CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
RAZOR
Getting inside the house, I’m ready to raise my voice. My lungs stiffen, crossing the threshold after Bunny, but the catfight shredding vocal cords snaps my teeth closed.
Cash’s arms are getting mauled from holding Aries back in the kitchen and Xene is barricading Ora in the living room, both the girls screaming shit I can’t fucking understand.
This isn’t normal. Aries doesn’t tolerate shit, but she’s never been this close to tearing someone apart. And I’ve never seen Ora this pissed off.
Stopping Bunny from chewing on her nails, I grab her hand and shove it into my pocket, standing far enough to the side to be able to keep her out of the crossfire, make sure she doesn’t see anything she shouldn’t have to.
Aries screams. Ora screams. The guys scream at them to stop.
I try to wait for my opening, but with the back-and-forth bitch fest, my patience is burning up, and my lungs are turning to cement. “Enough!”
The ire I swallowed maybe fucking six minutes ago burns through my chest, slashing the screaming to silence and putting everyone in an awkward pause.
A perk of being in control. I even have Duse and Gwen inching out of their room.
Bunny’s hand squirms within mine, reminding me of the furry goddamn friend that hitched a ride home with us.
With everyone’s attention on me, I pull it out, panning over the stuffy room.
“Someone’s watching us,” I tell them, holding the cryptic ass rabbit’s foot up for them to see. “Specifically, Bunny.”
Aries tosses her hands up, smacking her palms back down to her thighs with an exasperated head shake, the roll of her eyes guiding her back to the fridge for a beer.
“Think it has somethin’ to do with that detective?” Cash asks, roughly wiping the sweat from his eyes.
“No,” I answer. “Our little bunny just found a bug in the office.” Huffing, I get the rabbit’s foot loaded back into my pocket, scanning the wood paneling for anything similar to what we saw staring at us from the corner.
“We’d be long gone if the ops were the ones watching… Someone’s getting a show out of this.”
“I fucking told you!” Ora points at Aries, shooting knives for eyes across the house, then she’s snapping over to Bunny. “I didn’t take your shit, Bun. I’d never. And I’d never damage something of yours.”
“I-I didn’t think it was you,” Bunny stammers.
“Razor did!” Ora thrashes a stiff hand my way, swinging back to Aries scowling at her from the kitchen. “So did Aries!”
Slamming her beer on the table, Aries steps closer, leaning into a viscous hunch with her hand pressing into the table. “You have an advantage. You’re the only one that goes in there besides…”
Everyone turning to look at me at the same fucking time simmers another wave of annoyance.
“Please don’t make me laugh right now. I’m not in the mood.” A silent growl vibrates my throat, closing my eyes for a moment so that I can hopefully breathe through the urge to burn this place down with them in it.
Not Bunny. You shouldn’t even question that.
“What about that Cassi girl?” Xene asks.
Her name being mentioned in front of Bunny pries my eyes open to him inspecting the walls, none the wiser to what I was trying to distract her from.
Anndd there she goes. She’s ripping her hand from mine and shooting her big eyes up at me.
I know I said I’d let her help dig up dirt on that girl. But if I have any say, I want her staying out of everything. She’s the last fucking person that should be standing toe to toe with demons.
Taking too long to say anything, Xene looks right at me, bumping a shrug. “That’s probably why she said Bunny kills you. She knows-”
“That’s enough,” I interrupt.
“Xene! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Aries hollers, her face tightening just as irately as mine.
“Woah, wait.” Bunny waves her hands, stepping out in front of me and giving me the look I’ve been fucking waiting on. “She knows what?”
Ora shoves Xene in the chest, and instead of taking the damn hint that he, hm, I don’t fucking know, just started a war in Bun’s head, his palms turn up and he looks around like he’s confused.
“Nothing, Bunny.” Dragging in a deep inhale, I lock it in my throat, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her around, ushering her toward the hallway.
“No!” Lashing out of my grip, she spins around with volatility sharpening her eyes, holding up her hands like she can’t stand my touch right now.
