Lola
Brody drags me faster, faster, through the snow. The wind is shoving ice down the back of my neck, the world is white and black and red. I don’t feel my fingers. I don’t feel my feet. Only the panic.
We stumble through a field of broken weeds and animal tracks, nothing but endless gray sky, and death-cold blizzard around us. The only light is the orange smudge of a barn half-buried by snow.
Brody curses under his breath, shoulders splintered boards aside, and throws us in.
Old hay, crumbling into yellowed dust floats in the air. My eyes blur. Spiderwebs and rusted metal, the skeletons of tools. There’s a ladder up to the hayloft, but it looks ready to collapse. In the far corner, a pile of splintered crates are stacked, frostbitten, gnawed by rodents.
He slams the door shut and jams a rusty bar through the latch before kicking a broken feed bucket aside. He checks the windows one by one—boards, frost, spidered glass. Then he paces, all muscle and hunger, he appears caged and rabid.
His coat is torn, salt-stiff with snow and blood. His face is bleeding down one side, jaw smeared. His eyes flick to me, then away. Always watching for a threat.
My legs give out. I fold onto a mound of hay, and shivers take over my whole body, down to my bones. Teeth knock together; my breath whistles through them like wind through a ruin. I curl up, try to hold myself still, but it’s impossible. My body won’t obey anymore.
I close my eyes and it all comes back.
The gunshot. That wet, choking sound. A man’s gurgle, his lifeblood pouring out in a hot spray as he fell.
Brody’s hands. The wildness in his face.
The look in his eyes as he buried a fist in another man’s throat.
How calm he was afterward. How careful when he wiped the blood off my cheek with the back of his hand.
The mess left behind us, red and steaming on the perfect white snow.
I can’t stop. It rewinds in my head, over and over. Blood. Bodies. Brody’s hands, Brody’s violence. Violence for me. Always about me. I remember his violence in the cabin. How terrified I felt. How terrified I still feel. He saved me, but that does not erase what he did to me.
What is wrong with me? I should be running. But I cannot run away from him, no matter how badly I want to.
He’s in front of me before I realize he’s moved. Brody’s coat, heavy with ice, lands over my shoulders. His hands, bleeding and shaking, yank it tight around me, hard enough to bruise.
He crouches, knees popping as he starts checking me. Ribs, arms, shoulders. Squeezing, prodding for breaks. His fingers are rough, but the shake in them is more fear than anger.
He grabs my jaw, just like that, his whole hand closing around my chin and cheek, squeezing until I look right at him. His eyes are black, endless. Obsession instead of empathy.
“Did Marcus hurt you?” he grinds out.
I want to laugh.
“Which time?” My lips are numb. “Take your pick.”
He flinches. Barely. Only the little ripple in his jaw, the cold narrowing of his eyes. I know what I’ve done to him, how deep it goes.
Brody’s voice drops. It’s all fury now, nothing soft. “I’m ending him. For everything. He manipulated every fucking thing. If it weren’t for him, my mom would still be alive. We might still be together.”
His hands move off me as he stands and begins pacing, wiping his own blood on his jeans. Shoved up against the wall, he peers through the slats, scanning the white.
Those words ring through my head. We might still be together. He’s right. We could’ve been happy, but Marcus wanted me all to himself. We were both caged to someone else, we were both manipulated and conditioned.
If only we realized it earlier, if only. We could have avoided so much pain. Conditioning runs deep, unfortunately. Once you’re in it, it’s hard to dig your way out of the reality that is set up for you. It was all a lie, but how were we to know?
“The van’s tagged. Marcus will know you’re missing already, and his crew will see the bodies. He’ll figure out I took you the second he finds the blood. He’ll come.” Brody cracks his neck, like he’s warming up for war. “He’ll want to make me suffer before he kills us.”
The words slide into my bones, cold as the air. I can’t stop shaking. I know what Marcus does to people who disobey. I know the kind of pain waiting on the other side of the door. Brody doesn’t care. He prowls the room, checking every angle, every shadow. If he’s afraid, he doesn’t show it.
“He’ll find us. He’ll make me pay. But I’m going to take him out, or die trying. For what he did to you, to us.”
Brody crouches in front of me again. As if the rest of the blizzard isn’t even real, like nothing outside this dirty, reeking barn matters but the truth.
My hands fists in the ruined coat, my knuckles blue. My jaw spasms, but it’s not just cold now. It’s fear.
Survival. Nothing else.
I know Brody is hinting at the night it ended. My voice is shattered. “I was drugged. That night.” It hangs in the air. “I didn’t choose it. I couldn’t remember, not enough. I couldn’t reach you after. I was trapped. He made sure of it.”
