Title: Break Me

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and sexual and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Or even any merchandise from the franchise, though I intend to fix this.

Author's notes: Yes, for those of you who bother to read these things – I have added 'explicit content' to the story description and 'sexual content' to my rating. This chapter is for all you Debster fans. Honestly, I wasn't going to go there, thinking it would offend some readers, but it seems that pretty much my entire reviewing audience is pro-Debster... and SUPER keen for it. So, here you go. *throws bone*

Thanks a million to the people who review and tell me everything you liked. Reading those, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that bit was good!" or "I hate her, too!" and it makes me feel a bit like I'm just another fan of this story and that makes me want to keep going so I can find out what happens next, too. Writingisfunlol (amazing review – I could live off this like Dexter lives off Deb! And agreed; Hannah was such a waste of screentime that could have been used way better), debster fan (I'm sorry! I really hope ch10 didn't keep you up in the end, but I won't pretend that having such a huge effect on someone through my writing isn't a big ego boost!), soodohnimh (I know this isn't exactly what you meant by 'heat' but I hope you like), red roses are pink (that's okay, you can keep telling me it's amazing, I don't mind!), Ash (thanks for that! And sublime is such a great word, thinking of stealing it), harsh realm (the dreams and metaphors are kind of writing themselves, you're right, they bring a lot of the issues to the fore), PSiwrotethis (another chapter I think you'll like), yuiop, bellart (thanks – I like my baddies manipulative and scary, not a waste of time like both Vogel and Saxon turned out to be in the show), Dahlia Faith Black (don't cry! This might help) and shadow, you people are wonderful :)

Chapter Eleven

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The conversation ends as Deb turns away to switch on her bedside lamp; I take the dismissal and leave, closing her bedroom door behind me. I can hardly believe we just had that conversation. I feel numb. I feel hopeless. I feel... shattered. I'm killing my sister. I'm not just hurting her and draining her anymore. I am killing her. My head is filled with the image of her big sad eyes as I break her heart, again. Would it make her feel any better to know she's just done the same back to me? I doubt it. I wish the conversation had never happened. I wish I didn't know the truth of what I'm doing. I wish she'd gotten angry instead and yelled and screamed and stamped her feet so I could yell back at her, and then afterwards as the tension defused I could have held her close while she came down from her flighty emotions and I could have apologised and everything would have reset. Ready for another cycle.

The cycle isn't working the way it used to, I realise as I turn off the lights and lock all the doors. Deb isn't playing along. She is trying to change the rules. It scares me. Is she changing things because she herself is changed? Because she is... dying? I have broken her and put her back together so many times – maybe each time I am making microscopic mistakes and maybe she's been changing little by little all year and the sister I knew is gone forever? If she says I am killing her, then maybe soon she'll be gone altogether. I don't like change – I don't change – but Deb is changing everything. She is different and is trying to make our relationship different. I don't want different but I don't want to be without her, either.

I open my right hand and look at the jagged red line where Vogel's teacup sliced it open. The wound is closed but it is still inflamed and I know it will scar horribly. The burn on my leg amounted to nothing much, and the bruises on my face are all but gone. My split eyebrow has healed neatly. I think of my beautiful, miserable sister as she helped me to treat all of these wounds. I am as bad as our father, letting her clean up after me and my mistakes. I shouldn't blame her for this most recent mess. It's my fault. As she pointed out, I have been encouraging it. I have made a mess of us and of her, and then left her to pick up the confused and mixed up pieces and expected that she would know how to make sense of them.

Debra has always equated love with sex. Her lovelife has been a train wreck and her deepest emotional connections are all the same – they start platonic yet charged, even wrought with friction, and then she throws herself at the other person and they have sex, and a romance blossoms from there. I think of Lundy, Quinn, Antoine, even Rudy Cooper, Brian. She has never experienced a love affair that didn't start with sex. She is reading the signs from me – the fighting, the neediness, the frustrations, the sweetness – and as far as she is concerned, the only way to get from here to where she wants to be – secure, loved, wanted – is for us to sleep together and give ourselves to each other physically. She thinks this is how you give your heart to someone. I can see her logic, even if I am uncomfortable with it.

I am different from Deb. For me, love comes from familiarity. Connection comes from slowly opening up and letting someone further into my psyche. I don't need sex to find love, or even to define it, although I have learned to enjoy it and use it as a means of human connection and emotional release. It isn't necessary, though, and it certainly isn't needed here. But what if we like it? Deb asked. We do both enjoy sex. We do both enjoy each other. We do love each other. Is it possible that we could follow this path and not regret it?

