"I am!" And I thought I was.

His face dipped closer and I watched his eyes go a weird mixture of warm and intense. I'd never seen anything like that before and I had a feeling it did not bode well for me.

I was right.

"Sadie, a month ago, I got back to the office after finishing a job with Luke and walked into a stairwell to see you, literally, fall on your face because you didn't have the strength to hold yourself up."

I pulled in my breath so sharply, my lungs started to burn.

He kept talking. "You were wearin' nothin' but a torn nightgown and you were covered in blood. I carried you to the Explorer and you couldn't even hold your head up. You passed out in my lap after you told me there was no one to care if you woke up. I live to be a hundred, mamita, I'll never forget it. Not one fuckin' second of it."

I closed my eyes and tried to turn my face away, hateful, humiliating memories charging through my brain and making my blood run cold. I didn't want these memories but more, it was unthinkable that Hector shared them with me.

His hand at the side of my head put gentle pressure there to keep me facing him, foiling my mini-escape Hector plan. I opened my eyes again and he was still looking at me with that warm intensity.

"The next day, the two men in your kitchen walked into your hospital room, they took one look at the state of you and it rocked their world."

The burning in my lungs intensified.

"Stop talking," I whispered.

He didn't stop talking. "Then they did everything in their power to take care of you and help you heal. And, from what I can see, they did a damn fine job of it."

"Please stop talking." I was still whispering.

Hector still didn't stop talking. "A few nights ago, I watched you walk away from a bartender who hadn't finished your order, you went down the hall, past the bathroom and then you disappeared out the backdoor. I followed you only to find you'd walked right into the hands of Harvey Balducci. He had you clean off the ground, you were fightin' him and you were losin'. Daisy didn't stop me, I would have squeezed the life out of him and you didn't stop Daisy, she would have kept on beatin' him."

"Hector "

He shook his head to stop my interruption and kept talking. "You don't have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, so I'll explain it to you. Sadie, these are the actions of people who care about you. What happens to you happens to you but, in a way, it also happens to the people around you that care about you."

I felt tears start to sting my eyes and I clenched my teeth to stop them.

Hector saw it and his face dipped even closer. "If you're in danger, they got a right to know. You keep it from them, somethin' happens to you and you end up "

"Enough!" I snapped.

My finely honed defense mechanism clicked into place and Sorceress of the Antarctic made an appearance precisely when I needed her.

Finally!

My back straightened, my chin lifted and, even though I couldn't see them, I knew my eyes weren't warm and they were no longer filled with tears. They were shards of ice.

"Fine," I clipped, my voice cold.

Hector's eyes went even more intense as they scanned my face.

Then he murmured as if to himself, "Fuckin' hell, I lost her."

I ignored his words because there was no point in responding. He had, indeed, lost her.

New Sadie was a memory. She had to be, this was no place for her.

"I'll talk to Buddy and Ralphie. You do," I hesitated, "whatever you have to do."

"Sadie " he started, giving me a gentle squeeze.

"No," I interrupted him and pulled away. Yanking out of his arm and jerking my head from his hand, I took a step back. "It's fine. You're right, perfectly right. Thank you for the lesson in kindness and morality. You're right about that too, I don't know much about that either."

His eyes flashed and he clipped out a, "God damn it," but I was already out the door.

I marched back to the kitchen so fast my robe flew out behind me.

I halted inside the kitchen and looked at Buddy and Ralphie who were both sitting close together at the island, Buddy's arm was around Ralphie's shoulders. When their faces turned to me, I noticed they looked worried.

Blooming heck!

I felt Hector enter the kitchen but I ignored him. I prepared to make an Ice Princess Speech, something I'd never really had to do before but I figured I could pull it off.

It was time to be mistress of my own destiny or I'd lose everything. I was sick of losing and I was going to put a stop to it, right fucking now.

I took a deep breath and charged in. "Last night, a couple of hours after Hector left, Marty Balducci called me and he was angry about me pressing charges against his brothers. He said he was going to take care of Harvey and Ricky and I'd been a stupid bitch," I announced.

