Now she looked terrified, grabbing me by the shoulders. “You can’t tell anyone! You promised. I’ll be blacklisted and my career will be over.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m not going to tell them about you. If it’s okay with you, I’ll tell them about me. He was a former client of mine at the dungeon. He was frequently inappropriate, but the last time he assaulted me. I used the panic button and had him banned from ever going back to the dungeon where I work or any other dungeon we have a relationship with. This is clearly a pattern for him, and I can’t stand by and keep letting it happen.”

I unhooked my choker and held the key out to her. “I’d like you to take this and wear it. If you give me your phone, I’ll download the app it pairs with and set it up for you. You don’t have to speak up. You need to deal with this on your own terms and I’ve had much longer to process it. But I need to know you’re safe. If he tries anything again, you hold this button down and it’ll alert me through the app. I can also set it up to alert someone else if you’re okay with that. Maybe Alex since I won’t always be on set?”

“No. We’d have to tell him why.”

“He’s a good man, Melody. I trust him. You can too.”

“I’ll think about it, but not yet.”

“Okay, you let me know if you want to add someone. In the meantime, if I get an alert from you and I’m not here, I’ll be contacting security if I don’t hear from you immediately to confirm you’re okay. Since sometimes I’m with clients and don’t have my phone, it’s going to default to calling emergency services if one of us doesn’t deactivate it to say you’re fine.”

“Thank you,” she said, hugging me again.

Once I’d set things up on her phone, I made sure she was okay one more time, gave her the info for a therapist friend if she wanted to talk to someone, and left to do what needed to be done.

43

Alex

I stood in front of the mirror in my trailer, fully in costume. Leather pants and heavy boots, shirtless with elaborately painted tattoos winding around my chest and arms, a massive fur cloak draped around my shoulders—a beast I’d supposedly slain with my bare hands. It was impossible not to feel like a badass motherfucker in a cloak.

I was staring at my reflection trying to block out all the noise of my personal life and find an isolated place in my head where I could become the character, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Elena’s eyes would light up when she saw me fully transformed into Lucas Steel. He didn’t wear suspenders, but I was willing to bet once I put his leather gloves on she didn’t stand a chance. I hoped these tattoos didn’t smudge easily.