Tommy's turn.

"So, I guess that's me done," Bailey mutters, digging herself further into the covers and yawning. "Your turn, Tommy, IF you still wanna tell."

Tommy squirms in place for a moment, looking over to Nick shyly. "It's not a good story. Are you sure you want to know?"

"It can't be worse then mine," Nick says.

"I love you so much, Nicki," she whispers. "I don't want to lose you."

"Not going to happen, darling," he assures her. Bailey also smiles, kissing Tommy's thigh where it pokes out from under the blanket they're sharing.

"Okay," she says, sniffling a little. "I was born in a small town in Mississippi. I mean, seriously small, like two stop signs. My mother was a teen-mom, and she didn't know who my father was. She did the best she could at first, but she didn't have any skills or job experience. She ended up hooking up with a local deputy sheriff and getting married. They fought all the time, and they both drank and eventually started in on meth. He helped run the local meth house, so he was feeling pretty much invulnerable. I was sort of an additional extra he took on in order to get access to my mother and my little sister, Casey."

Nick tries to keep his face neutral, but he can see the pain in her face, and so can Bailey, who continues rubbing and kissing Tommy gently. "We can stop if you need to, baby," she says.

"No, that's okay." Tommy closes her eyes, but keeps going. "I want you both to know who I really am. So, when I was little, I always knew something wasn't right with my body. Before she married my step-father, momma thought it was kinda cute, her three-year-old insisting on wearing girls clothes and playing with her make-up. But she made me stop when she got married. See, at that time, I was Thomas James Ryder, and my new daddy was very proud of his right-wing neo-Nazi heritage. He was a local Klansman, took us all to church every Sunday, the whole package. Most of the time, I just tried to stay out of his way.

"But things didn't go that way. Casey disappeared when I was seven, and I never found out what happened to her. I wanna believe she was **** by some nice couple who wanted her to be safe, but I think my step-father prolly had something to do with it. So I became the only kid, and step-dad worked hard to try and toughen me up. **** camping trips, making me try out for all the sports teams, even taking me to Klan meetings. I hated him, I hated them, and I hated my life. Then I made it onto the high school swim team. And I found my first boyfriend, Tyler. I mean, there aren't very many openly gay guys in small-town Mississippi, and Tyler and I weren't intending on being the first. He was the first boy I dressed for, really as a joke at first one night. But it felt so right, like I was finally the way I was meant to be. I didn't want to be a girl, exactly, I just wanted to be pretty and loved and safe." She squeezes Nick's hand tight. "Like with you." Then she looks at Bailey, and shakes her head. "No. Like I feel with both of you.

"So of course, step-daddy found out. You wouldn't believe how crazy he got. He took a bullwhip to me, made me swear I wouldn't ever talk to Tyler again. I quit the swim team, and thought about quitting life, too. Every Sunday, he would drag us off to church and lecture me on how sick and fucked up I was. After the first few weeks of that, things changed. He started getting drunk, and he would stand me up in his bedroom. He'd make me bend over the bed, and he would whip me and tell me over and over again what a pervert he was. And every time, I would hear his belt buckle jingling behind me, the sound of his breath, the smell of beer and whisky, and then he would cum all over my ass and throw me out of his room.

"After about a month of that, I ran away. I got as far as Memphis just thumbing rides and stealing bus tickets. When they caught me, I begged them not to send me home. They figured they should believe their brother-officer over me, so back I went. The first night I was back, he snuck into my bedroom and tried to **** me. I fought him off, grabbed his service weapon, and shot him.

"Oh, my God, baby," Bailey exhaled.

"It's okay, I didn't kill him. Despite my best attempt. That was the only bright spot; Child Protective Services came in and got me, sent me up to Hattiesburg and a juvenile detention facility. I got to go to school, and I was able to fake straight well enough to keep from getting too brutalized. And I discovered I was good at math, and at cards. I mean, scary good. By the time I left juvie, I was 18, I'd earned a scholarship to junior college for accounting, and I was on my way. After a month or two on my own, I decided to say fuck it and started dressing full-time. Surprisingly, no one said anything to me. Things would have been pretty good, but I was so focused on playing poker after school, I started spending more and more time at the clubs and casinos, and less and less at school. Finally, last year, I dropped out.

"See, I'd met a Ukranian guy called Artem Vashlikop who told me he was a property investor. He was rich, sophisticated, handsome, and he totally wanted to fuck me. He offered to finance me trying to go professional as a full-time poker player. I got 50k from him, and didn't realize until after I lost the money on a bad hand that he considered it a loan, payable immediately on demand. Oh, he gave me an option: I could be his fuckboy and he'd take a grand off a week until my debt was paid, with interest. Since the vig was 10 points, it meant I'd be paying him back with my ass long after he lost any interest in me.

"So I skipped town and ran for it. I ended up on the streets five months ago, ****. I did what I could to survive, which I won't go into. You can imagine what a crossdresser with no money and no propects gets up to in the city. I figured I'd gone far enough, but one of Artem's business associates made me at a back-room poker game last month. They came up looking for me, to rough me up and take me back to him. And that happened to be right outside your door, Nicki."

"Wow," Bailey says, hugging Tommy so tight they're almost one person. "That's really sad, baby. I'm so sorry all that happened to you."

Aden has managed to restrain the monster, but it's taken the name: Artem Vashlikop. He's got friends he can check with to find the man, maybe pay him a visit. And there's enough to find the step-father, too, a Mississippi cop named Ryder who has a record with the KKK, connections to meth dealing, and a bullet wound. Yeah, the monster says. _I can kill those two for her. _Out loud, he simply kisses her deeply, touching his forehead to hers and holding her there for a moment. "I'm so glad I found you, and you're with us."

"Are we an us, then?" Bailey asks; it's her turn to be shy. "Because I would love that, but I also have this whole complicated thing with Sarah. And I feel like I'm taking advantage of you."

"You're absolutely fine," Nick says, touching her arm. "We can be as much of an us as you feel comfortable with." They all sit silently for a while.

Finally, the girls smile, and Bailey looks to him. "You wanna tell us anything, babe?" she asks, leaving it up to him.

With a deep and uncomfortable sigh, he nods, and starts his own tale.