Buddy's arm dropped from around Ralphie's shoulders, they both straightened and I kept talking.

"He told me I was going to pay."

Ralphie's eyes closed slowly. Buddy's face went tight.

I went right on talking. "He called me the c-word."

Ralphie's eyes flew open and he gasped.

"Twice," I went on.

"The c-word?" Ralphie breathed, his face getting red.

"Yes," I clipped then continued. "Hector's people are monitoring my cell calls. One of them heard it, told Hector and he came back around."

"Why didn't you come to us last night? We're just across the hall," Buddy asked me.

"I didn't want to wake you," I answered.

"You..." Buddy's eyes were wide then he shook his head in disbelief. "You didn't want to wake us?"

"That's right," I told him, my voice pure ice but I watched with a sinking heart as Buddy started to look mad and I knew he was mad at me.

I hated it that he was mad at me but I kept going and this time my glacial gaze slid across the whole room including in its frosty path Hector, who was now standing by the island, leaned against it, taking in my performance with a blank face and his arms crossed on his chest.

"Now, what you all don't understand, but I'll explain to you, is that this isn't unusual for me. Dealing with these kinds of people, this kind of behavior, it doesn't faze me. It's been my life for twenty-nine years. I will admit that I've never been the target but I also know how these people work. These are my people, this is my world and you have my sincere apologies for dragging you all into it with me."

"Sadie, sweetie " Ralphie was getting up but I lifted my hand and shook my head. He took one look at my face, blinked slowly and settled, wordlessly (a miracle!), back on his stool.

"I don't know what to do but I'll figure something out and I'll inform you of my plans when I've come to some conclusions. In the meantime, I know that the situation is grave and I appreciate all your help in keeping me safe." I was barreling toward my grand finale and I swept across the room, snatched my coffee cup from the counter and started toward the door. "Now, I'm getting ready for work." My eyes went to Hector. "Enjoy the brioche and have a nice day," I finished.

Then on that I made the best exit I could on bare feet with no makeup, my heart in my throat, my stomach in a knot and while wearing silky, lacy pajamas and a robe that, I realized belatedly, I should have tied closed.

I got to the foot of the stairs thinking I'd made a clean getaway and no one would hear me if I cried in the shower when an arm sliced around my waist, laying waste to any hope of a successful exit.

In a smooth move that had to be in contention for the Smoothest Move in the History of Man, Hector curled me around to face him, took my coffee cup out of my hand, leaned to the side, placed it on a stair (without spilling a drop!), came back to me and locked his other arm around me, both of them going tight.

When he was done with this, my heart was hammering, I looked up at his blank face, Sorceress of the Antarctic thankfully still firmly in place.

"Let me go," I demanded.

"Not a chance," Hector returned instantly, the blank look disappearing as his eyes flashed with annoyance. Then he said what I personally thought was bizarrely, "Spent a year hopin' you'd give me the opportunity to try this. Now that you have, I'm gonna take it and we'll see how it plays out."

Before I could ask what he was talking about or demand him to let me go again or, better still, tear out of his arms and make a run for it, one of his hands slid up my back into my hair, his head lowered, I opened my mouth to protest and his mouth was on mine.

I put my hands to his shoulders to push him away at the same I pulled my head back but his head came with mine, his tongue slid inside my mouth and (damn and blast!) my Sorceress of the Antarctic disintegrated right on the spot.

His heat hit me (and another kind of heat hit me in other places) and my hands stopped pushing at his shoulders. I went up on tiptoe, my casted hand curled around his neck, the fingers of my other hand slid into his thick hair.

Apparently unable to control myself, I pressed into him and kissed him back.

This was one of his urgent, fiery kisses. The ones that tore through me, taking all reason and rational thought with it and leaving me with nothing but the heat and the desire to lose myself completely in the kiss and in him.