No. I am furious with myself for even asking. I dig my fingernails into my palm, aggravating the wound. It burns with pain but I make myself feel it. I deserve it. I deserve worse. I dig deeper, trying to reopen the split skin. Deb already has my heart. How can she not know that? Have I not made that clear? Have I not said it? I exhale slowly, depressed and hurting, and reopen my fingers. She's my whole world and I don't know how to make her see that the love she already gives me is enough, is all I can justify taking from her. She thinks she wants something from me, when in fact she's trying to have me take something away from her.

Worse is that I've been making her think this way. I am a terrible brother. I am a terrible person. I am killing my sister with my empty affection and useless love. Starving her; suffocating her. Just the thought of it almost suffocates me. I take measured breaths, trying to keep a grip. I feel out of control, like I do when I am desperate to complete a kill – except it's the opposite, because I am already partway through one and I just want to be able to rewind and take back all the damage I've done.

You're killing me. My very being is splintered by Deb's words. I told her I never would, never could, but I am anyway. My insides feel twisted. She is in so much pain, all because of me; when she hurts I hurt, too. Is it possible that she can be broken so badly that nothing can put her back together? Can she lose her ability to love – to love me? Can she really be taken from me? Yes, of course; it's naive to think otherwise. What happens to me if she dies? Do I stop existing? I am only me because of her. If I destroy her completely then who is left to believe in Dexter Morgan?

I squeeze my eyes shut and let my forehead fall with a thump against the glass door. I hate being me. Even now, while my little sister is falling apart, I am thinking about the effect of her pain on myself. She's right, I'm so selfish. Harry Morgan made an epic mistake bringing me home that day. He should have left me in the blood with my brother. Brian and I were made into monsters in that storage container. We grew up to be destroyers and killers. We deserve each other. But Harry's daughter never deserved any of this. Whether I'm trying to be good or bad to her, it doesn't matter. I just keep hurting her.

Meanwhile, I am hurting someone else. Hannah, my girlfriend, has chosen me, and has chosen to stay in Miami to be with me. Despite the risks, despite being hunted, she is here, and has allowed herself to be locked up in Debra's house, waiting on me and relying on me to smuggle her out of the country and into a future I keep promising her. I'm forcing her to sit and watch while I deliberate where I stand with Deb and getting mad with her when she asks me for assurance. Does she see my behaviour towards my sister in the same way that Deb does? Is it that obvious to the world that my sister is in love with me and that I'm a freaking idiot? Is this why she's so insecure? It's my fault she's here – I'm the one who had her arrested, who pitted Hannah and Deb against each other in the first place, who drove Hannah to the lengths she's now gone to in order to survive. I took Hannah's options away. I am doing wrong by everyone, I realise. I should have let Hannah leave on that plane. I shouldn't have asked her to stay. I've just complicated everything.

I sit on the sofa and watch Deb's door. Underneath, there is a strip of light from inside. I watch as her shadow passes several times as she gets ready for bed. What is going through her head? What is she thinking? Is she still crying? I don't hear anything. She switches her light off and my world goes dark. It's always darker without her.

I try to sleep. It's hours of painful silence in the dark before I manage to. I dream.

I'm in the storage container, but not alone. I'm with Hannah, and we're making love on my kill table, like the first time. She is looking at me with lust-filled blue eyes. We move rhythmically against each other and I close my eyes as the pleasure builds. She breathes my name heavily. Her voice doesn't sound right. I open my eyes, driving deep.

She arches back with a moan but she isn't Hannah anymore. She's too thin, too long to be Hannah. I freeze up, knowing even before she falls back and looks up that this is Deb. I am fucking my sister. Even after I said I wouldn't. Her breaths are heavy and satisfying and come in short puffs through her typically slightly open mouth. Her dark hair is damp at the roots and the rest is splayed around her head, ends sticking to her cheeks. Her skin is dotted with sweat and her long limbs wind around mine as she tries to push for more. I am frozen. I don't know what to do. It's done, clearly.

"Don't do this," she begs, running hands through my hair and pulling my face down to hers. She breathes hard into my mouth, her lips brushing mine and driving us both crazy. "Don't start down this path again and then pull away. It's too late, Dex. Stay."

