Sander didn’t leave me until I was spent through—burned out and emptied of everything I couldn’t carry anymore. Not until I was replenished. Occupied. Made whole. Not until he had nothing left to give. Not until my breath slowed, my body softened, my eyes glazed—not from exhaustion, but from relief.

From solace.

Not until he made me cum—not from need, not from purging ghosts—but because we were lovers, making each other feel good. With harmony that wasn’t forced. That didn’t feel borrowed or about to vanish.

Not until I slept. Deep. Dreamless. Untouched by ghosts. Not even a freckled spot.

I think everyone understood. No knock at the door. No “hurry up” for more nothingness. When I finally had to go to the bathroom, my body protested. Hips ached. Thighs weak. The sheets clung—wet, smelly, spent.

When I peed, I wept.

Because I was allowed to. Because sometimes crying just feels good.

I made my bed, fitted with new sheets—already prepared. Jolene understood. She’d planned for aftermath.

I wept some more. And slept.

When I was finally disturbed, it wasn’t Heather. It was my mother. Just… being a mother. A cup of tea. A plate of cookies. A kiss on the forehead. A hug I didn’t have to earn. She collected the soiled sheets without comment and took them to the wash.

Because today wasn’t about our family.

It was just about family.

Sander had done his part. And now, Mom was giving me what she had to offer.

I stretched for my phone. It was flat. Emptied. Just like I’d been.

Even reaching for the charger felt like exercise—like uncoiling springs wound too tightly around bone. It hurt in that good, earned way.

I watched the charge symbol flicker to life and lay back. Drifted. I wasn’t reprogramming. Not exactly. Just… updating. Every now and then, my system tells me to restart. Press “OK.”

I turned my phone on. Waited until it buzzed. Seven times.

Shavonne. Lisa. Alicia. Kelly.

Shavonne was out in flurries by the docks, where she once walked backward and nearly tripped. A photo. Probably meant to be poetic. It was.

Lisa just missed me. Twice. The third was a reminder that I hadn’t replied.

Alicia asked when I was coming. Then followed up. Then followed up again.

Kelly.

She sat by a fire pit, in a moment not quite dark or light. She wore a hat with a ridiculous tassel, her hair braided in two long ropes. Her face caught the flicker of the flames. She wasn’t looking at the camera, but into the fire.

There was a caption.
“Duluth is my tranquility. Did you know Minnesota means ‘sky-tinted water’? It feels good to be removed from Cambridge. The campus. Harvard. Thank you for pulling me through the first semester. xox”

Replying to Shavonne was easy. No matter what I said, she’d turn it into something dirty, spoiled, and utterly fantastic.

Lisa was just as effortless. She needed an apology and some reassurance. I gave both, promised I’d be in Madison in a few days.

Alicia needed a time slot. “Tomorrow. Afternoonish. Around 3.” I added another.
“Are you okay?”

I didn’t know what to do with Kelly’s.

I could take a picture of a cactus and a wilted flower. She didn’t need to see me peeing behind a bush. But a photo meant getting out of bed. Moving. Something I couldn’t make myself do until the update was complete.

She signed all her texts xox. Maybe just to me. Maybe to everyone.

Was it deliberate? Or was I just one of many? A random contact on a curated list? Was it a moment she wanted to share with me—or with some version of me? Hannah 3.65?

I hadn’t caught up.

I was still on version 2.0.

Or maybe I was reading too much into a girl in the forest by a fire.

Then again, I had to check. To make sure none of it rattled me.

And my mind—finally—slowed. Stilled. Shut the fuck up.

I thought about food, which meant I had to shower, because I was still covered in my own filth.

And Sander.

And I wasn’t ready to part with any of it just yet.

Secretly, because I let my mind wander, I started thinking about being used. Just as I was. Stinking of sex and sweat. Covered in stench and everything we’d done to each other.

I laughed. At my dysfunction. At how predictable I’d become. I knew I had to get in the shower. It felt almost like stripping paint. I shaved—all of me.

Then I considered shaving my head, too.

Didn’t.

Oiled myself.

Spent an hour moisturizing—lotions, creams, whatever I could reach.

