Available Darkness Season 2

place a man with long dark hair and piercing blue eyes. The man was gone in an instant, replaced by Greg, and Hannah’s scream fell into a whimper. Greg seemed to mistake her momentary shock for lust, and used it to feed his animal.
    He pounded her harder.
    Hannah squeezed her eyes tight, imagining the dark-haired man on top of her, ravishing her. He’d seemed somehow familiar, yet new and unknown. But something about him, even though she’d only seen him for a moment, was incredibly sexy. She thought of his eyes, staring so deep into her soul that it shook her to the core. She kept imagining him, instead of Greg, ravishing her, and sank into the beautiful depths of the fantasy.
    Time swam until they finished, and Greg had emptied the animal inside, into her — the first time they’d had sex without a condom. And in that moment, she didn’t care. Perhaps she’d get pregnant and engaged in the same week. They lay entwined in one another’s warmth, flesh on flesh, as Greg’s eyelids fluttered, and quickly collapsed. Soon, he started to snore, leaving Hannah alone with her thoughts of the dark-haired man, wondering who he was and why she could think of nothing else.
    As she began to drift, finally joining Greg in the depths of slumber, a name danced at the edge of her mind.
    John .

    * * * *

CHAPTER 5 — Larry

    “She got sick at the restaurant,” Katya said.
    Abi looked down, not wanting to meet Larry’s gaze. He wasn’t sure if she was still mad at him — he didn’t think so — or if something had happened. Whatever it was, Abi wasn’t saying, and Larry was growing worried as they stood in the kitchen trading small talk that meant nothing, while the other thing that did went undiscussed. He wanted Katya to leave so he could talk to Abi and figure out what happened.
    But Katya was hanging around, like she wanted to speak with Larry alone, which stoked both curiosity and fear.
    What the hell happened? He wondered if Katya had somehow discovered Abi’s secret.
    Eventually, Abi decided to head up to her room, saying she wanted to rest.
    “I’ll be up to check on you in a minute,” Larry said, listening as she trudged up the stairs, into the bathroom, then into her room.
    As her door closed, he mouthed the words, “What happened?” to Katya.
    Her eyes turned glassy with tears that didn’t fall as she moved closer to Larry. “What happened to that girl?” she asked, holding his eyes.
    “Excuse me?” Larry asked. “She was with you tonight.”
    “No, not tonight, I mean before now. What happened to her?”
    Larry wasn’t sure what Katya had managed to piece together, but his mind spun through the many possibilities, trying to figure out what Abi might have said to get Katya asking questions.
    “What do you mean what happened to her?”
    “Someone abused that girl,” Katya said. “Who was it?”
    Larry stepped back, putting his hands up, hoping like hell that Katya didn’t think he had done anything to Abi. She definitely sensed something, which meant Larry had to tell Katya some sort of story. It had to be believable, but it couldn’t be the truth.
    “Keep your voice down,” Larry whispered, motioning for Katya to quiet. “Let me walk you to your car, and I’ll tell you more outside.”
    Katya eyed him, almost suspiciously, then followed his lead out the front door.
    In front of Katya’s car, Larry looked up toward Abi’s bedroom window, blacked out to keep the nighttime inside, without any part in the curtains. Unless she’d gone to another darkened window, Abi wasn’t watching.
    “What happened to her?” Katya repeated.
    “She was in a bad situation before she came to stay with me, that’s all I can say.”
    “Was it your brother?”
    “Oh God, no, but you’re right, she was abused. That’s why she’s staying with me. My brother, her father, went to jail for killing the man responsible.” Larry felt bad lying to Katya, but it was the first fiction to fly from his tongue, and one he felt might help explain whatever Abi had said or done.
    He studied Katya to see if his lie was doing its job.
    Her eyes softened. “Oh my God, the poor thing,”
    “Yeah, she blames herself. A lot,” Larry added for emphasis. “So, you want to tell me what happened tonight?”
    “We were eating dinner and, out of nowhere, Abigail jumped up and ran to the bathroom. I followed after a minute, and went to see if she was OK. She’d puked all over. I asked her if she was okay, but she