She kisses me and I let her. It's hardly a big deal considering what the rest of our bodies are doing. I stroke her messy hair away from her damp, flushed face.

"I don't ever want to lose you," I admit. Does she still not understand? What we're doing, this could put a wall between us that we might never be able to pull back down. She kisses my nose, a moment of sweetness, and then pulls my head down to her neck, her fingers still weaving through my hair. My mouth meets her skin and my lips part automatically. I kiss her collarbone. She tastes like salt. Without thinking I trace my tongue up higher, opening my mouth wider, kissing and tasting. She makes a soft, sighing sound and raises her hips to mine. I close my eyes tightly in response to the incredible sensation of sinking deeper into her. It feels good but it shouldn't. She turns her head and I feel her breath in my ear.

"You're never going to lose me, Dexter," she whispers. Her chest heaves against mine as she tightens her stomach muscles and rocks her hips back and forth. I bury my face in her neck and try to contain the indecent moans that escape me. I don't want her to know how she's making me feel. I don't want to encourage anything, though it's a little late for that. She tries to soothe me. "It's alright. I'm here. I love you," she reminds me, shifting slightly under me so she can turn her head enough to look me in the eyes. I'm sure she sees my desire and terror there. "I told you, this is what I want."

"You have no idea... what you want," I tell her, my words undermined by the primal grunt that interrupts me, coinciding with an upward thrust of hers. It's too much. "Deb, stop it." Her lip twitches into her usual charming half-smirk. I can't believe she's doing this, or that I'm reacting physically the way I am. I reach down between us to grasp her bony hip and push to keep her down. She frowns when she realises what I'm doing and keeps trying, muscles tensing as she strains upwards against my hold. She runs her hands from my head down my back; I know what she's planning. I have no hands left, with one pinning her down and the other holding my weight up off her, and try to use my elbows to knock her hands away. "Please, Deb, don't." She ignores me and when her hands are on my lower back she pulls me down and back into her. I shudder at the sensation, upset and excited at the same time. I don't know what to think.

"You never think," Deb murmurs, reading my mind. She works hard to pull me against her rhythmically, fighting my tenseness. "What difference does it make what you think now?" She strains against my hold and I tighten my grip on her. I close my eyes and press my forehead into the metal surface of the table. This is crazy, this is wrong, this feels amazing. The breath from inside her is hot and fast in my ear, and when she speaks again, her lips brush my earlobe. I shiver in response. "I belong to you. I'll never leave you. Are you going to leave me?"

I open my eyes and stare hard at the metal at the end of my nose. Leave her? How could I ever leave her? I slide my head closer to her so I can press my cheek against hers. She moves one hand back up to stroke my hair.

"You started this," she informs me softly. I glare at the table, hating that she is right. "You pull me so fucking close and then drop me. The fall feels further each time." She pauses in her relentless seduction. She quits the upward pressure; her arms wrap around me in an embrace that feels the closest to normal I have felt since this started. She plays her best card. "Please don't drop me. It kills me when you do."

I blink at the tabletop. Way to pull the rug out from under my feet, Deb. My body demands that we keep going but I have the self control to think first. Barely. There is no choice, after all. I lift my head from beside hers to kiss her delicately on her lips. She watches me the whole time, waiting. I'm not sure what for. I don't need to tell her what she means to me. I don't need to say, of course I won't drop you, I love you, I'm yours for always. I pull her up from the cold metal table so I can slide my arm behind her and hold her close. My hand on her hip tightens and I use it to pull her in instead of pushing her away. She winds her legs around mine, our mouths meet and the sex begins anew.

It's quick. It's hot. It's noisy. Soon enough I'm done and so is she, and she's shaking in my arms and I collapse on top of her. Distantly I know this is only a dream but the sensations are incredible, so real. I feel my sister trembling and sucking in oxygen beneath me.

I am hit with a gutful of guilt and regret. This is my sister. I told Hannah I wouldn't. I told Deb I wouldn't. I told myself I wouldn't. And now I have. I push myself upwards and off of her and stumble from the kill table. I lean against it, eyes shut tightly, breathing hard. What have I done?

"I'm so sorry," I whisper through unexpected tears.

I expect Deb to reach out to me, to touch me or to say something. She is quiet. Suddenly she makes a surprised, muffled sound and jerks violently. One of her knees catches me in the back. I turn quickly. Brian has come, and has his hands over Deb's mouth and nose. She is struggling, striking out with her arms and legs. He seems unaffected and holds tight.