My hips still ached. My pussy still growled when I touched her. My thighs didn’t want to carry me. My calves cramped in protest. My arms felt heavy, used.

And when I finally returned to the living, they were already getting ready for bed.

Aunt just smiled and pulled a meal out of nothing—just for me.

When the lights shut off around us and everyone else disappeared into the night, she stayed.

Milk. Bread. Toast.

She made eggs because I kept eating.

She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t interrupt.

She just sat with me.

And when I finally stopped, she looked at me with nothing but care.

“Are we okay, Hannah?”

She was still worried the room had stayed with me. I wasn’t about to tell her she’d spilled from my mouth, left a trail of cum on my lips—because this moment didn’t call for it.

I smiled. “Depends on whose version of okay you’re asking for, Auntie.”

She understood.

“I keep arguing it in ethics, but no one can comprehend. It’s too easy for them to wrap their heads around—and that’s the problem.”

I took her hands. Sometimes you need to ground yourself in something other than the truth.

“Your question’s too big, Auntie.”

I looked inward. Checked for lies.

“I’m okay, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m better now than I was two months ago. You shoved something of yours onto me. But none of that is mine. So… are you okay, Auntie?”

She shrugged, took my plate, slid it into the dishwasher.

And then she stopped in the doorway. No more thinking. Just the truth.

“I’m not just okay, Hannah. I’m living the life I need to live. I go back into the office Monday morning—without even knowing if the intern is the guy who fucked everything out of me in that room.”

She sighed.

“You think you’ve got it figured out, Hannah. But you’ve never even fucked anything real. Not until you’re reduced to someone’s hole do you know what it’s like to truly be fucked. By someone unseen. Unknown. Maybe someone who’s only doing it because he’s paid to.”

The folly of age—thinking you know better just because you’ve lived longer.

Her need was defined, and she thought that meant it translated. That it explained why I always got to fuck her, but she only could when I wanted. Needed.

Or just because I needed to study.
Categorize.
Figure it out.

She fucked and fucked until there was nothing left but the fuck itself. I needed to know why we fuck. The different kinds of fucks. Why Jolene needed to be a hole. Why Shavonne drank my pee. Why Solomon believed his sperm was a spirit.

At the end of it all, she screamed my name—to make it stop.

I didn’t scream my name until it had stopped.

How do you sleep when you’ve slept through it all?

I sat on the couch and watched reruns until I slumped to the side, draped myself in a blanket, and E.T. found a signal.

Something still itched in my brain.

“How do you get from Bakersfield to L.A.?”

Relax, Hannah. People do. All the time.

Of course they do. But that wasn’t even the point.

The point was that my brain needed all the pieces to shut down successfully. I hope everyone’s like that.

“Did I turn off the stove?”, “Did I lock the door?”, “Do I know how to get from Bakersfield to L.A.?”

If I screamed my name, would it stop?

I got up. Dressed. Walked until the streets ran out. Until the lights disappeared. Until the highway was just a hum in the distance. Until the grapevines were the only things left to witness me.

I screamed.

First, my name.

Then just words.

“Fuck.”
“Piss.”
“Filth.”

“Asshattery.”
“Cockmongerer.”
“Motherfucker.”

Because they had more vowels.

“Cocadoodlefuck.”
“Twat-hoarding-son-of-a-bitch.”

I screamed until my voice hurt. Until it bled. Until it was nothing.

Until I was cold.

And alone.

Until I realized I needed people to keep me occupied—or I’d truly go insane. It wasn’t just Alicia who needed me. I needed to escape the lull of Bakersfield. I needed to see something new. Because reruns of the same thoughts? The same conversations on loop?

Fucking the same people over and over?

Dr. Reed has so much work to do.

It also meant I needed a plan beyond L.A.

Beyond Madison.

Because staying in the same place too long meant stagnation. Repeating the same patterns too long meant boredom. My brain needed something to chew on. Something substantial. Something fresh. Unfigured.

Shavonne. Maybe Boston.

Shavonne knew how to push. To challenge. To change my mind. Sure—my body too. But especially my mind. Fucking it when it needed.

How long until the second semester? Days? Weeks?

Neverbeen.

Never been to Minnesota. Is it cold enough to slow my brain?

