AN: This is NOT Anne Hathaway's/Christopher Nolan's Selina Kyle. This is Frank Miller's Catwoman as I planned the story in 2009 before TDKR casting ever hit theaters.

See I am Gotham and Her Sister's Keeper for more Ernestina-verse Selina cameos.

Jane C. Arkham Memorial Women's Correctional Facility

To a beautiful and calculating woman, prisoner was such a subjective term.

Twice weekly internet access, daily library visits and snack exchange tokens for good behavior…

…Not to mention all the drugs, liquor, and fitness equipment a woman could want if she was willing to put out a bit. And Selina Kyle, as the guards quickly found out, was more than willing. She was aching, moaning, panting, gasping, scratching, nipping, licking and longing for it. Years as one of Falconi's street-walkers and later a high end escort had given her the experience wanted, and daily three hour yoga sessions had given her the pliability necessary. Granted the garish, baggy orange jump-suits certainly weren't stylish and did nothing to increase her sexual appeal, but then again they'd never stayed on her svelte figure long enough to cause much of a problem. Most of these men were ex-soldiers or blue-collar workers just trying to make an extra dime. Many of them were also un-convicted crooks. No college, no skills, dead-beat job and a dead-end marriage to a dumpy woman who'd lost her figure in a culture that emasculated them…

For a Man-Eater, it wasn't even sport. This prey was just. Too. Damn. Easy. It had taken mere days for her to go from block-bitch to Dominatrix, and she'd only had to be treated for STD's just the once when that asshole Himmel refused to play by the rules. He'd signed his resignation the next day, she'd heard, minus half his teeth and with his balls bruised black. Apparently the rest of the boys didn't take too kindly to him exposing them all—and their wives—to the Clap. Selina had learned to put a condom on with her teeth before she was fifteen years old, and it didn't take much more convincing than that.

Zander Mason. The warden's Rook and right hand man. One of the few who prided himself in being an officer and a gentleman. Most of the minions called him a fag, but Selina knew better: he didn't fuck her because he was a shriveled prude. Mason was ex-military, certainly, but rumor had it it was the stick up his ass that made his spine so stiff and straight.

"Mmm. Mason," she purred, peeking just her breasts out between the bars like two ripe oranges. "Did you come to see me?"

"You're damned a cock-tease, you know that?"

"I've missed you," she flicked her green eyes down demurely, still peering out at him. "Did you miss me?"

"Like hell you did," he growled. "Don't think I don't know what game you're playing at. You've got half the men in here under your spell."

The siren sneered. Laughed. Slithered her sinewy body against the cage that held her. "Only half? Is that what you think?" she leered.

He scowled, stepped closer in confrontation, frown-lines stretching and splitting through his pale, paper-like skin. "I know what your game is, you brazen cunt, and I'm not sure I like it."

She traced her fingertips down from his navel. Upturned her half-closed eyes and purred,"I'm fairly certain you do."

Mason shook his head in disgust.

"Call me!" Selina sang to his retreating back.

"He bothering you?" Hal Flass stumped over. Arnold Flass' cousin, with all the same tastes and personal hygiene. She hated him, which only made her bait him all the more. Flass was the fattest, foulest, and easiest to dupe. When Emilia Gonzales and the rest of the Latin bitches had tried to take a hit out on her, Flass had helped make sure they never got the opportunity. The official prison log said it had been in industrial cleaning accident, that the janitorial crew on duty that day must've mixed up the canisters of ammonia and bleach…

She'd watched on GCN as Warden Jameson promised to get to the bottom of the issue, enact stricter standards to ensure a tragedy like this would never happen again…and that night they'd fucked their way through a box of durex, three bottles of champagne and he'd shown her the pictures of the blistered, gasping bodies from his phone. Selina had been careful not to cross him (at least not openly), and to show her due deference to his face. The Warden still had the power to make her life hell, and one could never be sure if the sex was enough to buy all the guards' loyalty. His chaplain was a sniveling toadie who couldn't be trusted, so she used her tongue on him but didn't wag it in his presence. But despite their silent power struggle, there could be no doubt in the cell block's mind as to who was the rightful ruler of Memorial: the Queen. The King and the Bishop had their fronts, of course, but the Knights and Pawns answered to her and her alone.

And Pawns, in numbers large enough, could prove quite deadly. And one errant knight was all it took to bring an empire down.

