CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
RAZOR
Suds follow the washcloth over her shoulder, slipping down her suntanned skin, the transparency collecting the orange tint of the wavering flame. I take my time over the prominent bones, admiring the contours that make her look easy to catch.
So fucking soft. So small.
It was easy breaking her skin with my teeth. She’s fragile. But not weak. Her exterior is susceptible to damage. But internally she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.
I’d like to see it; how pink she is in there even after all the rot she’s experienced.
I want her inside and out, wanna be able to form my hand around her heart, close in on her warm pulse, just to leave my fingerprints on it.
It’s a shame it would kill her. If I had a way to open her like a cadaver and draw my fingers along everything she keeps inside—I would.
Macabre images flash behind my eyes. Usually, the gory shots of crimson and violence are concerning. But subconsciously making up strange visuals of moving from the smeared scarlet on Bunny’s neck, down to her wrist to create a new wound to drink from—warms me.
Dunking the washcloth in the water, I run it back over the soap on her shoulder, stalking the loose suds traveling down her back and puddling into the bubbles surrounding her.
Her ribs. The precious cage protecting what I want most is wrapped in a blanket of hot water, leaving the skin that’s usually taut relaxed and pliable.
I could take one… Clean the meat from her bone to carry her with me forever.
I’d inhale her if I could.
“That girl earlier,” she rasps, turning to look at me over her shoulder, her glistening eye peeking around the curtain of dark cocoa framing her face. “Did she say her name?”
“Yes,” I answer, leaning over the edge of the tub to tuck her hair behind her ear. “All she said was Cassi.”
“Did she say why she was watching us?”
I sigh deeply, barely letting out the jet of air. “Film. Movie. Whatever the fuck.” Getting more soap on the cloth, I clean around her neck, taking extra caution of the bruises I left on her. “We apparently inspired something.”
“A movie.” She looks away, staring off into the dancing candle. “That could be fun, though. Why were you mean?”
“I wasn’t mean,” my brows slam together. “That was a valid reaction to some random lady creeping hard enough to draw us in under ten minutes.”
“Ew,” she frowns, looking back at me again. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Xene still has her little journal, so it doesn’t matter now.”
Observing me for a moment, she’s huffing and spinning around, her hair following in a delayed spiral beneath the water. “You wanna know why I got the heebie-jeebies from her?”
“Oh, baby, tell me what made your skin crawl,” I lean into her.
She sputters a laugh, tossing a wet hand to my shoulder and taking a quick deep breath to calm herself. “She kinda looks like Carl.”
Heebie-jeebies indeed.
I see it now that she’s saying it. Same cold, glazed over eyes and taut bottom lip, almost like a deep-rooted evil needed someplace to fracture the mask.
Using my silence as an agreement, she scoots closer, bracing her other hand to the tub and staring at me with her big eyes. “You think so too?”
“I see it… Yeah.”
“Do you know if he has a daughter? Could we find out?”
She looks too fucking cute right now for any alarms to sound off in my head.
Drying my hand off on my shirt, I hastily pull my phone from my cargos, snapping a fuzzy picture of her looking up at me, the wet length of her hair bending and curling to her arms. “I fucking hope he didn’t reproduce, but, uh…
” Checking the photo out, I give it a quick grin and stretch over to set my phone on the sink. “We can see what we can dig up on him.”
“We?” she smiles.
This is what makes it so hard hiding so much shit from her.
She wants to be included. She wants to know so many things.
But I don’t think I have her in position that makes it safe for her to know—yet.
I just need some more time doing normal shit with her.
Like this. What we’re doing right now. Just talking and hanging out, making plans.
That’s normal. She needs normal before…
Woah, what the fuck is she looking at?
My skin shrinks, catching her eyes drift to the side and shallowly stare at something behind me. “Bunny? … Hey, you okay?”
I check over my shoulder, making sure Freddy Krueger isn’t making an early appearance tonight, and all I see is the door faintly illuminated by the candle.
“Uh… no, I don’t like that.” Lunging to my feet, I grab her towel from the hook on the wall and toss it over my shoulder, wasting no time shoving my hands into the water to pull her out by underneath her arms.
I basically throw her little ass into me, holding her with one arm and jerking the towel over her, using a violent hustle to blow the flame out and leave the bathroom.
“I’ve never seen him in here before.”
Centipedes race up my back, my eyes pinning wide. “He? He who?” Avoiding the drunk chatter coming from the rest of the house, I gun it into my room and shut the door.
“I think it’s Damien.”
Getting slam dunked in my own vat of formaldehyde, all muscles seize to a freeze near my bed, hearing the name she shouldn’t remember.
The name I never thought I’d hear again.
Curiously taking each inch closer, the singular seat that’s occupied in the front row drains my focus over to the only face giving her an audience.
He’s not paying a lick of attention. His poor little head is rested in his palm, and his eyes are closed, like he’s taking himself a goddamn nap.
The ungrateful fuck has my shoes scuffing to a stop a few feet from the silk bunny swirling to her own hum, my vision coming to a slit. Talking some shit in my head about him being more narcoleptic than my vegetative uncle, the song of a sad siren is fading to silence.
“Psst!”
Turning to look where the noise came from, Roslyn Rabbit has her attention on me, her bare feet planted to the stage as she simultaneously shushes me with a finger and wiggles out of the black silk.
I do a double take at the guy passed out, trying to pacify the dark spots beginning to absorb my sight.
Kinda fuckin’ seems like I have someone that’s gonna be in my way. Someone she lulled to sleep and is rushing away from.
“Damien, stop.” Bunny moves between us, skating a hand up his heaving chest.
His soulless, blind fucking eyes are narrowed in on me, his upper lip snarling.
“We get a new guy that shows up, follows you around, and now has a pathetic pet name for you?” Cutting his violent eyes down to her, they vibrate around, trying to search through the white cast for her silhouette.
“You’re probably being a fucking whore!”
“Stop,” she cries.
“Stop.” My chest swells into cement, the room spinning. “Stop.”
“Stop! Please stop!”
“Stop.”
“Killer in the-”
“Killer.”
“Did you eat?”
“Eat. Eat. It’s good.”
“Stop.”