Page 138 of He Sees You

I pull out slowly, watching my cum drip from her swollen pussy.

Tucking myself away, I help her up, her dress a ruined mess.

But she looks perfect like that—marked, claimed, utterly mine. The night isn't over yet.

Blood washes pink down the drain, swirling with soap and the last evidence of our wedding night.

Celeste stands under the spray with me, Patricia's ruined dress abandoned on the bathroom floor like shed skin.

Her body bears new marks—bruises from recoil, cuts from broken glass, a burn on her wrist from a shell casing.

Battle scars from her first night as a killer.

We made love twice—once against the door, still fully clothed and covered in evidence, unable to wait.

The second time in bed, slower, mapping each other's damage with tongues and teeth.

Consummating our marriage with violence still singing in our veins.

Now, in the shower's steam, she's washing her father's blood from under her fingernails with the same OCD level precision I use.

She's learning that the physical evidence is easier to remove than the psychological residue.

Sterling will live under her nails forever, no matter how hard she scrubs.

"The cottage will be found today," she says, watching the water run clear. "Someone will see the smoke."

"Let them. Sterling had many enemies. A disgraced sheriff, a missing trafficking ring, angry fathers looking for their daughters—anyone could have killed him."

"They'll come here to question me."

"And you'll perform grief perfectly. The devoted daughter, shocked by revelations about her father but still devastated by his loss."

She turns off the water, steps out, wraps herself in a towel.

In the mirror, we look like what we are—newlyweds with secrets.

Normal except for the darkness in our eyes, the satisfied set of our shoulders.

"I should cry," she says. "When they come. Daughters cry for their fathers, even monstrous ones."

"Can you?"

"I'm a writer. I can imagine anything, even grief for him."

The morning light through the bedroom window is harsh, revealing.

Patricia's dress looks like evidence of a massacre, which it is.

I bag it for burning later, along with our clothes from last night.

The weapons are already cleaned, returned to their hiding spots.

We're good at this, natural born killers playing house.

Celeste makes coffee while I cook eggs, domestic normalcy with an undercurrent of electricity.

Every time she passes, we touch—fingers grazing, hips bumping, the constant need to confirm we're both real, both here, both irreversibly changed.