"What are you doing?" I demand. I glare at him across the table. "She's mine, not yours."

"She's both of ours," Brian insists. "Did you enjoy her? I did. Poor, dear, desperate Debra. You know as well as I do that you're going to destroy her sooner or later." He smiles down at her as she fights fruitlessly. He almost looks affectionate for a moment. "It's better for everyone if I do it for you. I don't want to see you hurting, little brother. Just... let go. Watch."

I watch as the fight seeps out of my sister. My brother, my own darkness, is slowly suffocating her. Less and less she is able to strike back, though she keeps trying. Beneath her skin, her toned muscles strain and work to move her body into a more favourable position. Her fingernails draw blood from his arms as she scratches at him. Her stifled screams die quickly as her lungs burn for air. Her legs slide about on the metal table, made slippery from our sweat, unable to get a good foothold with which to leverage her weight against Brian's hold. Her motions lose their power. Kicks become spasms. Measured strikes become slaps, which in turn become little more than desperate taps. Her spine, tensely arched, lowers back down to the table. Her foot slides off the table and hangs there.

I realise I am watching my sister die and I finally react. I throw myself into Brian's side and shove him away. His hands come away from Deb's face and she gasps. I drive my brother as far away as I can, smashing him into the wall of the container.

"You'll kill her eventually," he snarls at me. "Grow a pair and accept it, Dexter. Or just let me do it."

"I'll never do it," I argue. "I'll never let you do it, either. I've hurt her but whatever you say, whatever she says, I'm going to find a way to fix it."

"You're a fucking idiot," he mocks, "thinking you can salvage something from the mess you've made. You're living a fluffy little dream, Dexter." He pushes against me but I shove back, holding him by the front of his shirt.

"I'm not letting you hurt her," I say threateningly. He laughs in my face.

"Not letting me? I'm you. Think you can stop yourself from doing what you always do? And you're not thinking very creatively. You and I, we're one and the same – Dexter and his Darkness – and we don't need a knife and a table to take someone's life away." He juts his chin in Deb's direction, prompting me to look over. I'm not sure I want to. "Have a look. It doesn't need to be your knife to be your fault."

I finally give in and look over. I drop Brian in horror. Deb is surrounded. Elway is kneeling over her and has a gun to her heart, and whispers bitter, twisted things into her ear. Vogel has a hand on Deb's throat and another in Deb's mouth, forcing her jaw open. Hannah is pouring poison inside. Deputy Marshal Clayton is pinning Deb's arms together, cuffing them to the underside of the table. Saxon has his arm looped around Deb's legs, locking them together uselessly, and in his other hand is his power saw, switched off for now but with its little red stand-by light flashing.

Any of them can end her in a second. Ending her will end me. She pulls against their holds but she's stuck. I start forward. Brian catches my wrist. He takes my shoulders gently and turns me to face the wall. He leans his head against mine.

"You don't want to see this," he says knowingly, and holds me as Deb makes desperate, voiceless sounds in her blocked throat, as she chokes and sputters on the poison, as the gun goes off, and as the power saw starts. I squeeze my eyes shut and Brian's grip on me tightens. "It doesn't have to be like this. You can do it. You can let her go, so no one can ever hurt her again. Not them; not you; not even herself. You and I, we would be gentle." He squeezes my shoulder supportively. "She would let you."

I snap awake and sit up. My head swims and my stomach roils with the nightmarish visions and sounds of my dream. I jump to my feet, run to the door and unlock it with fumbling fingers as my stomach begins to eject its contents. I swallow it down once, giving me enough time to wrench open the door and run out onto the sand. I collapse onto my hands and knees. I am violently sick. Last night's yoghurt comes up, along with the beer and whatever it was I ate for dinner. Once it is all out I continue to retch. Afterwards I am shaking and sweating like we were in the dream. I crawl away from my disgusting mess and lie down several metres away. It is so early. The sun isn't even up yet, but the yellowish tinge to the grey of the eastern horizon tells me it is thinking about it.