"Hal, baby, that man he's just so mean to me," she pouted. Flass was your typical boorish adolescent, chasing the three D's: Ditzy, D-cups, and Dependent. But size, Selina had learned quickly, didn't matter if you knew how to use them right. Memorial's suicide prevention policy dictated all prisoners had be naked under uniforms, but a woman didn't need a push-up bra or a boost job if she learned how to move right. And Selina Kyle had all the right feline moves in so very many wrong places.

"He hurt you?"

She twisted a lock of dark hair between supple fingers. Whined, "he hurt my delicate feelings."

"Delicate, huh?" he eyed her 'feelings' quite distinctively. "They sure are."

"I'm afraid of him."

"That so?"

"I need a big, strong, hard man to protect me," she pleaded.

"Yeah," he nodded along dumbly.

She sidled up to him. Went in for the kill. "Are you going to protect me, Hal?"

"Don't ya, don't ya won't to see if I'm a big, strong, hard man first?"

Most had the decency to at least disguise it as a trip to the medic, chaplain, or showers. Not Flass. Flass would unzip and just fuck through the steel bars. Crass, crude, but effective. Selina Kyle had never been shy, and she could be quite the exhibitionist when the occasion called.

This did.

She let Hal Flass feel like a hero. Made him the star of his own pathetic porno. And later the next morning when the Warden's voice rang out over the intercom, speaking of the tragic failure of Zander Mason's under-serviced brake system and his subsequent demise…

Queen takes Rook, Selina allowed herself the faintest of smirks. Your move. But only the faintest. And only for a second. Chess was, after all, so much more entertaining when you both played the same side of the board. With Mason gone, there was nothing standing between her and her prey. Someone sold her out to Stan Shillings. Someone sold her sister's body to Falconi's henchman. Maggie was gone. That shit-sack Shillings was dead, but the traitor was still out there. She was close. So close now.

…If there's anything a cat hates, it's the rankling stench of a living rat.

Gordon Residence

Even Barbara Gordon was not immune.

Gordon (she'd never been able to call him Jim-the Commissioner was far too fatherly and too much the Commissioner that after six years anything but his title still felt like disrespect) had invited them over because he missed the camaraderie with 'the troops' as he jokingly put it. He spoke as if he missed the streets. The action. Like he regretted the time he spent safely behind a desk.

…And Barbara Gordon could tell it.

"It's a young man's game, now," he'd say, shaking his wearied head that seemed greyer every time she glimpsed him. "And it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it!"

It used to elicit a laugh, a tender touch, a meaningful glance. As if they'd grow old together. Tonight's Barbara wasn't cold so much as she was civil: she did everything you would expect a polite, doting wife to do, but her heart wasn't in it and that smile, when it did appear, was only the shadow of its former self.

But Barb and Gordon weren't Aaron's friends so much as they were his boss. His boss and his wife (it was so easy to forget she'd once been a street cop herself, all those years ago). So as much as she was curious, as much as she was saddened, as much as she wanted the older woman's sage advise on a relationship with an officer of the GCPD who was married more to his work than any woman…they weren't friends. Their husbands were, and they were only polite props brought together by social expectations of successful men. No, the marriage of Commissioner and Barbara Gordon was none of her business. She knew it would be impolite to pry.

So pry she did not.

She ate the basted chicken with garlic and rosemary and butter, complimented Barb on the kale and her homemade rolls and apple-cranberry jam, and enjoyed the dinner as she felt she should, exchanging meaningless niceties with her hostess while their men talked.

"Still no luck with NIGHTSTALKER?" she heard Aaron ask. "There's more money and more officers dedicated to finding the Batman than there ever were for Falconi. Not to mention all the bounty-hunters and the Batfans out there. You'd think someone would've caught him—at least got a picture of him—by now."

"Yes," she heard Gordon agree as she aided Barb in clearing the once-laden table. "Yes he's proven quite elusive so far—"

"If I knew any better I'd say it was like he was having help," her husband growled. "Like that unit was purposefully inept—"

Oh, Goddamnit, Aaron. Not this again—

"We'll catch him, Detective."

"Bullock was certainly an interesting choice for the NIGHTSTALKER task force chief."

"I have every confidence Detective Bullock is competent for the task. They'll find him, and bring him to justice," Gordon sipped his coffee.

