Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Dalton
We take a detour when we hit North Carolina, choosing to cut along the coast so that Van Gogh can smell the sea air. It’s really for Rayna, but I play along and pretend we’re doing this for our ailing Victorian child. He certainly looks the part as she holds him against the window.
“Are there squirrels on the beach?” she asks as she watches the ocean pass by.
I shrug. “Seagulls would probably be the squirrels of the beach.”
“Maybe I can find a taxidermy seagull when we get to Oak Hollow,” she says with a beaming smile. She looks down at Van Gogh. “We can get you a cousin.”
If the Reddit thread is to be believed, she’ll find damn near anything she wants in that town. They’ve draped every shop, café, and home in death. I wish I could share Rayna’s excitement, but I’m thoroughly creeped the fuck out.
She pulls out her phone and types something in. Seconds later, a frown replaces her smile. “Fuck, we’ll miss the funeral celebration at this rate.”
“Funeral . . . celebration?”
“Yeah, right before Halloween, they display their dead for the year before burying them.”
More questions pop into my mind, but I’m too afraid of the answers. Glad our detour will force us to miss out, I take another side road and pull through a strip of souvenir shops. This isn’t exactly tourist season for the beach town, but the steady supply of locals must keep them in business.
Rayna sits up taller and focuses on something ahead. I follow her gaze to a man on the side of the road. Unlike the locals, he sticks out. He wears a tattered brown backpack, and road dust covers his clothes. He holds his thumb high in the air, begging for a ride out of here.
“We have to stop and pick him up!” Rayna says, her enthusiasm seeping out of every pore.
“We absolutely do not have to do that.”
“Come on, Dalton. Please!” She adjusts in her seat so that she can face me. “We don’t even have to kill him.”
“Then what’s the point of picking him up?”
She doesn’t even need to consider her answer. “We can make him as uncomfortable as possible and see how long it takes him to ask to be let out. Please? For me?”
Her hand slides over my thigh and lands on the crotch of my jeans. Her begging does something to me. It always has. It’s how I ended up in my first ever three-way . . . with a corpse. It’s how I ended up wearing another man’s sausage casing. She begs, and I’m so stupidly in love that I give in.
She’s a bad influence.
I pull over and turn to Rayna. “Okay. We can pick him up. But we are not killing him, understood?”
Rayna lets out a joyful squeal and kicks her feet with the cutest show of excitement I’ve ever seen. It’s as if picking up a dirty man on the side of the road is the greatest gift I could have given her.
I wave to the man, and he approaches the car as I lower the window. “Where you headed?”
As he draws closer, I regret the decision to stop.
Despite being grimy from the road, he’s incredibly handsome.
Hell, the grit might be adding to the allure.
When he smiles at me, I want to punch him in the teeth to make them just a little less straight, but then I might slip and cut my fist on that razor-sharp jawline.
He leans down and places his thick forearms on my window, tossing his head to get the quiff of blond hair out of his face. “Florida, but if you’re headed south, I’ll ride as far as you can take me.”
“What a coincidence!” Rayna squeals. “We’re headed to Florida too!”
My brain screams to come up with a reason, any reason, to change my mind right now and drive away, but it’s too late.
He’s already opening the back door and settling his pack on the seat.
A strange and slightly familiar scent reaches my nose when he sits down and closes the door.
I can’t quite put my finger on it . . . but I know that odd, leather-like aroma.
“How long have you been hitchhiking?” I ask, trying to beat back the awkward silence with some idle conversation.
“All day.” He shuffles around in the back seat.
Rayna turns to see what he’s doing, and her eyes go wide.
Panic immediately sets in as her mouth falls open.
She’s never without something to say. I need to keep my eyes on the road, but I’m dying to know what he’s revealed that has her so shocked.
It better not be his fucking dick. If he so much as looks at Rayna sideways, I’m breaking my one rule and making the kill my damn self.
Finally, Rayna finds her voice. “Is that a cinnamon? I’ve never seen one in person.”
Cinnamon?
“I see you know your raccoons,” the man says.
Raccoon? Did he bring a wild animal into my car?
“And it’s a soft mount too? It looks so lifelike.” Rayna is practically beaming, and that’s when it hits me. The man must have seen her squirrel and pulled out his own bit of taxidermy. But what she says next nearly has me swerving off the road. “Did we just become best friends?”
Did I just pick up the man who will steal the love of my life away from me?
“Why do you carry around a dead raccoon?” I ask, trying to prevent him from answering that question.
“Probably the same reason I carry a dead squirrel around,” Rayna quips.
