave. I stand in the middle of the destroyed apartment, surrounded by the remnants of my life.
“I can’t stay here,” I say to no one.
“You’re not staying here.” Damien’s already on his phone. “You’re coming to my place. I’m having new locks installed tomorrow. Security cameras on every floor. Motion sensors. I’ll hire someone to watch the building-”
“That’s too much-”
“It’s not enough.” His voice cracks. “I should have done this weeks ago. I should have protected you better-”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“It feels like my fault.”
I look at him - really look. At the fear beneath the anger. At the guilt he’s carrying for something he couldn’t have prevented.
“Take me home,” I whisper. “Your home. Please.”
He doesn’t argue. Just wraps his arm around my shoulders and guides me out.
His apartment is warm.
Same small space I’ve been in a dozen times. Same sparse furniture, same toy dinosaurs on the windowsill. But tonight it feels different. Safer. Like the walls themselves are standing guard.
Damien makes tea. Sets a mug in front of me. Doesn’t speak.
I wrap my hands around the warmth and stare at nothing.
“She called me a whore.” My voice sounds distant. Wrong. “On my mirror. In my home. She wrote that I’m a-”
“You’re not.”
“I know.” The words come automatically. “I know I’m not. But seeing it there, in my space, after everything-”
“It’s psychological warfare.” Damien sits across from me. “They’re trying to break you. Make you feel dirty. Ashamed. Small.”
“It’s working.”
“Only if you let it.”
I look up at him. His face is drawn, exhausted. I realize he’s been as scared as I am. Maybe more.
“I’m tired,” I whisper. “Not just sleepy. Tired in my bones. Tired of fighting. Tired of being afraid all the time.”
“I know.”
“I thought when I left him - when I finally got out - that it would be over. That I’d be free.” I laugh, and it sounds bitter even to my own ears. “But he’s still there. Still controlling my life. Still making me feel like I’m worthless.”
“You’re not worthless.”
“Tell that to the voice in my head that sounds like him.”
Damien moves. Comes to kneel in front of my chair. Takes my hands in both of his.
“Listen to me.” His voice is fierce. “You are not what he says you are. You are not weak or crazy or any of the words they’re trying to use against you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen you. The real you. Not the version Marcus created. Not the version everyone else expects.” He squeezes my hands. “I’ve seen you stand up to him. Fight back. Refuse to be broken. That’s not weakness. That’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Tears are sliding down my face. I didn’t even notice when they started.
“Make me feel something good,” I whisper. “Please. I’m so tired of being afraid. I want to feel something other than this.”
“Cara…” His voice is strained. “I don’t want to take advantage-”
“You’re not taking anything. I’m giving.” I cup his face in my hands. “I’m choosing this. Choosing you. Please, Damien. Make me forget, even just for tonight.”
He searches my eyes. Looking for doubt. For hesitation.
He doesn’t find any.
He lifts me in his arms. Carries me to his bed like I weigh nothing.
“If you want to stop-”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“At any point-”
“Damien.” I pull him down to me. “I trust you. Now trust me to know what I need.”
What I need is to feel something that isn’t fear.
He seems to understand that without me saying it, because there’s no urgency in him tonight.
Where the first time was frantic, this is the opposite.
He undresses me slowly, like there’s nowhere else in the world he has to be, peeling each layer away and pressing his mouth to the skin underneath, and praising every inch of me as he goes.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, easing my shirt off.
He kisses my shoulder. “I don’t think you know.
I don’t think he ever told you.” The clasp of my bra.
He kisses the swell of each breast as he frees it.
“You’re stunning. Every part of you.” The waistband of my jeans, his mouth following the denim down over my hips.
“I’ve spent weeks trying not to look at you like this. Failing.”
“You set the pace,” he says against my stomach, looking up the length of my body. “Whatever you want. However you want it. I’m not going anywhere. Tonight’s about you.”
The words undo something in me. After tonight - the destroyed apartment, that word on the mirror, the feeling of being watched, hunted, small - being the one who decides feels like oxygen.
“I want to be on top,” I whisper.
Something flares in his eyes. “Then get on top. Take whatever you need from me. I’m yours.”
He strips off the rest of his clothes and lies back, all that lean muscle and ink laid out for me, and I straddle him, and for a moment I just look.
