Carly looked up at Tzich slowly. His words haunted her—nested in her ear and gnawed on her brain. Her head stung and she felt the threat of tears rise, pricking her tear ducts and making her throat weak.

When she felt too vulnerable she looked away, jerking her head almost violently in the other direction. No, it wasn’t a threat—a warning, more than likely a promise. Because fate was permanent, and it’d already encroached. There was no looking away now. It was present and demanded attention.

Rather than agreeing, or maybe trying to reconcile with him, Carly said nothing. She got up from the concrete steps rigidly, then walked down the sidewalk. She held her red leather jacket, cut at the shoulder, tight against her and she didn’t look back. She cried while she walked until she reached the front door of her house, which she opened to find empty.

Tiredly, she climbed the stairs and took shelter in her room, and after shedding her khakis and the damp polo she’d worn underneath her now tattered jacket she wriggled underneath her sheets and tried to wrap herself up, and to ward off the assailing thoughts that Tzich had planted. Sooner or later, the pain meds worked her over well and she was dead to the world.