Eight freckles that could never be mine.

Because ultimately, when helping people—

I wreck them?

Or do they wreck under their own weight, trying to live up to the morality code written by dead men thousands of years ago? People don’t want to be truly themselves under that weight. They can’t. Not the heat, not the filth, not the reality of being utterly human.

Jolene had aligned with the truth. Morality is about consent. Mutual, undeniable consent. Mom was whipped raw because she wanted to be—and because someone wanted to do it. And when she no longer wanted it, she screamed the safe word. That was the system. That was the boundary. Even Christ consented to his suffering. That was the whole point.

But Mom and Dad had a secret code—a safe word. And God didn’t even allow his son one.

As it turns out, Bakersfield at the break of dawn isn’t all that bad. It's chilly but beautiful—a few days before the break of a new year. Grapevines stretched as far as the eye could see, their branches bare and skeletal, stripped of leaves but not life. Just dormant.

I was freezing my ass off, but I kept walking, kept getting closer to a town beginning to rustle back to life. Cars started to pass by on the road beside me. Maybe I should just hitchhike out.

Drift away.

I undid my pants, let them fall to my ankles, and squatted in a field just outside Bakersfield. Dawn rising behind the grapevines like a prayer someone forgot to finish. I peed into the cold dirt. Steam curled up from between my thighs like incense. You should try it sometime.

I wiped with a tissue, then pressed a finger inside myself—curious, slow. I giggled. Not because it was funny, but because something inside me felt full. Pregnant. Not with life, but with consequence. Maybe I should have been, after all the careless fucking I’d done this year. Maybe I still could be.

But no. Not with a child.

I was pregnant with something else. With the weight of my own taboo. With the stretch of every boundary I had crossed, bent, buried. With the ache of pleasure I’d taken where others would have shamed.

I was full of kink, of memory, of filth I’d chosen.

And she—whatever had grown inside me—was beautifully me.

I never drifted away. I made a punctuation and moved on.

Imagine Hannah just drifting away from Heather, Pete, Jolene, and Thomas? From Sander?

Sander would get me. He always did. Whether I wanted him to or not. Because, at the end of all things, I needed Sander as much as he needed me.

Naturally, Sander would drive me to L.A., with no questions asked.

I stood at Aunt and Uncle’s front door. When you keep moving, you always end up somewhere. Sometimes, even precisely where you intended.

I went upstairs. Dressed proper. Packed indecent.

I woke Sander.

“It’s time to go.”

He stretched, groaned something about the hour but didn’t question the destination.

“You’re ruthless, Hannah,” he sighed, sliding out of bed—naked, stiff, all morning muscle and temptation. It was okay. That would still be there when I came back.

We brushed our teeth, peed, fixed our hair. Got ready like people do.

“Watch out,” I smiled, “our periods will start syncing next.”

He didn’t laugh. But he grinned. That quiet kind he saved just for me.

We didn’t hit the highway until the sun was fully up, the kind of pale gold light that makes you think anything is possible. Only then did he ask where we were going, or if I’d bothered asking Dad for the car.

As if Dad would have a say.

I texted Alicia: On our way.

She replied almost instantly.

“You’ll be here around noon, then. Give or take. Let me know about traffic. Go to Central Plaza. Not even you could get lost.”

I liked the road. I liked Sander. Him and me, the hum, the asphalt, my turn to pick the radio station. Sexy in restraint. That’s the real thing. You can tie someone down with leather collars and whips, but when it’s just mental restraints—it hurts. Real pain.

We passed a truck stop. We both grinned.

“You thought about stopping, didn’t you?” I laughed.

He didn’t deny it. In fact, he said nothing. And that was all he needed to say.

I was still dressed proper when we arrived in the city. That’s when it stopped being a road trip and started becoming a stall. A wait. It was nearing noon.

I let Alicia know we were stuck.

She asked where. Then told us how to get unstuck.

Sander dropped me off in North Hollywood. Alicia sent me to the Red Line. I rode to Union Station, then caught the train to Chinatown.

Even I couldn’t miss Central Plaza.

