"But," I say, smiling at her as I let her hair go. I bring her close to me and give her a hug. "But look, Chella. I'm kind of dangerous in that respect. I don't think it would work for us."

She clicks her tongue. "Bric! Who turns down dirty submissive sex? This was my present to you and you're ruining it!"

I laugh and hug her, my hand rubbing the curve of her ass cheek. "I can give you a taste If you like. I can do that much. But take my word on this, sweetie. You're not ready for the kind of dominance I display. But I can still be fun. And I can still make it hurt."

"I've been bad, Mr. Bricman," she says again in her sultry voice, looking up at me with her smoky eyes. "Very, very bad."

We both laugh this time.

"I bet you have, you little whore. Lie face down with your head in my lap."

She does it without question. And damn, I'm sorry I didn't realize earlier she might be into this. I'd have taken her downstairs and taught her how to submit to me properly instead of allowing her to become Rochelle's replacement.

But it's done now. And there's no way to go back.

She will be Smith's... eventually.

But tonight she's mine.

I spank her. Hard. The sound of my hand on her ass cheeks fills the room.

I spank her until she comes all over my fingers.

Chapter Thirty-Two - Quin.

Christmas night, at exactly midnight, I make my way up to Chella's apartment. I've been dying to see her all day. All three of us have. We've been downstairs the whole time waiting to see if she'd come down. For breakfast, then lunch, then dinner.

But she didn't. She stayed inside and kept to herself.

I wonder if the holidays are hard for her? If she thinks about her childhood. I don't know much about what happened, but I don't need to know much. What happened with her father the other night is explanation enough.

She was neglected. Somehow, some way.

The door is unlocked when I try the knob and when I enter, there's Christmas music playing and the remnants of wrapping paper and boxes all over the living room floor.

We give her the real presents on Christmas Eve, but Bric came back up here early this morning while she was still sleeping and stacked dozens of presents under her tree.

We got her toys.

A dollhouse, Barbies, sparkling, glittery craft kits, a stereo-people don't get those anymore, but it was something you asked for at Christmas as a teenager back in the day. We got her a diary, and some Lego sets. All the things she missed out on growing up.

"Chella?" I call into the apartment. She's nowhere to be seen.

"Back here!" A faint yell from the bedroom.

I walk down the hallway and enter the bedroom, find it empty. "Chella? Where are you?"

"Up here!" she calls again, this time louder. "In the closet."

"In the closet?" I walk over to the closet-hers, not ours-and peek inside. "What the fuck?"

Chella's head pops out from the attic door in the ceiling. "Hey. Come up here."

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Where the hell did this ladder come from?"

"It's an attic, Quin. And it's my present to you." She smiles, her head hanging upside down, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. "Come on. I'm dying to show you this. I've been keeping it a secret for a week and I can't take it anymore."

I climb up the steep attic ladder and peek inside as she scoots away and backs up against a small circular window at the far end of the room, her head outlined by the lights around the gold dome of the capitol building. "What the fuck is all this?"

"What does it look like?" Chella asks. "Or, who does it look like?"

I take it all in. A small shabby Christmas tree is lit up on the opposite end as Chella. It's decorated with white lights and ornaments made of old paper. There's dozens of vintage suitcases stacked around the perimeter walls. Those little hand-cases women used to carry makeup and toiletries in back in the Fifties and Sixties. And there's a fuzzy pink rug on the floor.

"It looks like... Rochelle," I say, sadness filling my heart.

"It is Rochelle," Chella says. "I found this place by accident last week. And even I saw it immediately. She came up here, I guess. Her little secret room. Her little private life. And I don't think Bric knows about it."

"No," I say, crawling across the rug and sitting cross-legged in front of Chella. "He'd have thrown it all away if he did."

"Yeah, that's why I didn't tell him. I figure all this stuff belongs to you. And look," she says, crawling over to an old record player, the kind that comes in a case. "There's music too." She flips a switch and the turn table begins to spin. When she lifts the arm and places the needle on the 45 record, it starts to play Blue Christmas.

"Fuck," I say.

Chella frowns. "Is this making you sad? I didn't want to make you sad."

"No," I say, laying back on the rug and closing my eyes, two fingers massaging my temple to drive away the headache I feel coming. "I'm not sad."

I'm devastated. I just don't want it to show.

"I miss her so fucking much."

Chella crawls over to me and lies down. She wraps an arm around my waist and places her head against my chest. "I'm sorry she left. And I wish I knew where she went. Because I'd tell you, Quin. I promise, I would."

I slip an arm under her and start playing with her hair as I imagine all the nights Rochelle and I spent together listening to these old records. "Blue Christmas. That's pretty much how I feel right now."