“I just love taxidermy,” the man says before sitting back in his seat with the animal draped across his lap. If I lean just right, I can see him in the rearview mirror. And he’s still so fucking handsome.
Regret grips my throat in a chokehold. I fucked up. I let the man of Rayna’s dreams inside my fucking car. He’s the psycho to her pathic, the in to her sane. I’m outside looking in, firmly seated beyond their inner circle as they play a gruesome game of show and tell. Where is Raul when I need him?
If he thinks he’ll steal her from me, he’s lost it. I’ll kill him myself before I let him have her, and I’ll burn his stupid raccoon in front of him first.
I firm my grip on the wheel and reel in my sanity.
I’m not thinking clearly. Rayna loves me, and she won’t hop on the first dick who shares her favorite hobby.
Even if he does look a lot like Liam Hemsworth.
And even though he’s now telling her that he not only owns a taxidermy collection, but he has his own shop.
If we picked up a girl who had a penchant for blood like me, would Rayna feel this intense jealousy I’m feeling now? Either way, killing him will be just the thing to get my mind right.
The next few miles pass in a blur as I try to block out their conversation. Joining in isn’t an option, as they’re currently discussing the merits of building your own form versus buying a pre-made. I don’t know what any of these words mean.
Golden arches appear in the distance as we near the interstate again. McDonald’s is Rayna’s favorite, and we haven’t eaten in hours.
“How about we stop for a bite?” I say to Rayna as I point to the fast-food building coming up on our right.
Rayna shakes her head. “I’m not really hungry right now.” She turns back to the stranger. “So, like I was saying, I thought about re-stretching him over a new form, but I think he’d just tear.”
“Let me see him,” the man says as he holds his hand toward Van Gogh.
I sit a little higher in my seat, knowing she’s about to snatch that squirrel back quicker than he can blink. It took a lot of work for her to allow me to touch him, and I know she’d never—
“Be careful with that left ear. It’s barely hanging on,” she says as she hands the squirrel to the man.
Fuck.
I snatch the wheel and pull into the McDonald’s parking lot.
Van Gogh flies from Rayna’s fingers and smacks into the side of my head, then continues down to the footboard, where he gets jammed under the brake.
Unfortunately, I also press my foot down at the same time, crushing the squirrel’s frail body.
The resulting crunch might as well have been my own ribcage because now I can’t fucking breathe.
Rayna screams as I put the car in park and reach into the shadows to pull up the remains of her most beloved object. At first glance, I’m relieved. He’s still in one piece, despite the terrible crunching sound we heard. But then my finger finds the ragged tear running down his side.
“Bones, I’m sorry,” I say as I offer him to her.
With tears in her eyes, she pulls the furry creature to her chest and fights back the sobs. I’ve never seen her look so small and afraid.
“You killed him,” she whispers as she studies the strip of separated skin.
Now is not the moment to tell her that he died a long time ago, so I bite my tongue and try to think of something kind to say. That’s when Mister Wonderful swoops in.
“Let me see him,” he says. He reaches into the front seat once more, and I fight the urge to bite his fingers off. When Rayna places Van Gogh in his waiting palm, my heart sinks again.
I bite back the rage. For her.
After a few moments of tense silence, the man sits forward and places the squirrel in Rayna’s lap. “The tear looks worse than it is. You lost a little fur, but I can patch him up if you don’t mind making the trip to Oak Hollow.”
“Then I guess we’re taking you the entire way there,” she says.
“Rayna, can I speak to you, please?” I say.
She nods. “Sure.”
“Outside the car.” I smile sweetly at her. I know I just fucked up, but we are absolutely not taking this strange man the entirety of the journey. In fact, I’m thinking of avoiding that town altogether now.
She sets Van Gogh on the center console and joins me outside the car. Despite being fall, it’s uncomfortably warm out, and I begin to sweat almost immediately. Though part of it is probably stress.
“You can’t be serious,” I whisper when the car door closes. We take a few steps away from the vehicle.
Rayna crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me. “Oh, I’m very serious. I only want the best for Van Gogh, and judging by his racoon, Samuel is the best.”
“Samuel? You’re on a first-name basis with him now?”
“Your shitty driving is the reason my squirrel now has a gash in his side, and he is the key to fixing him. Hell, he might even be able to reattach his dangly ear. Don’t you want that for our son, Dalton?”
Her bottom lip quivers as she looks up at me. She’s serious.
I sigh and pull her against my chest. “Fine, bones. We’ll take him the full way to Oak Hollow.”
Now I just have to hope I don’t regret this.