I must have some incredibly deep issues to resolve because each night these dreams are becoming worse. What started off as dreaming of finding Deb dead and gone (a reasonable fear, considering our circumstances) has evolved into nightmares about my own darkness seducing her and consuming her. She is right. I am killing her. Every night in my sleep. During the day I am unwittingly channelling Brian, the brother who drew Deb in with playful, loving behaviour until she fell hard for him, giving her a glimpse of a future she likes and then tearing it all away like pulling a curtain from a window and blinding someone with a flash of the harsh sunlight on the other side.

I dreamed about having sex with Debra. I don't even know how to feel about that. It's not real but it felt like it was. I recall every sensation vividly. I both enjoyed it and hated it. I try to tell myself it only came up in my subconscious because of our super-awkward conversation immediately before bed and that I would never have thought it up on my own. I tell myself it doesn't mean anything because it was just a dream and I would never choose to do it in waking reality. I would tell her no. I would let her down carefully. But I had a choice, even though in the dream I felt I didn't, and I made one that I said I never would. I stare at the grey above me and my eyes sting with unanticipated tears. I begin to understand why she's been such a disaster about all of this. It's confusing. It's hard. It's painful.

In short, it's absolutely fucked.

Even more painful is the dream's message. I have made a lot of poor choices in my time, and it seems that my subconscious is quite aware of how close I have allowed some very dangerous people to get to Deb. I am not as clever a chess master as I thought. Over the years I have lost good pieces – bishops, rooks, knights; Harry, Rita, Lumen – but I must have thought, as long as I have my queen, I can still win this. Meanwhile I have turned my attention away from her, thinking that a powerful piece like her will hold her own, and focussed exclusively on pawns. My relationship with Hannah. My urge to kill. My history with Vogel. Small game. My queen is being threatened and I am moving all the wrong pieces while I, the red knight, sit perfectly in position to defend her.

More than anything right now, I want to pick myself up from the beach, go back inside and curl up on Deb's bed beside her. I want to hear her slow breathing. I want to watch her chest rise and fall over and over again. I want to feel her warmth against me and to feel her immense gravity pull me back together. I want to use her. But I make myself stay where I am. I have no right. I have done enough damage. After what was said a few hours ago, I can't let her wake to find me wrapped around her, breathing her in. It would only confuse matters, make things worse. I close my eyes and concentrate on what she must look like right now: head on the pillow, hair soft and spread like a dark halo, blanket strewn roughly across her body, face smooth and relaxed in dreamless sleep, hands open. I remind myself that she is not far away. Metres. On the other side of a wall. This will have to do. I slowly begin to feel her proximity and work to centre myself.

I lie there until the compulsion to run to my sister's side has passed and I am ready to go about my morning as though I was not woken by terrifying dreams about sex with my sibling and her resultant ghastly murder. I still feel very far from okay but I am holding myself together. The sun is still not up but by now it is very close. I see the corona peeping over the edge of the Earth. I kick a pile of sand over my vomit. I go inside. Harrison is up, packing his schoolbag.

"I'm hungry, Daddy," he complains. "Can I have breakfast now?"

"Soon, buddy," I say, trying not to sound as tired as I am. I go for a shower and try to wash my self-disgust away. I rinse my mouth and brush my teeth. I wash the sand and dried sweat out of my hair, rejecting images of my sister's fingers running along my scalp instead. When I am dry and dressed, I look at myself in the mirror. I look normal. I don't feel normal.

Knowing I can do nothing right now to fix things with Deb, I decide to try to fix things with Hannah. I find her asleep in the spare room. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at her as she stirs. She is very pretty, golden blonde like I have always liked them best. I have really loved Hannah. She has accepted me for all that I am. No one else who has ever loved me has done this much. Harry learned to live with what he'd brought home from that crime scene and tried to channel me; Rita accepted everything about me that she liked and overlooked the rest; Brian was willing to take me as I was, but minus Deb; Lila accepted what I was but wanted only my darkness; Lumen needed my darkness so she could escape her own, and couldn't live with it once she had; Harrison loves what he knows of me. Even Deb, my other half, has tried relentlessly to change me, to little avail.

But I have done wrong by Hannah. Like Jamie with Quinn, Hannah deserves better than what I am giving. She shouldn't have to hear 'I love you' and see 'I don't'. No one should.

Hannah wakes and smiles uncertainly at me.

"Dexter? What time is it?"