"That'll be hard," Aaron said, watching the Commissioner carefully. "Especially for you. Your whole family testifying—"

A clatter. Sharp sound of splintering ceramic. Barb had dropped the near empty casserole dish to the floor. The men stopped abruptly, got up, offered to help, stood around milling in that useless way men always did, offering advice on how best to clean the mess that Barbara Gordon, a mother of two, knew expertly and intimately.

She didn't want to intrude. Ask. Upset. But she'd felt her own marriage slipping away, slipping away and she saw that same desperation, that same resignation and bitterness in Barbara Gordon's eyes.

"How do you do this?" she whispered once the danger of the broken dish had passed and the men had resumed their seats. This time the snippets of their conversation she could hear from the immaculate kitchen concerned the Gotham Knights' new lineup.

"Do what?" Barb said bitterly.

"Make your marriage work," she broached the subject with cautious deference. "With Jim's hours. All that time apart."

Barbara Gordon sighed, and with that sigh every grey hue of her face, the bags beneath her eyes, the jowls and frown lines, the papery, dehydrated skin and crow's feet became astonishingly apparent. "What makes you think it can?" the haggard woman replied.

"Why stay?" Amy needed to know.

The older woman shook her tired head. "I'm forty. Two children. Where else am I going to go?"

The goodbyes were pleasant and prolonged, as always, and before they'd gone she'd politely accepted the remainder of the peach pie and a pint of Barb's homemade jam. They drove in silence the whole while over the Carl Finch Toll Bridge, passing the shadow of downtown on their left as they zipped back into seamless traffic on the Harvey S. Dent Expressway. Everywhere she went, she couldn't escape. Gotham was everywhere. The reminders of that man, that Joker, that Batman…they haunted the Sleepless City and her waking world.

But she wouldn't be allowed to bear that burden alone.

"You're awfully quiet," Aaron put a hand on her knee as the rain ran in shadowed fractals across the dash. "What gives?"

She squeezed the proffered fingers. "Nothing."

"It doesn't seem like nothing," he said, hazel eyes in the rear view mirror staring into hers.

Amy brushed his hand off her lap. Crossed her arms.

"Ames—"

"What were you thinking?" She demanded.

"I think he's being evasive. About the Batman. Damnit, Ames, his whole testimony about that night doesn't make any sense."

"We've been over this a thousand times, Aaron—"

"And the evidences just don't add up!"

"Which do you really think more likely, that a public defender turned politician who abhors violence suddenly went on a killing spree while severely disabled or a known criminal with a history of violent behavior went and killed those responsible for his lover's death, including the other man?"

Aaron chewed his lips. "Dawes didn't seem the type."

"Rachel Dawes was a cunt, Aaron."

"She was a good ADA."

"She was still a cunt," Amy asserted.

"Alright. She was a cunt," he acquiesced, although the word still strangled on his tongue. "But why would she cover that up? The Batman, I mean. That makes no sense—"

She rolled her eyes. "Because she was fucking him." The entire city had to know that by now.

"She was fucking Dent," Aaron argued, ever chivalrous.

"She was fucking both of them."

"But why—"

"Would she cover it up?' she asked in exasperation. "Oh, I don't know—maybe so her boyfriend wouldn't know, so she wouldn't be arrested, take your pick."

"Dawes hated having to depend on the Batman. Couldn't wait for him to be caught or hang up his cape. There's always—"

"Not this again. The two Batman theory?" she begged. "Aaron, please—"

"It makes sense! Batman's actions are rationally consistent with two men. Harvey Dent was the Batman. He gave himself up in a trap to catch the Joker and acquit himself by having the double show up. Only something went wrong. The plan backfired. Dawes died, and Dent was hospitalized. The 'second shooter' goes berserk, starts killing those responsible. He means to kill Gordon, but Dent gets there first to dissuade him, and—"

"And so your 'fake' Batman kills Dent, the 'real' Batman, and that's why he's disappeared?" Amy asked drily, her head back against the seat and her eyes closed in resignation as the roar of the rainfall echoed shrilly in her skull. "Do you know how convoluted and ridiculous that sounds?'

"It's logically consistent. For Batman to kill Dent goes against his entire M.O.," he argued. "So does the Batman disappearing, unless he were dead."

