Mymindwon’tstopracing when I walk to Rhett’s cabin.
Her body. Her tight little pussy. Her lips. My FUCK, those lips…
My brain almost malfunctions until I catch my boot on a root and almost trip.
The snow hasn’t melted here, packed hard on the path by a hundred half-assed footsteps. My boots chew it up, ice grinding in the tread. I look at my hand—knuckles split, blood drying dark against my skin from when I slammed her against the brick.
Worth it.
I step into their cabin without bothering to knock. The place smells like burnt sugar and wet dog. Inside is hotter than hell, the wood stove going full blast, windows fogged to shit. I stand in the small mudroom, listening to the static of Isolde’s voice from the kitchen. She’s narrating her every move: “Two more tablespoons of sriracha, just like Mom used to ruin it. Oh, shit, that’s a lot. Okay. We adapt.” She slaps the spoon down and the noise echoes.
She’s the only person who talks to herself more than I do.
I flex my hand. Pain blooms across the knuckles—tiny bursts of glass, almost sweet. The other hand is clean. I should bandage the bad one but I like the look of it, raw and honest. I wipe the worst of the blood on my pants.
Then I go in.
Isolde is crouched over the kitchen island, mixing a bowl of something that looks like strawberry glue. Her hair is up, frizz bomb exploding from the elastic. She’s wearing sweats, the waistband over her growing stomach, shirt stained with four different colors. The stove is going—one pot burping steam, another spitting oil on the coils. There’s a tray of something marshmallow on the counter, half-melted and slumping over the edge.
Where the fuck is Rhett?
She turns and grins at me. “Hey, murder panda,” she says, waving the spoon. “You want the first bite?”
I shrug, lurching to the fridge. “What the hell is it?”
She makes a big show of sniffing the bowl. “You know that Korean street food where it’s, like, noodles but also candy? I’m inventing the Italian version. Tagliatelle alla… fuck, I haven’t named it yet.” She grabs a fistful of the sticky mass and tries to twist it into a knot, but it pulls back into a sad, pink worm. “Look at that. Food science.”
I chug water straight from the jug. “Why’s it pink?”
Isolde shrugs, “I thought it was food coloring, but it might’ve been paint. It was in the cabinet with all the… you know.” She gestures at the ancient, weirdly shaped spices and powders on the shelf. Some of them are unlabeled, just brown dust in jam jars. “Could be poison. We’ll know soon. I gotta put it in the fridge.”
My stomach is a rock, but the water helps. I watch her pour the goo into a glass pan, then dust it with a fistful of red chili flakes. “You know that’s not going to set,” I say.
She sticks the pan on the counter and wipes her hands on her ass. “That’s what the microwave is for,” she says, as if it solves anything or even makes sense. She catches me staring and grins wider. “What did you do to your hand?”
I look at it. “Fell.”
She snorts. “Into someone’s teeth?”
“Something like that.”
She plucks a bottle from the drying rack, unscrews the cap with her mouth. “Bam, you know it’s normal to be into rough sex, right? Like, you don’t have to go full serial killer every time you want to blow off steam.”
I glare. “You want me to leave?”
“Not unless you’re going to kill me, in which case—wait until dinner, yeah? I want to taste my masterpiece before I die.” She snickers, flopping onto a stool. “Rhett’s in his little cave. Says he’s got Board shit, but I think he’s just spying on Caius. Sit down. You look like you need carbs.”
There’s an edge to her, but she means well. She’s got this way of making violence a joke, like it’s a dumb party trick and not the only thing holding me together. Sometimes it pisses me off, but mostly it’s relief. Not a lot of people can stand to look at me for long.
I shove some wrappers aside and sit at the counter. She slides a can of beer down to me, the cheap stuff, but I take it.
“So,” she says, leaning in, “you gonna tell me what’s eating you?”
I pop the can, the hiss loud in the room. “Nothing.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Liar. Your face does this thing when you lie.” She demonstrates, twisting her features into an exaggerated scowl. “See? You’re doing it right now.”
I chug half the beer. It tastes like piss, but the cold is good. “You ever meet someone who just—” I stop. The words are stupid. I can’t even say them.