"Very early," I tell her quietly. She blinks and tries to sit up, worried. I gently hold her down. I avoid thinking of Hannah and all my other enemies holding Deb down, much less gently, and of Hannah pouring poison into my sister's mouth, drowning her. "It's alright, nothing's wrong. I just... wanted to see you." It's only a little lie. I would rather have sat beside Deb as she woke, but I can't say that. "I wanted to say it's Monday, and in a week from now I'm going to kill Vogel and Saxon, plant your DNA and evacuate you from the country. No one is ever going to hunt you again, or try to hurt you. You'll be safe, and happy."

"And after a while," she says, taking my hand lightly, "you'll come and join me?"

"Absolutely." But I'm not sure anymore. I don't know what I want. I lie beside Hannah and try to use her like she asked me to. She wants to be my Deb. I close my eyes and breathe, listening to her do the same. She falls back into a doze. I stay like this until the sun is well and truly up. I try to absorb her energy and to draw goodness and rightness from her, to feel better just by being near her. I try, I honestly do. But it isn't what I want. It isn't what I need. My soul is in pieces and this glue isn't strong enough. Maybe Hannah's not as righteous as my sister; I don't know. Whatever magic Deb has inside her that I feed off, to her detriment, Hannah doesn't have it. My heart stays broken.

When she wakes again, I smile at her. "Breakfast?"

"Definitely," she smiles back. We hear the pipes creak as the hot water begins to run. Deb is awake and taking her shower. "How do breakfast sausages, tomatoes and toast sound?"

We go out into the living area with our hands clasped together. It's nice; sweet. A far cry from the content of my dreams, anyway. Harrison is in the kitchen, fridge door open and head stuck inside. I'd forgotten about him. Great, Dad. Hannah's hand slips from mine as I go to check on my son and Hannah goes to tidy the cushions on the sofa from my restless sleep. Her fingers cling to my fingertips as she stretches back to keep the contact as long as possible. She says, "I took the sausages out of the freezer last night and put them in the fridge door to defrost. Grab them out? And there's tomatoes down the bottom."

I pull the door of the refrigerator open and Harrison jumps, caught out. He looks up at me guiltily. Chocolate is smeared across his mouth and the spoon in his hand is digging out a third or fourth helping of Deb's mousse.

"Oh, buddy," I say, cringing. "Your Aunt Deb loves you but this might be pushing it."

"I only ate a little bit!" Harrison says worriedly, showing me. "I was just so hungry. I thought she might not notice if it was just a little bit." He sniffs as tears of shame well in his eyes. "She's going to be so mad at me."

He looks down, obviously feeling bad. Hannah comes over, curious.

"What's the matter, little man?" she asks kindly. Tearfully, he turns to her and shows her the evidence of his betrayal. Hannah's gentle expression immediately hardens. "Harrison – what are you doing with that?" She steps forward, brushing past me, and snatches the dessert from my son. "That's your aunt's. You heard her; she said no one else was allowed it." She tosses the tub into the rubbish bin and pulls the foil lid from Harrison's hand to throw that away, too. She finds a dishcloth and crouches before Harrison to wipe his face and then his hands. "Why didn't you listen, Harrison?"

"I'm sorry," he says, very sadly. "I wasn't thinking." Hmm, must be a Morgan guy thing.

"I'll buy her another one, and she'll get over it," I assure Hannah, who seems immeasurably worried about Deb's wrath. I'm not worried. I have enough to worry about when it comes to my sister. This chocolate mousse situation is one I can fix. I am not certain about all the other issues I've raised between us, but I know I will do whatever it takes to fix them, too. I grab out the sausages and tomatoes, both exactly where Hannah said they would be.

"Let's just not tell her, hmm?" Hannah suggests to Harrison, not really to me. My son looks doubtful.

"Lie to Aunt Deb?" he asks. His gaze shifts to me uncertainly. "Or a surprise? That's like a nice secret," he explains to my girlfriend.

"It'll be a surprise when your daddy puts new ones in the fridge and she finds them," Hannah says with a quick smile. She puts the spoon and cloth into the sink. She goes back to Harrison and fusses over him, brushing his hair off his forehead and straightening his clothes. "How about some water for you, little man? I'll put a little slice of lime in it."

"Sometimes Aunt Deb puts limes in her beer," Harrison says brightly. He scoots off to sit at the table. Hannah stands and tries to smile after him. I can tell she's still worried.