"Then why in the name of sanity didn't second Batman just kill the Joker?" she fumed. "Aaron, I'm sick to fucking death of the Batman thing! Will you just leave it!"

He shut his mouth. Stared. "I, sure. Sure. We can just leave it."

But that river of emotions she'd been damming for months now had suddenly breached its walls. Aaron Lawless brought out the best in her, the worst in her, and try as she might he always forced her into honesty in the end. And this time he deserved it. "You don't talk to me, you don't ask me about my day, we never see each other and when we do it's Batman this, and Batman that…Paltron this—"

An ugly look, perhaps denial, found its way on to his face. "I didn't even mention her!"

"It was a generalization—"

"—If you want to talk about Paltron we can talk about Paltron—"

"No I don't want to fucking talk about Paltron!" Guinevere Paltron was old. Ugly. Completely compassionless, cool and frigid. Everything she never was and had been told not to be. And yet her husband sought her out. Catered to her every dangerous whim. Craved her attention and approval. Guinevere Paltron didn't have to put out, didn't have to worry or slave over her appearance or marriage…but she had her husband's affection anyways. She'd fretted for years over how to compete with that, and had concluded that she couldn't.

"Then why the hell would you bring her up!"

"Goddamnit, Aaron!" she slapped her palms against the dash.

He stomped the brakes. Swerved non-too-gently onto the abandoned shoulder. Flicked the flashers on in the pouring rain, but no need. This time of night on a Friday, there was no traffic leaving Gotham. Not even on the interstate.

"You're mad. Maybe at me, maybe at something else, and you're not thinking straight," Aaron took a deep breath and spoke with the godawful voice of reason that he reserved for lectures, Ian, and her. "So we're going to sit here until you can explain yourself. So we both understand."

The silent treatment. The ultimatum. The final word. Did he even have any idea how humiliating, how belittling—? She closed her eyes miserably. "Let's just go home—"

"We need to talk."

"I said I want to go home!"

"You said we never talk, you wanted to talk, so talk," he said, as if it were a conversation and not a command.

"I said we can talk at home," she could barely hear herself over the downpour.

He sighed. In that long-suffering way of his. "How's it going to be any better at home, Ames?"

"Because it just is, okay?" she shouted.

"You're not making sense—"

"And I won't be stuck in a fucking car with you!" she said. "God, you treat me like a child!"

"What happened?" he finally questioned, that look of utter bewildered hurt enough to make her want to slap him, to make her want to fuck him right here, right now. "To us?"

"I don't know." To us. Not you. Us. She'd always be half of his whole. Never her own person again. He was far too possessive and protective to ever let her go. Jess may have divorced him, Paltron re-assigned him, but Aaron Scott Lawless didn't put up vacancy signs in his heart when the old tenants had left, kept their rooms ready and waiting for the moment they'd come back. And her? For her he was confounding everything she'd been taught about masculinity and love. He kept her guessing. Second-guessing. Uncertain. Insecure. Afraid.

She didn't want to leave him.

She didn't want to lose him.

But sometimes she'd just couldn't fucking stand him.

"Ames—"

"Forget it," she choked. "Just forget I ever brought it up." Every time they talked she sounded like a whiny, unappreciative child. She sounded like Ian.

"Do you mean that," he pressed. Damn him, he had to win every single fucking argument. He just couldn't let it go…"or are Batman and Paltron still supposed to be taboo?"

"Obviously," she told the open dash and the Sleepless City scintillating beyond.

"And how am I supposed to know that when you don't say—"

"I did say it!" she shouted at Gotham. But Gotham City—like her husband—never listened.

"You said the exact opposite."

"You knew what I meant," Amy accused him. "You're just pretending to be dumb to make me feel stupid. 'Look at me, I'm the clever detective, I'm the medical doctor, I've got five books published and you're just an RN—'"

"I have never, in my life, ever said that to you."

"You say it every damn day, Aaron. Every. Single. Damn day."

"Then I apologize if I've been…arrogant," he struggled to say. "It wasn't my intent."

She pressed her face against the cool panes of the window and listened to the sound of falling rain. "Yeah. And that's worse, Aaron. You're that much of a asshole without even trying."

Silence.

"Ames, please, can we just talk—"

"Alright. Fine. How was your day?" she snapped. "Or isn't that what the wife's supposed to ask."

