My stomach turned a little. I wanted more kids, but I didn’t like putting her body through this at all. I knew she’d be fine once she healed, but it almost seemed unfair that some women did this five or six times. Sometimes more. It looked brutal.

And I didn’t want to see her cry like that again.

We washed our hair and rinsed, and then I soaped up a cloth and washed her body, knowing she must be fucking sore to let me do it without protest.

“What will you do?” she asked as I knelt in front of her and washed her legs. “About Christiane?”

I paused, thinking. With Rika, I had too much pride to give myself away, but with Winter, I was freer.

“Do you think I should let her in?” I asked, not looking at her.

She put her hands on my shoulders to steady herself as I lifted her leg and washed her foot.

“I don’t think we have to be in a hurry to make any decisions now,” she said.

I smiled to myself. I loved how she was. She made me better, because I loved seeing her happy, but she didn’t push me, either.

“Our family comes first,” she added.

“Our family…” I repeated. My family. Mine.

I continued washing her, finishing her legs and cleaning the blood off her thighs.

“Do you ever stand at the edge of a cliff or a balcony,” she asked, “and have this moment where you wonder what it would feel like to jump?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Kind of thrilled at the idea that you’re one step from death?” She squeezed my shoulders. “One step…” she said. “And everything changes?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “It symbolizes a need to engage in self-destructive behavior. It’s not that uncommon.”

While driving, we think, even for just a moment, about jerking the steering wheel into oncoming traffic or leaping off the balcony of a ship and into the abyss of the black water below. They’re passing thoughts and little dares we allow our psyche, because we’re tired of not living and we want the fear. We want to remember why we want to live.

And some of us were more tempted than others at the thrill of how, in the moment, everything could change. Of how it’s not about who we are but what we are, and animals don’t apologize for whatever they need to do to survive.

“There’s a French phrase for it,” she said. “L’appel du vide.”

I looked up at her, her pink lips misty with hot water.

“That’s what binds us,” she told me.

“Who?”

“Our family.”

Our family?

“Kai, Banks, Michael, Rika, Will, Alex…” she went on. “You and me. We all hear it. L’appel du vide. The call of the void.”

I stopped, gazing at her.

“The call of the void,” I murmured.

Was she right? Was that what bound us together? Like recognizes like, after all, and we lived in that need to go a step further and feel everything we were capable of. The fear was terrifying, but coming out the other side redefined our reality.

“I like it,” I told her.

She paused and then said, “I love you.”