Right when it was getting good and, later, when I thought about it, when I knew that he knew that he had me right where he wanted me, his mouth broke from mine. He lifted his head barely an inch but he kept me locked to him.

His eyes were as fiery as the kiss and back to intense and they scanned my face quickly before he said, "Now that my Sadie is back, I'll tell her that I'll be at the gallery to pick her up and take her to the hospital to have the cast removed. I don't give a fuck if Bex is there, mamita, you aren't fuckin' goin' without me and I won't be pleased if you make me look for you. I'll also tell you that tonight, we're goin' out to dinner, just the two of us. We're gonna enjoy the goddamned meal and after we're gonna have another talk. If I'm not at the gallery to pick you up at closing then I'll be here at the house at seven."

I was breathing heavily and trying to sort out my thoughts when he continued.

"You do somethin' stupid, Sadie, Buddy, Ralphie and I'll have a conversation and we might have to rethink your situation and you may not like what we come up with. But I'm tellin' you this, I'm keepin' you safe and you agreed to let me take care of you and that's what I'm fuckin' gonna do whether you like it or not."

Then without another word he let me go.

I teetered a bit without his arms around me and his body to lean into and before I got myself sorted, he'd walked around me without looking back.

When I turned and stared into the living room doorway, he was nowhere to be seen.

After a couple of seconds, I heard Ralphie ask from the kitchen, "Is she okay?"

"She will be," was Hector's very firm and also very annoyed answer.

I closed my eyes.

This was not going well for me.

Not at all.

I stared at my exposed wrist and felt a weird sense of calmness settle in me.

My wrist looked kind of strange but the cast was gone.

I only thought about the cut on my face when I saw myself in a mirror or noticed someone's gaze on it. I could forget it, sometimes lately for hours.

But for the last five weeks, the cast was a second-by-second reminder of what Ricky Balducci did to me.

And now it was gone.

I pulled in a deep breath as I let the calm settle. One more step toward healing. One more step toward the time when I might go whole days or even weeks without remembering.

"Sadie, girl," Bex called and I looked up at her and I couldn't help it, I smiled.

Bex and I were alone in an exam room. They'd taken the cast off then a physical therapist had shown me some exercises to strengthen my wrist. He gave me a squeezy ball and some leaflets filled with instructions and diagrams. He left and the nurse had gone off to get the paperwork for me to sign and then we could go.

Hector was there but outside the room talking on his cell.

As Hector told me, he showed up at Art at ten to two (double-parking again) just in time to take me to the hospital. In preparation (because I figured Hector would do as he said and I was not wrong), I called Bex and asked her to meet us there.

On the way over, I'd given Hector a blast of The Ice but he acted like I was "His Sadie" (whoever the heck that was) and not a wintry cold bitch, thus he totally ignored The Ice.

This, I had to admit, both irritated me and kind of scared me but I'd started practicing The Ice Treatment when I was eleven. Eighteen years and I'd perfected the art of The Ice Treatment. I knew if I stuck with it, I could and would deep freeze Hector.

Eventually.

I mentally shook my thoughts clear and said to Bex, "Yes?"

Her eyes moved to the door and back to me. "What's going on with Hector?" she asked. "You two seeing each other?"

Even though I wanted to explain it to her, I didn't.

Firstly, she might not get it. Secondly, she might feel like giving me a lecture and I could not deal with another lecture right now. Hector had delivered the powder room and hallway lectures and after I came down from getting ready both Buddy and Ralphie had lectured me in a gay roommate tag-team talking to and I had to say I was up to there with well meaning lectures. Lastly, I was feeling a calm I hadn't felt in a long time and I didn't want anything to shatter that.

So I responded, "Kind of."

"You been intimate?" she asked.

By the way, Bex was a pretty straightforward woman, she could be softly-softly but most of the time she cut to the chase.

I pulled my lips in, feeling the calm slip away and then replied, "Just making out a couple of times."

It was her turn to smile. "That's good."

She didn't know the half of it.