Chapter Sixteen
Rheda
By Friday, I start waking hours before the alarm.
It’s like something drags me violently out of sleep before my body fully understands why.
I jolt upright with my heart already hammering, thighs locked tightly together hard enough to ache afterwards.
Sweat clings cold to the back of my neck while heat pulses everywhere else in slow, humiliating waves.
Feeling...touched.
Not used, not penetrated, but...held in small ways I can’t explain without sounding insane.
Some mornings my nipples still ache beneath my shirt, tender enough that even fabric brushing across them makes my stomach tighten.
And lower still, heat lingers stubbornly between my thighs long after the dreams let go of me, in a way that makes nausea crawl up my throat the second I become aware of it.
And there’s something worse underneath all of it... the longing.
It’s something mean, deep; a horrible throbbing need my body keeps circling back toward no matter how violently my mind recoils from it.
I stop trusting my own memory. Not because I believe in ghosts but because I believe in exhaustion. In stress. In the human brain’s ability to quietly rot under pressure.
I buy a camera on my way home from work. It’s nothing expensive. Just something small with motion detection and night recording.
I tell myself it’s practical.
Sleepwalking. Parasomnia. Night terrors.
There are medical explanations for all of this. There have to be.
I position it opposite the bed.
Proof.
That’s all I want.
Proof that this ends when I wake up.
I swallow hard and I drag myself out of bed too fast just as the room tilts unpleasantly around me. My knees knock weakly against the side of the mattress before I steady myself.
I move to the shower, though it helps less every day.
I stand beneath water hot enough to sting and scrub at my skin until it burns pink beneath the sponge, but the awareness underneath it never leaves completely.
Sometimes it gets worse. A tingling pleasure dragging slowly through me every time the water slips between my thighs.
My own body responding to sensation now like it’s been trained into it.
By the time I step out, nausea sits thick at the back of my throat.
I leave my hair wet for work because my hands shake too badly trying to pin it up properly the first time. It takes three attempts before I decide to leave it there with a strand that keeps catching between my lips.
The viewing room smells like burnt coffee and old paper when I walk in.
Peter’s already there, sleeves rolled to his forearms, flipping slowly through a folder thick enough to split at the spine.
Mike sits beside the monitors eating crisps loudly enough to irritate Sean, who looks one comment away from murder.
I move toward my chair too quickly. My bag slips off my shoulder when I pull it forward, knocking hard against the desk. Papers spill halfway out before I catch them.
For one awful second, nobody says anything. I shove everything back inside too fast, fingers clumsy against the pages. My notes crumple slightly beneath my grip.
Peter watches the whole thing over the top of the folder. “You alright, Ainsley?”
“I’m fine.” I plaster a fake smile on my lips.
His eyes stay on me a second too long before he looks away.
I lower myself into the chair and force my attention onto my notebook instead.
My handwriting looks wrong. Letters pressed too hard into the paper. Words written over twice. One entire paragraph scratched through violently enough that the pen tore clean through the page beneath it.
I stare at the damage for a second too long before my eyes lift toward the glass.
Deogal sits exactly where they left him.
Still.
God, the stillness of him.
Bruising still darkens parts of his face from earlier sessions, yellowing now at the edges, but it somehow makes him look worse instead of weakened.
More lived in. More real. His bottom lip is split faintly at one corner, dried blood gathered there in a dark rust-coloured line that keeps dragging my attention back no matter how many times I force it elsewhere.
The overhead lights flatten everything else in the room except him.
His wrists are restrained low today. Thick metal cuffs biting into skin already rubbed raw from the last few sessions. Angry red indentations disappear beneath the sleeves of the jumpsuit whenever he shifts. Not that he shifts much. That’s the worst part.
Anyone else would be slumped by now. Exhausted or furious.
He just sits there beneath the lights with his head slightly lowered and his breathing slow enough that sometimes I catch myself staring at his chest waiting for movement. Waiting to make sure he’s still human.
The hours drag by. My attention stays on him like there are hooks behind my eyes.
Across the room, Peter flips another page in the file.
“We’ll need to rework the overnight rotation if this carries on,” he says without looking up.
Sean swears quietly beneath his breath. “I did twelve hours yesterday.”
“You’ll survive another six.”
Mike snorts. “Easy for you to say. You went home.”
Peter ignores him completely. “We split the nights properly so nobody gets burned out.”
Burned out.
The phrase lands strangely in my chest. Because exhaustion already hangs over the room thickly now. I can see it in Sean’s eyes. Mike’s shorter temper. The coffee cups overflowing the bin beside the monitors. And somehow, through all of it—Deogal still doesn’t look tired.
“What about her?” Sean asks suddenly.
The sound of his voice jerks my attention away from the glass hard enough that my stomach drops.
My head snaps up.
“She observes,” Peter says. “Fresh perspective is more useful than interference at this stage.”
The word interference settles badly under my ribs.
Mike bobs his head, already turning back to his crisps. “As long as you keep the food coming, I’m fine.”
Sean mutters something under his breath and Mike flips him off without even looking away from the monitors. Peter keeps turning pages in the file.
My phone buzzes softly against the desk. My hand moves immediately.
Olivia’s name flashes across the screen.
The brightness of it feels jarring after hours beneath fluorescent lights and silence.
There’s a picture attached underneath the message—blurred club lighting, Olivia grinning into a mirror in a tiny black dress, curls bouncing around her shoulders while somebody beside her lifts a cocktail into frame.
Warmth and normality.
The image feels so disconnected from the room around me that for a second it almost doesn’t register as real.
Her message reads below.
Already started without you. Hurry up, birthday girl deserves attention xx
My stomach drops.
Shit.
That’s tonight.
Now.
I completely forgot.
Guilt hits first and then something sharper. Relief. Because part of me suddenly wants out of this room so badly my chest physically aches.
I look toward Peter before I’ve fully decided to speak. “Peter.”
He doesn’t glance up from the file straight away. “Mm?”
I swallow hard. My throat feels strangely tight. “I need to leave early tonight.”
“For?”
“My friend’s birthday.” The words come out too fast. “I forgot it was tonight.”
Sean lets out a quiet laugh somewhere behind me. “Jesus Christ.”
I ignore him.
Peter studies me for a second too long.
“We’ll be running late,” he says eventually. “Rotations don’t stop because you’ve got plans.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
“I know.” My voice sounds thinner now. “I just need a few hours. I’m really sorry.”
He keeps looking at me.
“When do you need to leave?”
I glance down at the time. By the time I look back at him, I’m certain my skin is red.
“Now?” I hold my breath without meaning to.
He sniffs once, dragging a tired hand across his mouth as though weighing whether arguing is worth the effort.
“Fine,” he says at last. “Go. But you’re back in first thing tomorrow.”
Relief loosens something in my chest before I can stop it.
“Thank you,” I say quickly.
I shove my notebook into my bag a little too fast and nearly catch the strap awkwardly beneath the chair arm on the way up. Sean snorts softly into his coffee and heat crawls straight back into my face.
I mutter something that might be goodnight and head for the door before anybody can look at me properly again.
I don’t look back toward the interrogation room again.
But the feeling follows anyway, low and persistent, like something unfinished tugging quietly at the centre of my chest.