I laugh it off, shaking my head, and grind back into the music with Harper, letting the bass take over while the lights smear everything into color, motion and heat.
If tonight’s a mess, then at least it’s a fun one.
Harper leans in, shouting in my ear, “Bitch, you aresodrunk, and you have so much fucking tea to spill later.”
I laugh, loud and unbothered, shaking my head. “You haveno idea,” I shout back, bumping my shoulder into hers. “Like…not even a little.”
And for once, I fucking mean it. I really, really do.
Part of me can’t wait to tell them about Kross and Kade—the masks, the attitude, the way they looked at me like they couldn’t decide if they should kill me or kiss me. I’ll leave out the parts that would get me institutionalized.
Definitely skipping the murder, especially Mark’s.
A flicker of thought cuts in anyway, unwanted but persistent. Will it hit the news? Will he just…disappear? Have his face all over the town on a missing poster. Concerned coworkers. A mother waiting for a phone call that never comes. I wonder, distantly, how they’re going to handle it. Howthose twoclean up something like that when it wasn’t one of their planned victims.
If they’ve even killed spontaneously before. If they already have it down to a system.
Then I shake it off, hard, like snapping a rubber band against my own brain.
Not tonight, Aeri.
The music surges again, the lights smear into neon streaks, and I stop trying to track time or consequences or whatever version of myself existed before this. I let it carry me. Let the heat, the noise, and the bad decisions stack up and blur together until all that’s left is movement, laughter, and that buzzing, electric feeling under my skin.
For once, I don’t want to think. I just want to enjoy it.
And fuck, I deserve this.
I’m not steering anymore.
I’m just riding it, and honestly? I’m fucking loving it.
10
KROSS
We stop pretending this is going to look clean the second the cleaner runs out.
Kade found the bottle shoved behind the last stall, half-empty and crusted around the nozzle like no one’s fucking touched it in months. He sprayed until the air burned and my eyes started watering. The smell hit so fucking sharp it’s clawing straight up my goddamn nose.
I’m on trash duty.
Anything with blood on it goes straight into the bottom of the garbage can.
I rip the paper towel dispensers empty, one after the other, using everything I can find to suck up the blood splattered around the room and stuffing the wads down hard. Toilet paper too, torn off in thick, frantic handfuls until the rolls are nothing but soggy cardboard.
If it’s red, it gets fucking buried.
No exceptions.
I stomp it all down with my boot, grinding it into a wet, ugly mess that makes my stomach twist, then start layering dry trash over the top. Cups. Wrappers. I pack it in until it looks likenothing more than a neglected bathroom bin that hasn’t seen mercy in weeks.
This is the first time we’ve killed someone we didn’t set out to kill.
Not that it bothers me. Not even a little. The fucker deserved it. It was never just the cheating. That was just the excuse. I’ve met men like him before. Small, fragile, walking around with that tight, coiled rage under their skin. The kind that shows up the second a woman stops making herself smaller for them. It’s always only a matter of time before that kind of insecurity turns into something uglier. Hands where they don’t belong. Anger they swear they didn’t mean.
So no, I don’t feel bad for him.
What gets under my skin iswhenit happened.
