As the truck pulled in and parked behind Christie and her rental car throne, her sister looked up in confusion at Kyle behind the wheel, spotted her seated next to him in the passenger seat, narrowed her eyes in fury, and jumped to her feet, ready, no doubt, to tear her a new one. She groaned, and slid down the seat.

"Shit."

"Family?" Kyle asked.

Instead of answering she heaved a sigh and opened the door, willing herself to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Her sister was already flying towards her as she slammed the heavy passenger door shut behind her, and before she could brace herself, Christie was upon her.

Except instead of grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, or yelling and screaming at her, or, even worse, hissing in quiet whispers all of the ways she had failed at being a sister and a daughter and a wife, Christie wrapped her arms around her and hugged her so tightly and with such force that the two of them stumbled backwards.

And then, to her utter horror, Christie began to cry. To sob really. First a wail escaped her sister's lips, which later, when she replayed the moment in her memory, she realized was a mangled attempt at saying her name, "Courtney," as though Christie had needed to name her to make her real. And then the crying and the hysterical river of words, none of which made any sense, but all of which combined made clear the terror and despair her sister must have been sitting with since arriving at her broken shell of a house.

"Christie," she said, trying to disentangle herself from her sister's iron embrace, "Christie, I'm okay, I'm here. It's okay."

Of all the awful scenes she had been envisioning in the two days since her sister's threat of imminent arrival, this was not only completely unexpected but also by far the worst. She hadn't witnessed her sister cry since their father's funeral; Christie hadn't even squeezed out a tear for their mother, leaving her to wonder if the years of caretaking and loss had hardened her sister's heart into a lump of steel, or else caused it to disintegrate entirely.

Apparently not.

"You idiot!" Christie was crying out through her tears. This, at least, was more familiar ground. "You stupid little idiot, how could you do that to me? How could you leave your phone off and just disappear on me like that? What were you thinking?"

Her sister was finally loosening her hold on her, pulling away to better berate her. But then, instead of continuing her tirade, Christie began hiccupping, which then launched her into another uncontrollable crying jag and more violent hugging.

Her sister was trying to whisper something into her ear now, through the hiccupping and the sobs.

"What? What did you say?" she asked, and awkwardly tried to pat her sister's back in a soothing motion that characters on TV and movies often used at these moments.

"I said—" her sister hiccupped again. "I said, I am going to kill you as soon as I stop crying."

"Oh yeah," she replied. "I kind of figured."

***

After their last phone conversation, her sister had gone online and booked a flight to San Antonio. The next morning she had turned on the television to a morning news update that included a brief mention of tornadoes tearing through her sister's corner of Texas, and thus she had spent the next 24 hours, when she wasn't actually sitting on an airplane, making increasingly urgent and desperate phone calls to every hospital and police station between San Antonio and the Gulf Coast.

"Why didn't you call me you ninny?" Christie asked, after she had finally calmed down enough to speak in full sentences. At some point Cam had arrived in his truck, and the two men had tactfully wandered off into the wreckage of her house and left the sisters to themselves. "Why did you leave your phone off? Did you want me to think you were dead? Were you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"I didn't have a signal on my phone!" she said in defense. They were both sitting on the trunk of the rental car now, one of Christie's arms still wrapped around her, as though she still didn't trust her not to run off and disappear again. She was getting an uncomfortable crick in her neck from having to twist her head sideways since her sister insisted, as usual, on speaking face to face.

"You could have found a way!" her sister snapped back irritably. "I know this is Texas, but it's the 21st century. You could have found a working phone somewhere."

"I-I'm sorry. I guess I didn't think."

"You rarely do," Christie replied, but instead of launching into a rant, her face crumpled into tears again. "Do you know what it was like to drive through all the wreckage along the roads from the airport to here, and wondering the whole time what I was going to find when I reach your address? And then to find this?"

Her sister jabbed her thumb back over her shoulder at the remains of her house.

"I thought you were dead Courtney," she said, managing a withering tone of reproach even as the tears ran down her face. "I though you were dead. I even went in there looking for you."

"Jesus Christie, I am sorry," she said. "I really, really am."

***

Luckily here sister had been too broken down with worry and tears to display more than a passing look of suspicion when she had finally gotten around to introducing Kyle and Cam. It was still enough to make her blush, and then tremble when, instead of flatly insisting on a hotel, her sister had immediately accepted their invitation to stay at their house.

"We have an extra bedroom for you, and you're welcome to stay as long as you need," Kyle said, as Cam lifted boxes of books and other belongings scavenged from the rubble into the back of his truck.