"You won't have to worry anymore," he told her quietly. "I've got a new partner. Connolly. He's coming back full time now. IAB approved the end of his probationary status. Gordon just told me."

"Connolly?" she asked as the sick hit the back of her throat, leaving a bitter after taste and a pounding heart. "You mean the guy who shot that kid on accident? That's supposed to make me feel better? Fuck, Aaron!" At least with that cunt Gwen Paltron her husband had always been protected…

He shrugged, staring out the windshield at the rain to avoid her eyes. "Psych and IAB both cleared him. And he's been alright so far." But she still sensed Paltron's name in the offing.

"He killed a kid!" Amy said, repulsed. "Ranaan Frye. He shot him point blank and you and Paltron covered it up—!"

"Amy!"

"It's the truth!" she insisted.

"Never say that out loud. Never. You could get three good cops sacked."

Sometimes she wondered if it wouldn't be better. For her. For them. For everyone. "You lied," she whispered. "To Jim. To IAB. You lied to everyone. Why."

But she knew the answer before the words could even leave his lips. "It was an accident," he said in that anguished way he had. "And everyone deserves a second chance. Especially a scared young kid." Redemption. Second chances. One day his penchant for forgiveness was going to get him killed.

After all, Ranaan Frye hadn't been given a second chance.

"So why tell me the truth?" she demanded. "Why not lie to me?"

"You're my wife," possession, confidante, confessor, she didn't know. "You're the one person I will never lie to."

"Do you love me?" she had to know. She was twenty-nine, he was forty-two. When they'd met she'd been hardly more than a reckless, irresponsible child. Now they had a house, a life together, eight years in the making and a child of their own. Her mother had never kept a man for that long, bouncing back and forth between boozers and losers who either stole from her or slapped her, a woman who would do anything to make a man happy because she was so damned unhappy herself. Aaron Lawless was a good man, one of the few she'd ever met. She didn't deserve him, didn't know how she'd gotten him, no clue how to keep him but she was desperate, desperate to know—

"Ames," he whispered, heart breaking. Then suddenly his hot breath was in her face and he smelt like jam and chicken and Barb's homemade cooking and the stubble of his beard was so rough against the soft skin of her neck her lips her face she'd buried her fingers in his short hair tasted his tears his sweat his skin struggled out of her seatbelt his gentle hands pawing her breasts her ass her crotch felt herself soak through the fabric of her pants eyes closed breathing harder and heavier panting and pulsing as rain pattered down—

Rapping. Knuckles on glass. Her eyes flew open and the strobing red blue flashes of a GCPD light washed the scene.

"Shit—!" she scrambled away, blinking and squinting as she pulled her shirt across her chest.

"There a uh, problem, officer?" Aaron rolled down the rain-streaked window to ask, wiping her pink lipstick from his beard. A blinding light shone in both their faces, then shut off just as abruptly.

"Lawless," the unidentified cop chuckled. "I might've known."

"Stephens!" Aaron gaped.

A co-worker. She could just die.

"I um…I would say this isn't what it looks like—"

"You two do know this is an interstate, right?"

"We've got the flashers on," Aaron argued as she sat in squirming silence. "No one's breaking any laws here."

"Yeah," the cop drawled. "And your house is how far—?"

"'Bout five miles," her husband said with chagrin as she felt her face flush an even deeper shade of scarlet.

Officer Stephens peered back into the cab, looking from Aaron's flustered face to hers, his gaze lingering only for a second on her smudged lipstick, unkempt hair and unbuttoned blouse held tightly against her chest. "Damn," was all he said.

"I would've gone more along the lines of 'fuck'," Aaron offered unhelpfully. He might've been on the far side of forty, but he could be such a damned teenager when he was horny.

"Lawless?"

"Yes, officer?"

"Don't push it. Ma'am," he tipped his hat to her with all due deference. "Have a good evening. And Lawless?" he called.

"Yes, officer?"

"Get a room."

Amy Lawless had the terrible sinking feeling the entire GCPD would know before the shift was out.

"Hi, honey," Aaron grinned as the cop car pulled out around them back onto patrol. "How was your day?"

Talk about GCPD corruption…"You just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar."

"That's a rather playful euphemism, don't you think?"

"Aaron!" she scolded.

"What?"

"Let's just go home."

"There's a baby sitter at home," he reminded her with a child's petulance.

"She's only been paid til ten," she said crossly.

