I’m lying down in a pool of my own blood.

JB is pulling up his pants. He looks down at me. He is shaking his head and has this disappointed expression on his face.

“I didn’t want to have to do that to you,” JB explains to me, “I didn’t want to have to take you like that. Damn. See what you made me do?”

I want to be mad but at that moment I just feel a void. I could never believe in a million years that I honestly loved JB and he would violate me like this. I never thought he would actually be the one to hurt me. I’m shocked when it happens. My is on fire lying there on the bathroom floor. I can still feel his inside of me tearing me apart. The blood is still fresh on the bathroom floor.

JB is still panting low and deep. He’s still sweating.

That’s when I hear someone walk into the bathroom. At first I’m not paying attention to it. I’m so gone that I don’t care who it is. It isn’t until I hear a small rage that I realize that Mark has walked in on what just happened.

“What the ?” Mark asks.

The fighting starts. JB swings at Mark. He hits Mark. He’s so ing strong that I swear Mark ’s jaw has been broken. Mark recovers relatively quickly though. He goes back after JB tackling him to the ground and attempting to pin him. JB gets the best of him. He is on top of Mark . JB is so ing strong. He’s so ing powerful.

I know that I have to do something so I get on top of JB. I’m punching JB in the back of his head. He flings me across the room with one arm. I hit the wall hard but not before Mark picks him up and slams JB’s entire body into the sink!

There is a crashing sound at that moment.

JB is laying on the ground.

“Is he dead?”

JB isn’t moving. . JB was dead. He was dead. My heart is racing at that moment as I’m standing over him.

Mark reaches over to check his pulse, “No. He’s alive. Barely…but he’s alive…”

I don’t know how the this happened. I don’t know how things got so crazy with him. It was self-defense though.

“We need to call the cops.”

“Are you crazy? He is the cops. He is the POLICE chief.”

Mark had a point. We didn’t have a choice though. I knew Mark wasn’t all about following the rules but this wasn’t even about the rules. If we just left JB here JB could die. That would be a murder on our hands. Jackson would come wondering where he was. My blood was all over this bathroom from JB violating me. They would be able to connect the dots. Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to know it was . Maybe they would have thought it was just a fight or something. Still they’d know I was involved.

There is no other choice. “We need to call them…”

Mark nods, “OK.”

“You leave.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ll say me and JB got into a fight. I’m a Libra. I’m the heir to the High Liberty. They won’t charge me anything bad for attacking the police chief. You on the other hand…they would throw the book at you,” I respond.

“He FORCED himself on you.”

“You know they don’t care.”

“Call the cops and as soon as they show up, give them your statement and come back home,” Mark  tells me, “Don’t stick around at all.”

***

I get home later that evening. It’s just what I assumed it was. It was a frenzy of questions about what happened. I told them I had a concussion so I couldn’t answer too many questions. That was the only way they allowed me to leave because they assumed I was heading to the doctor. I knew it wasn’t over. The cops were out looking for blood about what happened.

Nyxx walks me into the apartment. It’s in the middle of the morning before I get home but Mark is up waiting for me. I never expected him to be up so late. He is at the door and he runs over to me at that moment. He hugs me.

All the doubts I had about Mark before seem to fade away when he hugs me. He keeps me close. It seems to last forever. It literally is a hug that lasts for about 10 minutes. He just keeps holding me tightly against his chest. I can’t move. I allow myself to feel his heart. I don’t care if Nyxx is watching us the entire time. I don’t think he cares either.

“I should have killed him,” he tells me.

I stop him from talking and look over at Nyxx, “Don’t.”

“I don’t care,” he responds shaking his head, “Man we should have both taken him out. He’s a strong motherer. He’s got a lot of training but we should have taken him out together.”

I don’t want to make this a big issue with Nyxx around. I grab him and walk him over to the couch. It’s not going to matter though because Nyxx follows us halfway over.

“I got that…thing we were talking about before the cops came,” I state.

Mark nods, “Good, but I don’t care about that right now. I should have never put you in that kind of situation. Did he go…all the way.”

“I’m OK really.”

“You can’t be OK,” Mark responds, “That was . Do you understand what just happened to you?”

Mark was right. Maybe I was still in shock about what happened. I’m worrying about this access card right now for some odd reason. I’m worrying about getting rid of Nyxx so we can have some privacy and figure out what we were going to do about the High Liberty. I’ve moved on so quickly that I haven’t taken the time to realize that I was really just . Mark is looking at me with raised eyebrows. He can’t believe how calm I’m acting.

Truth is I’m fine. Maybe it’s because I’m still in shock. Maybe it’s because it was JB. I don’t know what it is but right now I don’t feel like I’ve just been through a traumatic experience. Maybe it’ll hit me later but right now it didn’t.

“Mark I’m OK,” I tell him, “I’m just tired.”