"Oh, you probably want to stay somewhere in town, they live way out, way way out. We could get a hotel together or something," she hurriedly offered. Of course, that only made her sister even more suspicious, but she only raised her eyebrows and smiled.

"I would love to take you up on your offer if you don't mind," Christie said to Kyle. "Apparently most of the places around here are booked up with people who lost their homes."

Before she could open her mouth again in protest a fourth vehicle had pulled up on the road in front, her landlord at the wheel.

"Melvin," she groaned. Just who she needed to make it a party. She blushed furiously when she noticed that not only had Kyle stepped closer to her, as though to shield her from the interloper, but Cam had abruptly put down a box of her things and headed over toward her as well. She felt absurd with the two men flanked on either side of her, her self-appointed bodyguards.

If Christie took notice, however, she didn't show it. She was too busy studying Melvin as he struggled out of his car, a filthy t-shirt barely covering his enormous, pale belly roll.

"So that's your weasely landlord, huh?" she murmured, then without waiting for an answer she strode quickly and purposefully toward him.

"Oh no, Christie—" she said, starting to follow her sister, but Kyle put a hand on her arm.

"Let her talk to him," he suggested. "She seems to know what she is doing, and I have a feeling Melvin won't know what hit him. Let's finish collecting your things."

Since the thought of stumbling into a confrontation between her sister and her landlord was more horrifying than not, she turned away and followed Kyle into her shattered house so she could confront the wreckage of her life.

***

She expected to find little left to salvage, especially since Kyle and Cam had combed through her belongings several times already, but she was still unprepared for all that she had lost. After stumbling through the rooms, stepping carefully over jagged sheets of broken glass and splintered wood, she finally returned to the remains of her book collection, spread across a corner of the living room. At first she had used her foot to pick through the mushy blocks of wet paper, then finally sank to her knees in exhaustion and defeat. She had neglected to check the floor before dropping down to it, and immediately felt the sting of something sharp piercing her right shin, but she found she didn't care, not enough to move. In fact, a part of her shuddered in relief at the pain, the way it anchored her to the present instead of the regretful past or the uncertain future.

A pair of strong, rough hands gripped her sides and yanked her to her feet.

"Stop it, Courtney." It was Cam. Of course it was. She struggled to remove herself from his grasp, but to no avail. He was too strong for her.

"I said stop it," he hissed, and flipped her around to face him. "What do you think you're doing? You're bleeding through your goddamn jeans."

She knew he was right without looking, and she was furious at him for pulling her away from the momentary sense of release and control the pain and its growing wound had given her.

"Let go of me Cam!" she whispered, aware that her sister or Kyle could come upon them at any moment. "It's none of your goddamn business. I'm not—"

She stopped herself from saying "Madysen." Or even worse, "one of your little whores." She couldn't forgive him, this poor kid, for his dalliances with Madysen and God knows who else. She knew she was being unfair, but her anger and embarrassment at being caught by Cam in the act of self-immolation was too strong.

"I'm not some idiotic teenaged girl you can push around and—" but before she could finish he had gently, but firmly pushed her up against a wall and clamped a hand across her mouth. He pressed the full length of his body against hers, pinning her securely in place; his other arms wrapped around her waist.

"Hush now Courtney," he breathed into her ear, and her insides convulsed at the feel of his warmth and the smell of his scent. She hadn't been this close to him since the night of the storm, and now she realized how much she had yearned for him, for the steadying presence of his touch, no matter how rough. She stared at his unsmiling face, so close to her own, searching for some sign of the tenderness he had shown her previously.

"Baby," he said, his voice soft and reassuring now; as usual, he had read her mind. He continued to keep his hand pressed against her mouth, however, forcing her to breathe through her nose. "I will hurt you as much as you want. Don't do it without me, okay? You're carrying my baby now. Can you do that for me? Can you wait for me to hurt you like you need?'

Her face burned and tingled as the blood rushed to it at the sound and import of his words. Horrified, she felt the beginning of an orgasm grip her from within; she nodded vehemently, needing to get him away from her if she had any hope of fighting it back. But he only smiled at her, reminding her of a cat with its paw on a struggling bird.

"I'm not letting you go until you cum for me, Courtney," he murmured. "And you better hurry up if you don't want an audience."

But even as he said it, her body constricted in a spasm of exquisite, sharp-edged desire, and suddenly she was gasping and arching her back, and struggling to keep her moans as silent as possible. She trembled and shook against his hard, lean chest as he grinned at her in triumph.