"That's twenty minutes from now," he wheedled.

She glared at him. "Absolutely not."

"Alright, then," he shifted the car from park back onto the abandoned interstate. "To be continued," he enunciated with just enough ambiguity to make her blush.

They drove in silence for nearly sixty seconds before bursting into simultaneous peals of laughter.

"Oh, God!" Amy giggled. "Did that really just happen?"

"Well, that's one off the bucket list," he quipped. "Making love in the car on the side of a major roadway."

"At this time on a Friday night it hardly counts," she leveled, buttoning her blouse. "And we weren't having sex." It so didn't count as third base if it was still over the clothes. And since when did Aaron Lawless have a bucket list—?

"No?" Aaron teased, holding up one wet, gummy hand. "Because that was your orgasm noise."

"I do not have an orgasm noise," she sniffed, indignant.

He only grinned at her wolfishly in the rearview mirror, sending a thrill down her spine that only added to the ache between her legs.

"Shut up."

"It's just a shame I'm not a surgeon," he said. "Because I'm very, very good with my hands."

"Yeah," she finally allowed herself to agree. "It's just a shame about the penis."

He mouthed wordlessly, flushed and flabbergasted.

"What's wrong, Aaron?" she teased. "Witty comeback momentarily eluding you?"

"You're going to regret that comment," he sulked as they entered the neat, even rows of their subdivision. In the dark, in the rain, with the patterns of light beams it was almost breathtaking.

"Am I?"

"Yep."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"How do you plan on punishing me?" she teased as the car pulled into the cobble stone driveway, Margie's pimply face appearing at the window expectantly.

"I don't know…I thought maybe developing crippling erectile dysfunction and going all Lysistrata on your ass would be a good start."

"You know how I love it when you make obscure references I don't understand," she rolled her eyes.

"Lysistrata? Really?" he undid his seatbelt. "It's a classic—"

She put a finger lightly against his mouth. That at least shut him up…

"Remember how five seconds ago we were shamelessly talking about sex and now suddenly you've discussing ancient history?" Her husband was the only man she knew who literally had a hard on for arcane things like literature. She told him as much.

He flushed.

She opened her door, stretching and straightening her clothes. Margie was fifteen, but a very young fifteen. There was no way the shy neighbor girl had been doing what she'd been doing by the time she had been that age (kissing, groping, giving oral). Margie still blushed when her parents held hands.

She had a sudden thought."Connolly."

"Nope. No way," Aaron joked as they reached the porch. "I know he's adorably effeminate and all but we are so not having a three way with my new partner."

"Not a three way, you ass," she punched him playfully as he shook out the umbrella. "We should have him over. For dinner sometime." She needed to meet, to understand this young man who'd be protecting her husband…

She wanted to look him dead in the eye and tell him who he'd have to answer to if he got her husband killed.

"Are you sure?" he squinted at her, uncertain. "That never really worked out well with—"

With Paltron, he didn't say. And no, no it didn't. Gwen Paltron was a bitter bitch who'd begrudged her from the moment they'd met. She'd had nothing but scorn for the older woman, but now she wasn't sure. Anger? Rage? Never pity. Never guilt. Amy Lawless wasn't twenty-one anymore. No longer svelte and small and the envy of every woman she met. And she was furious, furious, yes, at all the older woman like Paltron who never told her how it was who never shared that they too had once been young and/or beautiful and instead turned their jealousy on girls like her who'd only blossom and fade with time. They'd had the gall to make her believe she'd be pretty, be enviable forever. And Amy Lawless couldn't stand to be lied to. She was a surgical nurse. She saw nudity, nakedness, bodies in shades of undress day in and day out, and she saw herself in all of them: the too perfect, skinny bodies of young girls whose figures she'd never have again, and every wrinkle, every dimple, every jiggle and stretch mark on the obese sent her reeling in convulsions of self-loathing and disgust.

She didn't know why he stayed. Out of guilt? Out of need? Aaron Lawless was one of those rare men who made a promise and intended to keep it. But that's all it was anymore, a promise. A ritual. A responsibility. She missed that he used to fuck her, stay with her because he wanted to, not because he should.

You're only young once, she wanted to tell the gangly girl who greeted them at the door. Don't waste it. Don't depend on it. One day it's going to be gone and you'll have nothing left.

