It’s not a question, but I shake my head anyway. “No fucking way.”
“That cop would?—”
“You know what’s been working really great for me the past couple of years, Kai? Letting sleeping, flea-ridden dogs lie.”
“He’s gonna want to speak to you anyway,” Kai says calmly, like he’s trying to reason with a toddler past their nap time.
“You just want to satisfy your own curiosity,” I grump, draining the last of the water in my glass before setting it downin the sink. I spin around, hands on the edge of the laminate counter. “The king is dead. Long live the queen.”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but my voice is too raspy, the words too shaky, and Kai is too fucking serious.
“God, what?” I snap.
He shakes his head, wiping his hands down his face like he’s trying to pull himself out of his own dark thoughts. “Nothing. You’re right. This is good.”
I shrug. “Good riddance, right?”
Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll stop feeling guilty.
Because as fucked up as it sounds, it’smyfault Bobby’s dead. If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have come back to Agony Hollow, and he’d still be alive.
Then again…
If Professor Rooke—my stalker, my obsession, mynightmare—hadn’t given him all that money, he wouldn’t have bought the dope that apparently killed him.
Fuck. If Bastian finds out about this, he’ll probably expect me to be grateful.
“I’ve wanted him dead for as long as I can remember,” I murmur as I walk back to the sofa, arms crossed tightly against my chest as I stare down at Kai. “Does that make me a psycho?”
Kai’s lips quirk. “Did you forget that we’ve been fantasizing about creative ways for Bobby to die since middle school?”
Despite everything, a real laugh bursts out of me, and Kai joins right in. We sound like a pair of comic book villains.
It’s inappropriate.
Horrible.
And so fuckingperfect.
I sink down onto the sofa, the coffee table letting out another ominous creak as Kai shifts over to the cushion beside me.
“Fuck, Ididforget,” I whimper as I wipe my eyes, still giggling. “Dumb Ways Bobby Can Die,” I sing.
Kai’s wearing a manic grin I know all too well as he counts off on his fingers. “Mauled by bears. Struck by lightning.” He glances up at the ceiling. “Um?—”
“Spontaneous combustion!” I blurt out, stabbing his chest with a finger. “Remember that one?”
He cups a hand over his eyes, groaning dramatically. “Jaysus…You always went for the exotic ones.”
“Eaten by piranhas!”
“In the Agony River?”
We both double over on the cheap furniture in our cheap Airbnb that’s a hundred times better than the trailers we grew up in, laughing about my dead father and our fucked-up childhood trauma like it’s peak comedy.
God, we’re so broken.
When it finally subsides, my ribs ache and my face is wet, and I feel lighter than I have in days.
