“Don’t stop,” she whispers, and he doesn’t, his mouth moves between her legs over newer, smoother, unmarked territory, his teeth gently nipping at the crotch of her underwear before he pushes it to one side with his tongue and buries his face into her. She comes almost instantly, her shoulders pressing violently back into the armrest of the couch, but he doesn’t stop, and she is coming and coming and her legs are on fire and the sparkles are back, like constellations on the ceiling, bright and beckoning stars. “Fuck me,” she says, but he seems unsure, his eyes travelling up and down her legs until she reaches forward and grabs at the waist of his jeans and starts to unbutton his fly, pulling him down on top of her. The corduroy feels strange against her bare skin as they move back and forth, and at one point he stops and pulls out the box cutter from beneath her back, letting it drop to the floor before leaning back over her, his breath hot against her neck.

Afterward, he goes to the bathroom and comes back with a wad of damp toilet paper. “I couldn’t find anything else,” he says apologetically. Part of her is grateful that he hasn’t asked about what happened to her legs, but part of her wishes he had. If he really cared, wouldn’t he press her? Or maybe this is just Shawn being Shawn – if they don’t talk about it, then they don’t have to acknowledge it is happening. She doesn’t know anymore.

As he begins to clean her wounds, her skin feels tender, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did before. She wonders if she is just numb from the sex, or if it really wasn’t all that bad to begin with, if she was just being overly dramatic, a baby. Fainting like that, calling out for Shawn feebly over the phone. It all seems so ludicrous now, embarrassing. She grimaces, causing Shawn to stop.

“No, it’s okay,” she says. “Keep going.”

Shawn bows his head back over her leg. “We should really get you some Polysporin or something.”

“How did you find me, anyway?” she asks.

“It was the only place I could think you might be. It’s like a rock you wear around your neck, this house. It’s practically a part of you.”

Katriina thinks about telling him that it is, in fact, quite a big part of her now. But she decides against it. “And your mom?”

Shawn clenches his jaw. “Still missing. When I left the hospital they were trying to pull the security tapes, see if they could tell where she went. I doubt she left the hospital, I mean, she just woke up from a coma. Plus she has all those injuries. She couldn’t make it too far.”