An unpleasant sensation of jealousy and irritation claws in my stomach, but I focus on the Sun. She wanted Von and Isadora here, but either Cosmo didn’t contact them, or he couldn’t convince them.That’swhat she means.
Cosmo sighs heavily, loudly, and he answers her true question. “For now, this is all.”
Chapter 32
Karia
“You think this is some kind of playtime?” I grip the tumbler tighter, my fingers pressing around the dented grooves and edges of the glass as I stare at the side of Cosmo’s face.
The sun is setting, blanketing the rolling hills of Haunt Muren’s vast lands in shadow, turning the green grass a darkened purple and the warm temperature cold. But the whiskey in my veins—the rest in my cup—has me heated, and it’s not the only thing.
After spending the morning watching Maude and Co. eat in silence around the dining room table, the tension heavier than a weighted blanket doused in ash, I needed real, true sleep.
I curled up in the same bed I slept in with Sullen, alone, but when I blinked my eyes open sometime in my drowsiness, I saw his hulking figure in a chair by the cracked door, as if he was my own personal guard dog.
It helped me sleep more.
Safe.
He is that, but right now, he’s inside after refusing Cosmo’s constant, irritating invitation to come sit around the firepit he lit and dragged black Adirondack chairs to.
“Do you see the troops coming? They’re not here yet, might as well enjoy it.” Cosmo grins at me before he removes the joint from behind his ear. I have no idea where he got it from—probably Fleet—but he pushes his hand into the pocket of his sweats and pulls out a red lighter.
“You shouldn’t be smoking around me.” I pretend to be annoyed as he lights up.
“Why? You’ll want to give in?” There’s a sensual caress to his words and I once would have felt it, low in my belly, when I was trading Sullen for Cosmo because I thought I could never have my monster.
But now he’s mine, isn’t he?Mine.Maybe not fully. Perhaps he is not there yet, and still I hold onto the hope that after everything, he will be. He’ll see how much I love him.
I don’t think of him inside with Maude, or I might murder her, and we have enough death coming.
“Besides,” Cosmo says softly, his lime eyes drifting to the tumbler in my hand. “You probably shouldn’t be drinking either and yet…”
I hold his gaze as he looks up at me, and I take a drink, just to spite him.
He smiles. Dimples pop in his face, then he holds the joint out to me.
For a second, I think to refuse. Sullen would want me to.
But what doIwant?
And besides, Sullen is inside with fuckingMaude.
I take the joint.
And for a moment under the stars, we pass the weed back and forth in silence, as if it was a normal night. As if maybe later I’ll nearly pass out, and Cosmo will fuck me so hard I feel it in myteeth, and I’ll pretend to tell him to stop, and everything will be typical between us. Sad, and pathetic, buttypical.
But that’s not my life now.
For Sullen, I don’t want it to ever be my life again.
Everything has changed.
It’s why I am out here alone with Cosmo in the first place. To continue our conversation from this morning, before Sullen found us in the kitchen together, and last night, when I was too tired to hear more horror.
And so after I exhale smoke through my nose and offer the stub to Cosmo, which he takes, I stare into the dying embers of the firepit and I say, “Finish telling me everything.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him toss the joint.