I force myself to hold his gaze. If I look away, I’m weak. If I don’t say it now, I never will. All the years of guilt, clinging like rot. All the shame. It’s out now, and I can’t take it back.
Brody goes stone-still. Not one muscle moves. Even the blood at his temple freezes, thick and black. He doesn’t speak. He just stares, through me, through the wall, through the years we lost. His fists are tight enough to crack bone.
He turns, like he might put it all through the wall, then stares back at me. “You never had to prove anything to me. I should have known. I should have burned the world down for you sooner.”
My voice comes out a ragged whisper. “I thought you’d hate me.” The rest is just breath. “I thought if I told you, you’d hate me.”
Brody’s not listening to that. He kneels, grabs my face in both hands and put his forehead to mine. Skin to skin, eyes to eyes. His hands are big enough to blot out the world.
“I don’t hate you. Not anymore. I hate him. And I hate myself for ever believing it was you. For walking away.” He takes a deep breath. “You survived what would’ve killed anyone else. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you then, but I fucking swear, no one’s ever touching you again.”
He pulls me in. There’s nothing left to hold back. His chest is all heat, and I press my face into the fabric and just let go. The tears are silent; I can’t breathe around them. I tremble in his arms, breaking apart, but Brody just holds tighter. Like he could squeeze the poison out of me.
He smooths my hair back, fingers shaking, blood and snow and tears mixing together. His mouth is at my ear. “My Lola. My Bambi. Mine.”
He kisses me. It’s not sweet. It’s what’s always been between us, the violence and the heat and the need. He wipes my cheeks with his thumb, then checks the gun again. He’s bleeding worse than before, but he pays it no mind.
I can see through a crack in the wall, out into the blue-black dark.
Brody holds me there, both arms tight around my ribs. Nothing gentle. Nothing safe. Just the promise of ruin.
“You’re my Bambi,” he says into my hair. “My eternal light. The only good thing in this rotten world.”
His arms stay locked around me, so tight I can’t tell where the bruises end and the comfort begins. I can feel his breath, rough against my ear, his body trembling with the violence he’s holding back.
Outside, snow rips sideways across the world. Obliterating all traces of blood, tracks, what we were before this moment. Inside, we are the only thing left alive, two animals clinging to each other, desperate and wild.
He pulls back just enough to stare down at me, his face a map of pain and hunger and longing. Blood spatters his cheek, matting his hair, but there’s nothing human in his eyes. Just that endless dark, the look of a man who would burn down heaven for a single taste of salvation.
I reach up, tracing the bruise at his jaw, fingers shaking. “You’re hurt,” I whisper.
He catches my wrist, presses my palm to his mouth. “Not enough to stop me. Not for you.”
I want to tell him to let go, to run, to save himself. I want to tell him he’s become everything I feared and everything I craved. But my mouth won’t open. The words die, strangled by hope and terror both.
Brody’s hands wander. Over my throat, my collarbone, my ribs, as if checking for breaks again. As if making sure nothing has been taken from him. He kisses the hollow of my neck, teeth grazing, tongue rough.
“You’re mine,” he chokes out. “I will never let him touch you again. I’d kill a thousand men before I ever let you go.”
The heat of him devours me. I pull him closer by his shirt.
He crushes his mouth to mine again. His kiss is savage.
I kiss him back like I’m starving, like I’ve been dying for this all my life.
His hands slip under the coat, palm flat against my bare skin.
I gasp, not from cold, but from the way he holds me.
Possessive, worshipping, as if he could anchor himself here and never drift again.
He drags his mouth over my throat and bites down hard enough to leave a mark. “I should have killed him sooner,” he says, voice breaking. “I should have burned this world for you.”
I arch into him, trembling. “You did. You’re here.”
He shudders, his whole frame wracked with it. “Nothing will hurt you again. Not while I breathe. Not while I’m alive.”
His hands find mine, our fingers lacing together, tight enough to hurt.
Our bodies tangle, desperate, hungry, as if we can make something holy out of all this devastation.
He buries his face in my neck and I feel the wetness of his tears, the weight of all those years lost. For this moment, there is no one but us.
The rest of the world can drown in snow and silence. Only Brody’s voice matters.
“My Bambi. My Lola. Mine.”
I believe him, because loving him has always been an act of survival, an act of damnation. A darkness I’ll never outrun.
We don’t talk about what Marcus made us do, and what he did to us in that warehouse. We don’t need to. Those memories will be painted into our skulls for the rest of our lives, and we have to live with it.
But, we are free, and that’s what matters.
Outside, through the broken boards, a pair of headlights knifes through the darkness. Closer, closer. Twin points of judgment, crawling across the snow.
Marcus.
I bury myself harder against Brody’s heart, and wait for the end.