My mother looks up at me and now is when her face pulls into focus. Now, with desperation shaping her features into a mask of fear. There are small globes of water clinging to the tips of her eyelashes, and her cheek is split open. She looks like she’s in pain, but she tries to smile for me anyway. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Momma’s okay.” Her already bruised lips part and she flashes me a broader smile, but all I see is blood. The blood seeping from her split upper lip. The bright crimson of the blood that stains her teeth from white to red.

The stranger steps forward, hands clenched by his sides, and I do the first thing that comes to mind; I turn and I put myself in between my mother and the man. I think he will hit me; he looks angrier than before, but then he hawks and spits on my mother’s bare legs.

“You’re a fucking whore. I tell you what I want, I pay you, and you fucking do it. That’s how this goes. You’d better know that for next time. Now get out of here before I fuck you raw in front of your little bastard.”

My mother scrambles to her feet, her breath coming out in short, sharp little pants; she grabs hold of me and lifts me into her arms, and then she’s running away from the man, crying into my hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry.” She says this over and over again, in between her ragged gulps for air. I hang onto my mother’s shoe, listening to the uneven slap of her one bare foot hitting the boardwalk as she runs, and I watch the angry man glaring after us as we go.

My mother carries me to the parking lot, where my dad is waiting in our car. My mother puts me down and takes her shoe from me. She tucks her hair behind her ears and wipes her tears from her cheeks, although she doesn’t stop crying.

“There. We’re okay now, Zeth,” she tells me. Her hands shake as she opens the rear door of the car and lifts me onto the back seat. She clips me in, closes the door, and then stands for a moment, fingers bridged against her forehead, her eyes closed. Then she gets in the car and I hear my father’s breath catch in his throat. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does my mother. But she’s still crying. And so is he.

Like most nights, the dream starts over again. The sun beating down on my head. The ice cream. Me and my father playing skeeball. The darkness. My mother being beaten. The sun beating down on my head. The ice cream. Me and my father playing skeeball. The darkness; my mother being beaten. The sun beating down on my head. The ice cream. Me and my father playing skeeball. The dark. My mother being beaten.

My mother being beaten.

The blood in her teeth.

The violent words that come out of the angry man’s mouth: You’re a fucking whore. I tell you what I want, I pay you and you fucking do it.

And my own words.

She doesn’t like it.

******

I wake with my heart in my mouth.

I wake with my hands clenched into fists and the bed sheets wrapped around my body, tangled up in my legs. As usual, I feel like I can’t fucking breathe. After all these years, after experiencing it over and over, you’d think it would get a little better, but it doesn’t. It’s the same. Always the same.

“Fuck.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, dragging my hands back through my hair. She’s gone. Both of them are—have been for years—and yet every time I have the beach dream, I wake up feeling like I need to save her. Like I might be able to go back and stop that asshole’s hand before it connects with her cheek. To pile drive my fucking fist into his face before he gets a chance to maul her mouth the way he did. The very thought of it makes me feel sick.

The clock on the bedside table reads five forty-three, which is about right. I never sleep past six, and what would be the point in trying now anyway? Knowing my luck, I’ll be hit with the other dream instead, just to top off my wonderful fucking start to the day. I climb out of bed and hit the shower instead, washing the sweat from my body.

I’m thinking one thing as I get clean: Sloane. I’m thinking her name over and over. The knowledge that she’s here, in the warehouse, one room over sleeping in my spare bed, is enough to temper the discomfort of the dream, if not to eradicate it altogether. I close my eyes and let the water wash over me, and I let the knowledge of her wash over me, too. She’s never going to be the first thing I think of when I open my eyes—my nightmares will take care of that—but she’s a close fucking second. And…and I like it. I fucking like it a lot.

I need her skin against mine. Right now.

I leave the water running as I pace, completely naked, out of my en suite, out of my room, into the hallway and then through the door and into her room. I’m leaving wet footprints everywhere but I don’t care. Sloane’s laid out on her back, one arm thrown up over her head, her fingers twitching in her sleep. Her eyelashes look like smudges of charcoal against the pale porcelain of her cheeks.

She’s perfect.

I rip the covers off her body, smirking to myself when she nearly rockets out of the bed, eyes snapping open in a fright. “Oh my god. Zeth, what is it? What’s the matter? Is it your stomach?”

My stomach is healing just fine. I shake my head, staring down at her, the cover still clenched in my hand.

Her eyes grow even wider when she finally wakes up enough to take me in properly. “Oh,” she says. “I see.”

I’ll bet she does. My cock is pretty much at her eye level, and it’s doing a pretty good job of waving good morning. I don’t say anything. I just lean down and pick her up, right out of the bed.