"Open your eyes and look up," Chella says.

I do. And on the ceiling is... a work of art. "Jesus," I whisper. "What is all that?"

"Her," Chella says. "She has a thing for dandelions."

I get a stabbing pain in my heart. "I used to pick her dandelions every summer. Whole bouquets of them. When they were yellow, she'd put them in a vase." And there on the ceiling is the vase filled with our weedy flowers. "And then in late summer I'd pick her wishes." I smile at that thought. "Millions of wishes."

Chella points to the ceiling. "Like that?"

It's a self-portrait of Rochelle. She's not a painter-as least, not as far as I knew-but it resembles her enough for me to recognize her. She's blowing the wishes away.

"What was her wish, Quin? Did she ever tell you?"

"Her wish..." I say, thinking about it. It has been so long since we thought of our relationship in terms of the arrangement. "Her wish was to... belong to someone."

We sigh together. "I think that might be my wish too," Chella says.

"Really?" I ask, turning my head so I can see her in profile.

"Yeah. Bric and Smith have both asked me, but I don't feel like telling them."

"But you'll tell me?"

She nods slowly. "I like telling you things. You tell me things, I tell you things. You're the perfect Number Two, Quin. Easy to love, just like Smith said. And easy to laugh with too."

"I like you too, Chella. And if I had my way, we'd stay in this arrangement forever."

"But we won't, will we?"

"No," I say. "It never lasts."

More sighing from both of us. "What's all that writing?" I ask, pointing to the ceiling.

"It's a song," Chella says. "An old church song. I'll Fly Away. Have you ever heard it?"

I shake my head. Sick. So sick for not knowing this about the girl I loved.

"I can play it," Chella says. "She has the record."

When I say nothing Chella gets up on her knees and crawls over to the record player. Anything is better than Blue Christmas. She takes that record off, plops a new record on, and then starts the music with a loud crackling noise.

Then she crawls back to me and lies back down. Points to the ceiling. "The words are up there. She wrote them all out."

I follow along with the song, reading her words, dying inside.

"She's dead, isn't she?" I ask.

"No," Chella says softly, leaning into me to kiss my cheek. "I don't think so."

"That song is about dying, Chella. Whatever this is, whatever reason she had for doing all this. She did it as a goodbye."

Chella lets out a long exhale. "She left, so that is a goodbye. But I don't think she left to kill herself, Quin."

"The song is about death," I say, too loud.

"I didn't know her well, Quin. Not at all, hardly. But if there's one thing I understood about Rochelle, it's that she's not a literal person. She's an artist. A musician. Maybe a painter and a poet. But she didn't write out those lyrics on the ceiling as a premonition of her suicide. She wrote as them as a memorial to your love."

"So our love is dead." That doesn't help.

"Maybe it's just a new beginning?" Chella asks. "Maybe she just wanted out of this arrangement? Did that ever occur to you?"

"Then why not tell me?" I ask, turning my head to look at Chella. "Why just... pick up and leave? She knew the rules."

"Maybe I don't know all the rules of Taking Turns, Quin. But it's my understanding that once you walk out, there's no turning back."

I don't answer.

"So maybe she left to end the game and give the two of you a chance to start over?"

"I'm supposed to look for her?" I want to throw up. "And I didn't. She's been gone for a month. She could be anywhere. She probably thinks-"

"She probably thinks it's gonna take a while for you to sort it all out, Quin. So don't jump to conclusions."

The song ends and the needle plays endless static as it jumps the open space at the center of the record.

"I think this is over now," I say.

"Yeah," Chella says in a low, sad whisper. "I think so too."

We lie there in the static of nothingness for a little longer. And then Chella gets up and crawls over to the record player again, picking up the needle and turning it off. "Come on," she says, tugging on my hand. "Let's go to sleep."

She climbs down from the attic and I follow a few second later. She's changing out of her dress and into a t-shirt and shorts. I walk across the hall, into the closet I share with Bric and Smith, and slowly undress until I'm only wearing gray boxer briefs.

Chella is waiting for me in bed, holding the covers open so I can climb in. I flip off the light and then pull her close.

"Merry Christmas," she says, holding on to me tight.

"Merry Christmas, Chella," I say, hugging her back.

We sleep like that. Clutching each other like we don't want to let go.

But we both know it's time to let go.

Chapter Thirty-Three - Smith.

"So tonight?" I'm trying my best to be cool with this, but I'm not cool with this.

"That's what she told Quin."

Chella made herself very clear the other night. She wants to experience the four of us together. The quad, as we like to call it. And I'll admit, this was my aim as well when we first started the game.