"FYI," I say, "when Deb says, 'don't let me catch any of you eating this', she doesn't mean she'll behead anyone she finds with traces of chocolate on their fingers. She's really not as mean as you make her out to be." I choose a knife and begin to slice the tomatoes. The tough skin of the fruit gives and the juice spills out. I force away visions of my knife doing the same to my sister's stomach. "Plus, to be honest, she was probably going to give that thing to him in the end anyway."

"Yeah, well," Hannah says, washing the spoon clean and returning it to the drawer. "Chocolate mousse really isn't an ideal breakfast for a little boy on a school day, is it?"

I can't argue with that. We cook the sausages in a pan and add the tomatoes. Deb spends ages in her room. I hear the hairdryer. I assume she has washed her hair and is straightening it. When she comes out I feel the click inside me as, straightaway, my world starts to put itself back together. Then I recall that she's the reason it's in pieces, and that inside, she's in pieces, too. Because of me. I feel awful once again.

She meets my gaze immediately. She's right, it's loaded. I see the challenge there – she's rested, stronger, ready to go again. I can't help my mind flashing on my very explicit dream; her writhing nakedness, her hair damp with sweat, her mouth whispering into my ear, her fingers on my skin and mine on hers. Her back arched and long legs flailing uselessly as my darkness suffocates her. The fight draining out of her and her foot hanging limp from the edge of the table. The sound of her choked screams for help and of the power saw. I feel ill and quickly pour myself some water. I skull it all. I wonder what Deb's thinking, if it's anywhere near as traumatic as what I am thinking. She is greeted by Harrison, who overcompensates for his earlier act of treachery by acting extremely cheerful.

"Good morning, Aunt Deb! Look what Hannah made me! It's water, with some lime. It's like when you have a beer, and you put a lime in the bottle." He holds up the glass. Deb comes over to him to look obediently. "It's yum. Do you want to try some? I don't mind."

"Sure," Deb agrees, and takes a mouthful from the other side of the glass. "Mm, you're right. That is good." She hands it back and comes to stand at the counter and to look at what Hannah and I are making. I quickly prepare a plate and hand it to her with a brief smile, trying to act normal. Like I didn't dream about fucking her and letting a room full of people kill her. Like I didn't break her heart last night. Like she didn't break mine. She seems to be pretending the same things. She accepts the plate dubiously and asks, "Which bit's poisoned?"

"I oversaw every stage of the breakfast-making operation," I assure her. I get a knife and fork for her. "Poison-free, guaranteed." Our relationship, not so.

"You'll drink water I prepared but not my food?" Hannah asks with a forced smile. Deb smiles in the same way in return.

"I like to think you'd never try to poison my nephew," she answers. She takes her breakfast away. "I just don't feel the fucking same about you and me."

Deb goes to the couch and turns on the television. Harrison takes his water and cereal over to join her. Hannah gives me a long-suffering look.

"Two more days," she recites quietly. "Two more days. I can last two more days of her. Then I never have to see her again, right?"

Deb and I don't talk all morning. She grabs her keys and meets my eyes as a signal that she's ready to go, so I usher Harrison out the door after her and go back to grab my phone. During the night I've had plenty of calls from Vogel but I don't feel compelled to call her back. Hannah catches me for a quick kiss.

"Have a good day," she encourages, and I leave with my son and sister. I'm not sure I can do as Hannah has asked. How can I have a good day after the way it started?

We drop Harrison off at school. He quietly hops out of the car and goes without even saying goodbye. I'm not sure what is wrong with him. He was happy and cheerful at home. Deb watches him until he reaches the classroom door, then backs the car out of the car park and heads to the station. I decide to broach our issues.

"Deb-"

"Shut up. I'm not fucking talking to you." Her tone is firm enough to make it clear that she means it, and so we drive all the way in complete silence. When we arrive at work I try again, making the mistake of placing my hand over hers on the park brake to get her attention. She freezes and looks pointedly at our hands. I realise suddenly that I'm doing it again. I whip my hand away, silently berating myself. I open my mouth to start apologising but she cuts me off before I even get through my two-word sentence. "Don't start, asshole. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything you've got to say, ever. Just fuck right off, alright? You'll just make everything worse, like you always do."

She gets out of the car. You'll just make everything worse. I sit for another second. I don't want to hear it. I feel so completely alone, and not in a good way. I'm still in pieces over last night's revelations and the only person who can help me fix it – who can let me fix it – doesn't want me anywhere near her. I'm not talking to you. I don't doubt I deserve it but I wish I were someone who didn't.