He offers me his hand, “Let’s go to sleep.”

“Together?”

He nods.

“Together.”

Mark lets me soak in the tub. When I come back out he rubs me down with oils. It feels so good feeling catered to. I can tell he feels bad about what happened. I can tell that he wants me to get back on my feet with things.

“Is she at the door?” I ask him.

He nods, “Nyxx is trying spy. I’m sure of it. I put on the television though. We should be fine if we whisper. Come here. Come lay next to me.”

For some reason when I get in bed with Mark it feels real. He spoons me. I feel protected. I feel safe next to him. I feel like this is where I belong. It’s a weird feeling, but I think it’s mutual. He scoots close to me. It isn’t ual. It’s nothing like that. He just wants to comfort me I think. He presses his face up against my face and lets it rest there. We breathe on each other in silence for a minute. Maybe we are listening for Nyxx. Maybe we are just listening to each other breathe. I don’t know what it is but I know it feels right.

I know after a little while he is going to say something. I’m hoping it isn’t about the again. I know I’m wrong. I know this whole time laying here he is thinking about it. Mark ’s voice was full of intense emotion when he mentioned it in the living room. Not much has changed. I don’t want to talk about it. For some reason I want to act like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to see JB as that thing that I saw him as. I want to pretend like it never happened.

“I thought I lost you,” he responds, “Isn’t that crazy? You were just lying there in your own blood. All the arguments we had were petty all of a sudden. I just kept thinking about how the last thing we talked about was so misleading. You thought I had feelings for someone else.”

“Yugyeom.”

“I don’t care about Yugyeom,” Mark  says… “Not like how you think.”

“I saw you kiss him.”

“What you saw was me trading information with him,” he responds.

“What?”

“Think about it. When you are being intimate with someone people don’t realize what you guys are doing. We were really having a conversation and it looked like we were kissing,” he responds, “It’s Yugyeom’s idea. Public affection shames people into looking away and not paying too much attention. He didn’t want to be identified.”

“Well I identified him,” I explain.

“You cared enough to keep looking because he seemed like he was intimate with me,” he responds, “Anyone else and you would have looked away. It’s normal. I hardly even kissed him.”

“Yugyeom must really like you if he came up with the idea to look intimate,” I reply.

Mark laughs, “Wait are you jealous man?”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“He might like me. I don’t know.”

Why am I annoyed at that? Thinking of Yugyeom annoys me. The guy isn’t a friend to me. He is a tool of a system. He will kill me when he needs to. I should honestly snitch on him but then I know that Yugyeom will just be replaced by another Zodiac Killer. This world is so ed up.

“I figured he likes you. Only someone who had a crush would come up with an idea like that.”

“Trust me I don’t feel the same. Yugyeom needs help. He reached out. He’s a victim just like you. Besides I came up with the idea to get and take a shower with you. What does that mean?”

“It means you care…”

He nods and laughs, “And I guess the fact that you identified Yugyeom must mean the same.”

Did I? Was that the reason I jumped to conclusions about them? Was it because I cared? Mark did have some creative ways to avoid being detected. We were in the bathroom showering first and now we were cuddled up in a bed speaking as low as possible.

“I guess maybe I do,” I admit, “I care about you.”

There is a silence. It lasts so long that I get scared that it’s not mutual. I get scared that maybe Mark doesn’t feel the same way about me as I feel about him. I’m wrong though because he’s squeezing me tighter after a few minutes. It’s almost like he’s letting this moment between us really linger. He’s allowing me to really understand what this moment means.

“I really don’t like the fact that you’re making me like a Libra,” he says with a bit of sarcasm in his tone, “I always said I hated Libras but here I am catching feelings for one.”

Mark saying that makes me smile a little bit. I let his arms surround me and hold me close for a few more seconds, “Well like you said the system is broken. Maybe it doesn’t matter what signs people are in the end. Maybe the only reason we have certain behaviors is because we were raised to believe we should act a certain way.”

“Exactly,” he responds, “But you do act like a Libra. The other Libras have lost their way but you out of everyone understands justice.”

He turns me around. He looks me in my eyes.

“What are you getting at Mark?”

“You need to press charges on that piece of JB for what he did to you,” Mark explains, “If you don’t press charges on that guy I’m going to kill him. I swear I will.”

Mark seems like he means it too. Maybe he had something personal with . Maybe somehow all the emotion and anger I should be feeling has been transferred over to Mark. I can see Mark ’s pain and resentment even thinking about it.

“We can’t,” I explain, “I’ve seen the system. The wealthy…they get off free. The important get off as well.”

“That’s not justice,” He responds.

I shake my head, “I know. But this is our society Mark. This is the world we live in. This is the Zodiac world.”

Mark lets out a deep sigh. He doesn’t respond. I can