Birdee didn’t ask twice.
She stepped over her unmoving mother, and we all went outside.
“I thought you were staying in the car?” I asked in shock.
“I was, but I had to move it because some cop asked me what I was doing.” She cleared her throat. “I told him I was going for a run.”
“Which they believed because you’re a nut job,” I whispered, my voice slightly quivering.
“I like to run. That’s not a bad thing,” Cody murmured. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We left the door open. We left everything exactly as it was. Then we ran.
Well, Cody and I ran. Birdee moved as fast as she was able due to her crutch and broken leg.
It was only an hour later when I got back home that I finally turned my phone back on.
It dinged, and my whole entire heart seized in my chest.
Panic and excitement and shame warred inside of me as I hit the text.
When it opened, a wave of pure shock rolled through me.
One text was all it took for me to feel my entire world spiraling.
Romeo:
Just leave me alone, you crazy freakin’ weirdo.
The “Sent with Siri” was the least of my worries as I read and reread the text message he’d sent.
Was that what I was doing? Hounding him to the point that he’d finally had to respond?
Was he pushing me away on purpose?
And had I just killed the woman that I was supposed to love—even though she’d gone out of her way to kill that love—for a man that thought I was a total creep?
I walked to the kitchen and picked up a bottle of wine.
I didn’t drink much, but if anything called for an occasion to do so…it was this one.
It also helped that Birdee and Cody arrived on their own, without my inviting them, to join me.
If there was ever a time to gather and drink, it was when you killed a woman who was a threat to your very existence.
Right?
Twenty-Seven
I want a man to tell me to shut up and obey him. I won’t do it, but I reckon it’ll turn me on.
—Mable to Romeo
Romeo
“Two things,” Apollo said when he came strolling through the door. “One, you’re allowed to go home. The threat’s been eliminated.”
“Really?” I asked, standing up.
