Page 319 of Deep Cover

Well. Things change.

Other than that and a handful of fat paperback novels I couldn't remember reading, some t-shirts and jeans, some fluttery tops my alter egos wore, a toothbrush that was practically growing cobwebs, there wasn't much of me here. Hadn't Mark and I shared a life? Apparently what we shared didn't add up to material possessions.

Standing there, looking at the bed, I thought of all the changes I'd gone through. Everyone says undercover changes you. Then again, they say that about anything traumatic. Psychotherapy changes you. Couples split up after one partner goes in and makes changes. Trauma changes you. Parents who lose a child often split.

I was looking for answers, had been for a while. I didn't want to be married to a fellow cop, undercover or not. That was too much of the job and too much stress. I didn't want to marry an adventurer necessarily, someone I had to race to catch up to.

But for the last year I'd considered Mark – not boring - But tame. He was too soft, I thought. Too easily hurt by my job. Too easily afraid. Too prone to feeling abandoned.

That's what I'd been working on while asking myself what I'd wanted from him if he himself hadn't been enough after a while.

But that wasn't it. I stood staring at the bed, where once in a while he'd handcuffed me. Sometimes I reacted in fury, shouting him off me, making him free me. But rough – I'd liked it rough with him, feeling like when he held me down with elbows and knees, he was getting the real me, somehow. Or – what? Just matching the crazy girl who wanted to be a police officer and stop bad guys.

That wasn't quite it either.

Standing here now in an apartment that didn't feel like it had ever been mine, I realized that every moment of our relationship had been dominated by Mark. Before the Brotherhood, before the fentanyl and Cole St. Martin and the rainforest cure, before my search through San Francisco and Las Vegas and all the changes, I'd thought when asked by the PD shrink or my CO or anyone at all that I was with Mark because he was my solid ground. My sanity. My love, my life, the reason I came home again. (Sometimes. Occasionally. When I wasn't undercover.)

I thought as time went by that I was staying with him because I hadn't found the time to stay home and the emotions and words to release him. Any time I came even close, he begged to stay with me. Determined. Hurt by the idea of anything else. He would wait. I wouldn't be undercover forever. Something would happen and it wouldn't be safe. I'd have to quit. We'd have some kind of a life together.

I thought I was sparing his feelings.

But now, looking at it through the lens of a Master/slave relationship, the version of it I saw with Cole's friends and the version of it I saw for myself, with Cole, I thought that every interaction with Mark had been about control. The things he asked for in the apartment, could I not do this or could I start to do this other thing. He was, I'd think, there a lot more than I was. Would it be so hard for me to grant his wishes?

No. Of course not. Except that it made me feel like I didn't really live there, was more of a guest.

And then more thoughts crowded in, faster. The way he contrived to get the emergency only cell number from my family – only my parents had it for that very reason, that Mark would call and compromise my safety and the job itself simply because he needed to connect with me. When he had called and it had been an emergency, still my first concern had been that he had that number and how very unsafe that was.

There was his desire when I was brought back from France where Vincent had held me. He and my father, tearing me away from Cole's compound. They knew nothing about the rest of the story, nothing about France and Vincent and Kie and still he had repeatedly insisted I needed a full invasive exam before I was admitted into the mental hospital. An exam he was going to do himself. That wasn't just control. That was punishment. For having been gone. For having, though he didn't know it, been abused.

And there was his insistence that he would wait for me. However long it took. That was manipulation and to an extent, it had worked. I never forgot that Mark was back in Seattle, training for his job as a surgeon which would keep him away from home for a lot of years but was apparently Mark-Approved, that he was in Seattle. Waiting for me. Patiently. Lovingly.

Or utterly controllingly.

I finished gathering what I wanted. School started summer session in a couple weeks. I'd be staying in a hotel until I found an apartment. Vegas had plenty of hotels. Cole had offered. But I needed the time.

Making sure I had gathered everything I was taking, I texted Mark.

I'm in town. I'll be at the apartment when you get back from work.

We need to talk.

47

Cole

The compound was silent when I got back from a long run. There were people present, working, but they weren't around me.

That was fine. I needed the time. To process Annie having left for school and that we'd be mostly out of touch.

To process that I missed her.

Ariel was somewhere, probably still in the maze. She still painted down there, though there was better light up top. She'd be with me for a few more months, acclimating, but she wasn'twithme.

Kie had gone off in an ambulance with Norcross the day before.

There was nothing I had to do. Maybe I'd work. Maybe I'd workout. Maybe I'd call –

Give her space.

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