Stress Reliever

Mimi's gone silent. Lucy sits in her car outside the gates, gripping the wheel so hard her knuckles bleach. No more tipoffs. No more lifeline. The reform school stares back like it knows something she doesn't. Her stomach twists, thoughts piling up too fast, nothing sticking. The missing girl is still missing and now Mimi might be too. Evidence—she needs evidence, and she has none. Gina finds her like that, jaw clenched, breathing all wrong. Doesn't ask. Just reaches over, tugs Lucy's belt loose, slides her fingers under denim and cotton until she finds heat and tension and works them out in slow, deliberate strokes. Lucy's head hits the headrest. Her legs spread wider. Gina watches her face while her fingers keep moving—steady, focused, no mercy. Lucy stops thinking about bodies she can't reach and starts shaking around the ones she can. When she comes it's sudden and loud in the cramped car, fogging the glass. Gina keeps her hand there until the tremors stop, then licks her fingers clean like it's nothing. Like saving her wife from her own mind is just another thing you do on a Tuesday night.