The parts of me I’m always trying to tamp down. The parts of me Waylon says I’m too afraid of, unlike him. Those parts of me are saying something else. Asking for something else. Daring to wonder about all the wicked things I was too scared to consider before. Before Waylon.

I think on his demand—his requirement to come inside. And a question squeezes through, weak and small.

“What if…what if I'm afraid?” I asked him.

Waylon stills. Like a predator who’s scented blood.

“You afraid of me, angel?”

I nod. But this time, I add, “Of you…. And of myself.”

“You want me to make you?” he asks softly.

His eyes, so flat when he told his story, are back to glittering now. “You want me to make you go inside? Make you tell me the words I need to hear?”

It's a reprise of the same question he asked me outside the trailer. But not the same, I realize.

The question had been a derisive read of my cowardly character outside the trailer.

Here on the back porch of my dream house, it became a serious question. A genuine question.

A question that scratched at a dark itch I’ve never dared to acknowledge.

I listen. I listen to the words coming from my gut and my chest. And then I…

Then I nod.

I give my consent. I give my consent to the crazy devil.

But Waylon doesn’t move. Doesn’t surge forward to grab me like he did in the church library.

“Nodding worked before when the lesson was simple,” he tells me instead, his voice quiet but stern. “But this is something else, angel. I'm going to need you to say it out loud. Give me a yes, let me know this is what you want.”

Oh, God…Oh, God…

I’m sitting down, but my heart is beating like I've just run a sprint as I work up the courage to, for once in my adult life, say it. Say what I want.

“Yes,” I whisper after many, many moments. “I know it's wrong. You shouldn't…I shouldn't…maybe, we shouldn't be like this. But yes, that's what I want.”

“Aw, angel.” He raises a hand to my face and cups it, his calloused thumb scraping over my cheek. “We're the ones who had shit done to us. So we’re the ones who get to decide what's right and what's wrong for us. That’s the first rule for this new set of lessons. You got that?”

Strangely, I do. A weight I didn't know was sitting on my chest suddenly lifts as I realize the truth of his words.