The phoenix on his chest. The Latin across his ribs.
The hard length of him pressed up between us, waiting, his hands resting loose on my thighs, letting me take whatever I’m ready to take.
I rock against him without taking him in yet, sliding the wet heat of me along his length, slow, and his fingers tighten on my thighs.
“Cara.” A rasp. “You’re killing me.”
“You said I set the pace.”
“I did say that.” His hands flex, white-knuckled, but he doesn’t grab. “I’m regretting it. Beautifully.”
So I make him wait. I keep grinding against him, taking my own pleasure from the slick drag of him against my clit, watching what it does to him - the way his head tips back against the pillow, the cords standing out in his neck, the way he’s biting his own lip to keep from moving.
It’s intoxicating, having him at my mercy.
Having someone hand me the power instead of taking it.
“You’re so hard,” I tell him, experimenting with it, with saying it out loud. “Is that for me?”
His eyes snap open. “Every bit of it. Has been for weeks. You have no idea what you do to me - walking around in those thin shirts, leaning over the desk, that little frown when you’re reading something. I’ve gone home aching more nights than I’ll admit.”
“Tell me.”
“I will. I’ll tell you every filthy thing I’ve thought about you.” He swallows. “After. Right now I’m trying very hard to be patient and you are making it impossible, and it’s the best torture of my life.”
I reward him - reach back, find the condom he set on the nightstand, roll it onto him with both hands, slow, watching his stomach jump under my touch. He watches me through half-lidded eyes the whole time, chest rising and falling fast.
Then I lift up. Position him. And sink down, slow, taking him inch by inch, and the stretch makes my eyes flutter shut.
“Look at me,” he says - the same thing he said the first time. I open my eyes. His are dark and fixed on my face. “There she is. There’s my brave girl. Look how you take me.”
I take all of him. When he’s fully seated I stay still a moment, just feeling it, full and grounded and here instead of trapped in my own fear. His hands smooth up my sides, reverent, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts.
Then I start to move.
I ride him slow, finding the angle that lights me up, and he lets me.
He doesn’t grab my hips and take over. He just touches me - my breasts, my throat, my jaw - and watches my face like it’s the only thing in the world worth watching, and pours praise over me the whole time, low and steady.
So good. So beautiful. That’s it, just like that, take what you need. Look at you. Look how perfect you are.
“You’re safe,” he says, when I shudder above him. “Right here. No one touches you. No one.” His thumb finds my clit and circles, matching my rhythm. “Just me. Just this. You’re mine to take care of now.”
The pleasure builds slow and deep, a different kind than the first time - less wildfire, more a tide coming in. I brace my hands on his chest and chase it, grinding down harder, taking him deeper, and he groans and his hips start to lift, just slightly, just enough.
“Faster?” he asks.
“No. Like this. Just-keep-”
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. As long as you need.”
His thumb works me steady and his hips roll up to meet mine and I feel it gathering, that tide pulling back before the crash.
I’m crying a little - not from sadness, from the sheer relief of feeling something good in a body that’s been nothing but afraid - and he reaches up and wipes my cheek with his thumb without breaking rhythm, without breaking the stream of soft words.
“That’s it. You’re doing so well. So good for me. Let go whenever you want - I’m right here - I’ll be right here when you come down. Let go, Cara.”
I do.
It rolls through me in long waves, and I clench around him, and only then does he let himself move the way he’s been holding back - both hands gripping my hips, driving up into me as I come down, chasing his own release now that he’s wrung mine out of me - and he follows me over with my name on his lips and his back arching off the bed.
I collapse onto his chest. His arms come around me, holding me to him, his hand stroking up and down my spine. Our hearts pound against each other.
“Better?” he asks, the same question from before.
“Better,” I whisper.
For the first time in months, I feel safe.
After, we lie curled together in the dark.
His hand traces lazy patterns on my hip. My head rests on his chest, rising and falling with his breath.
“Whatever happens with the divorce,” he says quietly, “with Marcus, with any of it - I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “You’re stuck with me now.”
I smile against his skin. “I can think of worse fates.”
“So can I.” His arms tighten around me. “Get some sleep. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
I close my eyes.
For the first time in weeks, I don’t dream about Marcus.
I dream about sunlight. About open spaces. About a future that actually feels possible.