I didn’t have to wait long. Just long enough to realize I’d gone from screaming obscenities into a dormant field in Bakersfield… to standing in a different world at noon.

“Zǎoshang hǎo,” I heard behind me. I didn’t understand the words, but I knew the voice.

When I turned around, I felt like a schoolgirl. Not because I was afraid—but because I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d find. Which Alicia.

She was tidy. Just like the first day I met her.

“You dressed proper,” she smiled. “For me?”

I smiled, because that’s what you do around Alicia. She never stopped smiling—not even when the spring around her spine tightened so hard it could snap a Redwood.

“I’m always proper,” I said. “Proper’s just about expectations. You know that.”

Alicia smiled again, but it was the kind she wore when deciding how much to give away. The kind that hid more than it showed.

She turned without answering, and I followed.

It wasn’t far. Nothing in Chinatown is.

The air smelled like oil, five-spice, and roasted duck. Red banners with gold calligraphy hung above shop doors, half-faded from years of sun. Somewhere, a shopkeeper swept the sidewalk. The hum of traffic on Broadway never stopped, but inside these streets, it was different. More contained. More deliberate.

Alicia moved like she belonged here. Not in ownership, but in familiarity. Her steps never hesitated. Her hands stayed tucked in her jacket pockets. Her shoulders squared slightly as she passed a group of men unloading crates outside a market.

I didn’t like following people. But here, I had no choice.

“How was Christmas?” I asked.

Alicia shrugged. “Busy.”

I smirked. “That’s not an answer.”

She glanced at me, the corner of her mouth twitching. “It’s the only one I have.”

Because Christmas in Chinatown wasn’t Christmas in Bakersfield. There was no shutting down, no slow collapse into warmth and laziness. No gift cards given with half an effort. Just another day. Another meal to serve. Another task to complete.

Then finally, she said, “Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

She smirked. “That’s not how it works here.”

“Here?”

She stepped onto the curb. Her breath curled in the cold air.

“Here isn’t like Harvard.”

I already knew that.

A little girl pressed her nose to a restaurant window as we passed. A group of old men sat on plastic stools outside a shop, eating from Styrofoam containers. Alicia smiled at all of them—at the girl, the men, the baker outside the corner shop who waved as we went by.

We stopped at a small red door beside a restaurant. She picked up a key from the frame and unlocked it. She stepped through and let me follow.

A dim hallway. A narrow flight of stairs.

The door closed behind us.

She looked at me, kissed me, pressed against me—and then collected herself again.

“Here,” she said, “I’m Lí Xuě. You can use Lí.”

She paused.

“Tomorrow, we have a seminar. Harvard-sanctioned. It’s… important that you remember that. You must remember why you’re here.”

And just like that, Alicia was gone.

Lí Xuě.

Her family was lovely. Hospitable, warm, full of love—for me. I could see how suffocating it was for her.

Because she had been made my servant. My guide. My responsibility. And I couldn’t even laugh about it. I’d seen it before, in other houses, in other forms. But never with someone I wanted to pull free.

Shavonne would probably make a study in sociology out of it. But this wasn’t a story I would give her.

Above all else, it was a home. Lived in to the fullest extent. Every inch accounted for. Every space designed to serve more than one purpose. Nothing wasted. No excess.

The hallway was narrow, lined with shoes stacked in careful disarray—some worn daily, some saved for occasions, some too small to belong to Alicia but still there, because throwing them out wasn’t an option. The scent of old leather and dust mixed with the sharper tang of cleaning agents.

The walls were close and warm. Off-white paint, slightly dulled by years of use, yet meticulously clean.

Every action had purpose, just like every word in Mandarin—some peppered with English, so I could understand what I was meant to. And ignore what I wasn’t.

It didn’t smell like food. It smelled like preparation. Oils, spices… soy, and something I couldn’t place. Not quite garlic, not quite vinegar. The scent wasn’t contained—it had seeped into the furniture, the sweaters, the air itself.

The whole place felt seasoned. Like the walls had absorbed years of cooking and voices and movement and expectation.

The kitchen wasn’t a kitchen. It was an intersection. A command center.

Alicia’s mother didn’t cook. She orchestrated. She yelled across rooms—at Alicia’s brother, her cousin…...