That alone concaves my chest. But the entire house falling to dead silence splinters the collective angst straight into my spine.
“I’m so fucking tired of this!” Bunny yells. Right at me.
I try to reach out to fix the flowers behind her ear, but she’s swatting my hand away and ripping the little, white blooms from the spot I put them in.
Thickness crowds my throat, my vision dimming to the incline of my heart rate. “Bun…”
“No,” she shakes her head, tossing the flowers and CD to the couch. “Unless you plan on telling me everything I wanna know, I don’t wanna hear anything out of your mouth.” Letting her venom seep in, she holds her eyes on mine, then spares a cunning scan around the house. “That goes for all of you.”
“What the hell did I do?”
I think it’s Ora that asks. I don’t know. My auditory receptors are beginning to thin all noise to a squeal.
Watching Bunny’s despondency was like an ice pick slowly getting hammered into my lobe.
I felt her pain, carried the heaviness she did her best to perform with.
But she started coming out of it. Not long before you got here, she started talking, started giving me little smiles, and that withdrew how damaging the metal separating my brain was.
But this?
Her walking away like the connection between us has been severed is shooting buckshot through my chest, the withdrawn ache spreading down my back and tunneling my focus on her disappearing around the turn to her room.
She’s wearing a branding of my teeth in her skin. It’s a bleeding mark that will scar, and she seems to be immune to that, as if the macabre and intimate connection we share is a bug she can flick off her shoulder.
No. No-no-no-no.
Stalking after her, my heads spins, catching her just in time to see her through the crack of the door. Bunny wouldn’t slam it. No. She’s slowly closing it, forcing me to endure the absence darkening her eyes.
“Bun, wait.” Stepping one foot closer to her, she pushes the door until it latches.
This isn’t funny. Or fun. I didn’t make her run away with flushed cheeks and an ache I could fucking smell. The metal turning over to lock me out makes that sink in, it injects me with some toxic fucking shit that roundhouses me into a panic.
“Bunny.” Grabbing the doorknob, I try to twist against the resistance.
I know it’s locked. I heard it. I fucking heard it.
But the built-up pressure refusing to let me in coagulates me, zeroing in on the white wood.
“Bunny.” I shake the knob. “Bunny, come on.” I shake it some more, my hand vibrating in tandem with the whooshing fading my sight.
“Bunny, I’m not playin’.” My throat swells, blocking the influx of liquid drowning my tongue.
Rattling it some more, the eyes needling into the back of my head rush me around, taking a wide step to glare out the cased opening of the hallway. “The fuck are you starin’ at?! Start tearing into the walls! Any vent, cabinet, fuck, even the fucking toilet!”
Everyone snaps into a hustle, their distorted frames moving in blurs.
Not actually expecting her to have it unlocked, I check the doorknob again, and I don’t know, feeling her drift away from me obliterates my conscience. I’m hitting the door before I can stop myself.
“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR BEFORE I-” Catching the explosive mistreatment, I bang my forehead to the wood, unable to swallow the pulse stretching up my narrow throat. “Bunny, baby, come on.” The way I yelled has left my voice hoarse, my desperate plea scratching through the stains of my abuse.
She’s too good. Too soft. She’s so soft. Soft. And you fucking… You…
“Bunny, I’m sorry, baby.” My voice echoes off the door, making her room seem too vacant.
“She hates you.”
“She left you. She’d never love you.”
“You’re a monster she ran from.”
An alarm creeps under my skin. I straighten up, grabbing the knob again, my eyes sewn wide. Not hearing anything, not even a breath, signals a catastrophic destruction in my brain. With an easy twist of my wrist, the doorknob is breaking loose and detaching from the hole it was installed in.
“You’ll forgive me,” I whisper, unable to blink as I give her door a shove.
Instantly targeting the box fan on the floor, I slide up to the frame it’s usually running in, and the screen missing from the open window behind her nightstand expands my skull.