Page 49 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves
“You broke me,” I say, full-on moaning. “That’s it. Normal’s dead. Bury me with my boner.”
Her laugh is quiet, smug. And god, I love it.
“Good,” she whispers. “I don’t want normal.”
I tilt her chin up, catch her mouth in a kiss, sweet, deep, just this side of desperate. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and find out it wasn’t real. That she isn’t here. That I didn’t just fall in love between her thighs and now have to live the rest of my life aching for every second she’s not in my arms.
But she is here. Soft and warm and wrapped around me. She’s real.
“Get comfy,” I say, tugging a blanket up over us. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her hand slides up to my neck, fingers stroking lazy circles against my skin.
“Good,” she whispers again.
I close my eyes, heart hammering slow and deep.
Mine.
Chapter Seventeen
Jennifer
It’s been a few hours since Blake left, and I’ve already scrubbed the counter twice, rearranged the spice rack by emotional trauma level, and eaten half a tray of cookies I don’t remember baking. I called Carson and postponed the SUV scrubbing until tonight. Because obviously I can’t bleach bloodstains when I’m emotionally raw and freshly sexed. That’s just poor time management.
I need to think.
What the actual fuck am I doing?
Blake is… he’s sweet. And hot. And filthy in the way that makes my spine curl like an overwatered fern. He’s gentle, but not fragile. Strong, but not performative. The man brought me chocolate milk, helped me move bodies, and then rearranged my internal organs. And now I want to vomit.
“Too much,” I say, pacing in my kitchen like it’s a panic runway. “He’s too much. Too safe. Too decent. He has… zero red flags. Do you understand how suspicious that is?”
I hurl the dish towel onto the counter like it’s the problem.
“He says “thank you” when I pass him things. He makes eye contact. He touches me like I’m sacred and slutty at the same time and I, Oh god. He’s going to get hurt,” I snap at the fridge, which has done nothing wrong except exist while I emotionally unravel. “He’s going to get all invested and loyal and then what? What do I do when he finds out I turn men into mulch?”
Walter’s picture, the one I taped to the compost bin for psychological catharsis, stares up at me like he knows. It’s that smug, haunted-ass smirk, like he’s still pulling the strings.
“And that’s your fault!” I scream at the bin like an unhinged Disney villain. “You! With your gaslighting, your rules, your fucking spreadsheets for how long I was allowed to cry!”
I devour another cookie like it just said “calm down.”
“I’m trying, okay?” I shout. “I killed the bad ones! I fed them to the tomatoes! I’m doing the work! And still, the world keeps spitting out bastards like a vending machine from hell!” I kick the bin. Not enough to hurt it. Just enough to make a point.
No matter how many of these useless, rage-stuffed, manipulative bastards I take out, four more show up like some kind of violent, misogynist hydra. It’s like I’m playing Whack-a-Misogynist in Beelzebub's arcade.
And Walter, the final boss of my trauma dungeon, is still out there somewhere. Probably sipping a green juice and creating more little bastard men like it’s a hobby.
“Maybe he’s got a lab,” I say, grabbing a spoon and jabbing it into the peanut butter like I’m executing a plan. “Clones. A whole fuckboy production line. Bastard birds hatching from eggs made of Axe body spray and fragile egos.”
I pause, stare into the distance, and then eat the peanut butter directly from the spoon while my brain tap dances through every possible scenario in which I don’t ruin Blake with my garbage fire heart and bloodstained baggage.
“It’s Walter. He’s the answer.” I say it out loud, like I’m solving the world’s shittiest riddle. “I bet he’d love that.” I laugh a little too sharp. It echoes off the walls like it’s trying to get away from me.
Alright. Enough. It’s time to get my sparkly, semi-feral shit together, because I have a dinner date with a mortician who feeds me like a death-obsessed god, something disturbingly magnetic with a homicide detective who may or may not have deleted a federal file for me, and Blake invited me to the goddamn county fair.
The fair. With ferris wheels and funnel cake and Cookie’s flock of Stepford Judgment Barbies who will sniff out my trauma like bloodhounds in rhinestone aprons.