"It's fine," she said as they stepped into the foyer, but their conversation—their evening, even—was derailed as a carrot-headed little boy who should've been in bed already padded down the stairs screaming shrilly.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"

"How's my little man?" Aaron scooped him up, spinning him round and round above his head as Ian laughed.

"I don't know how he got out!" Margie wailed, wringing her hands. "I put the gate up and everything just like you said!"

"Don't worry about it, kiddo," her husband soothed. "He's a climber, that's all." A climber, and a drooler, and a pants-shitter, and a…

He's two, she reminded herself furiously, tipping the awkward girl for watching the child that she herself would rather not. He's just a toddler. It'll pass.

But it wouldn't. It would never pass. This unwanted, unwelcome intruder would be part of her life now forever.

Amy Lawless had hated her mother until her dying breath. She'd never wanted to become one herself. One goddamned broken condom, just the one time—

"Mommy!"

"Hey," she planted a disinterested kiss on his freckled, drool-smeared cheek. 'Thanks, Margie."

"Bye, Mrs. Lawless!" the sitter called, trotting off across the front yard. "Bye, Mr. Lawless!"Amy watched to make sure the girl got home, saw her slide the hidden key from behind the porch light and wave. She was young. Naive. Too damn trusting…

"Do you have any idea how many times I've asked her not to call me that?" she mused aloud.

Aaron juggled Ian awkwardly on his hip. "Says the woman who calls Gordon 'Gordon'."

"Everyone calls him Gordon," she insisted, tossing her purse onto the couch.

"You're the only one who calls him 'Mr. Gordon'," his hazel eyes sparkled in amusement. Of course he appreciated the irony.

"One day you'll get a feeling for how annoying it is. How damned old it makes you feel," she sniffed the air once and gagged. "God, Ian, did you mess your pull-up?"

"No," he lied. Ian was very protective of his 'big boy' status, and he'd rather sit in shit all day than admit he'd had an accident.

"Liarpants," Aaron smelt the offending pull-up in question. "What happens if you lie to daddy about your pull-ups?"

"Diaper," Ian whispered, unable to meet their eyes.

"That's right," he set Ian down. "You act like a baby you get treated like a baby. Go get your change bag, okay?"

Because that's just what she wanted right now, to wipe some pissy little kid's ass…

"All I'm saying is that from her perspective, the age gap between the two of you is bigger than the one between us," Aaron straightened.

"No," Amy said aghast. That couldn't be right—

"Fourteen to our thirteen," she heard his voice ring. But she wasn't paying attention. She'd caught a glimpse of herself in one of the many mirrored panels meant to light up and open the dim entryway, and she hated what she saw. The lipstick and blush and eyeliner were garish and obvious, not the natural, radiant glow her face and eyes had once had. Her skin seemed sallow. Papery. Lined. She looked like Barbara Gordon.

"God, I'm old."

Aaron chuckled. Pecked her on the cheek. "Just wait til you turn forty."

Forty? Botox. Chemical peels. A facelift and a chin tuck. Not to mention silicone injections for her once plump lips…Amy Lawless didn't want to think about forty. How much it would cost to claw at youth. Not yet. Not tonight. She wanted to feel young and pretty and wanted, able to forget the constraints of their adult life, to escape their shared responsibility, to re-experience that fleeting glimpse of freedom they'd shared in the car, however much a lie, however briefly—

He must've seen. Must've felt it too.

"It's a Friday. A rare Friday when we're both home, so…" his voice trailed off as he tucked a long strand of dark hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. "I can get the little guy changed and in bed if you want to go…run a bath or something."

She'd had an hour glass figure before Ian. Now she had stretch marks and sagging skin over shrunken breasts. She missed her body, that fleeting youth and the way Aaron had worshipped her like a Goddess. Even on that first night, a slip of the tongue when he'd called her by his ex-wife's name by mistake…even then she felt beautiful. Wanted. Loved. He never said it was an obligation now, never said he minded or cared, but she knew. Knew he'd rather be caressing, rather be inside the tight body he remembered. He preferred her—they both preferred her—as she was. She'd been the one to instigate it, but she missed, craved, longed for that intimacy and honesty they once had. Now she was ashamed. She wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. They hadn't made love with the lights on since their son was born.

As her husband slipped into bed next to her, Amy Lawless couldn't imagine that ever changing.