My mother sat on a chaise longue beneath her window, two fingers to her temple. I pulled the blankets off me and went to her, touching her shoulder. She went stiff at my touch.
They say every sibling was raised by different parents. The mother who raised me never stopped hoping for my dad to love her again. When he died, a vacuum formed in its absence. The gnawing hope changed her, made her unable to love anything.
Without another word, my mother stood up and left me alone in her bedroom.
The next week passed uneventfully. There were no parties, my brother and his wife were out of town, and my mother ignored me.
I didn’t hear from Grim until Thursday morning, in text.
One hour.
I sighed. As Lock and Raze had pointed out, I’d already missed the last two check-ins. I knew if I pushed back too much, I’d regret it.
So I found myself walking along an empty beach toward the Wharf, blowing candy-flavored smoke from my vape into the air. It had snowed a little, and the flakes dusted the beach like powdered sugar?—
“Ow, shit.” I rubbed my wrist, where a red mark in the shape of my vape had burned the skin.
I shook my head. Fucking rookie shit.
Less than an hour later I approached the rusted Ferris wheel that marked the Wharf. This was my favorite part of Crowne Beach.
The sand always felt softer.
The fog sweeter.
Like something was going to slip out from the thin white tendrils and steal me away forever.
Grim waited at the pier, leaning on a nearly rotted wood railing. Fog swirled at his feet, the Ferris wheel at his back. He didn’t react when I approached.
“You know the drill,” he said.
“It’s outside. And it’swinter.”
Grim looked up from his phone, eyes hard.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
I tore off my shirt, unbuttoned my pants. I stayed like that, naked save for my La Perla, clothes in hand.
Grim’s eyes traveled down my body. Slow. Lazy. Leaving a trail of fire as they went.
These “check-ins” were categorically different from when the rest of the Horsemen were around. Those were bureaucratic, like a banker following up on a credit check.
But these?
“The rest.” His voice was cold with an apathy that matched his gaze.
Rolling my eyes, I unclasped the bra at my front and shimmied out of my underwear. The winter wind blew across my skin, frosty and bitter.
Grim stared without shame.
The Horsemen were not gentlemen.
I wouldn’t expect them to be.
Grim did a slow circle around me, his inspection cold and clinical. “Lift up your arm.”
