I wince, visoring my eyes against the flash-bang of sun. She doesn’t stop. She starts running faster, pulling me through the multiplied bodies and past the screams rushing off the running rides, until she’s drifting us to a stop next to a Dippin’ Dots stand and shooting her wrath at me.
“What is wrong with you?! You don’t go near that tent, Bun!”
Grasping at congested air, my heart beats against my sternum, widely staring at the vexation she’s never directed at me. “W-why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Stop asking questions you’re not ready to hear the answer to,” she seethes.
“What do you mean?!” My shoulders stiffen, my jaw innately clenching shut. But that’s the old me. The pathetic me. And I’m so tired of her. I’m tired of everyone tiptoeing around a real answer and me just accepting it. “How did you even know I was in there?”
She wipes the sweat from her forehead, breathing harshly and looking around, before snapping back down to me. “I followed you. Okay? I saw you go in, figured I’d give you a minute to change your mind, but you didn’t come back out. Do you realize how screwed I am, Bunny?” She bends down, jabbing tense fingers into her own chest and glaring at me.
Confused, like always, my brows furrow and my palms turn up. “What does that have to do with you? Do you watch me a lot? What is going on here?!”
“No,” her face tenses. “I saw your neck when you left. I figured you were goin’ to your tent, and I was gonna ask if you were okay. Don’t switch this shit to me.” Vaulting straight with a huff, she wipes down her face, giving me a moment to process. “I have to tell Raze, babe.”
This burdening me with more questions than I can even ask is digging a blade into my lungs, manifesting invasive needles in my eyes. “Why?”
She slaps her palms to her thighs, rolling her shoulders with the movement of her head, like the answer should be obvious. But it’s not.
I shake my head, letting my disappointment drip down my cheeks as I move around her. “I’m so tired of this.”
“Bun, wait,” she sighs.
I really wish I could say she’s just looking out for me. But if she had my back, she’d give me straight answers instead of dangling carrots and yanking them away when I get close.
Pun intended. Get it? Bunny.
Sorry, that was lame.
Wiping my wet face, I leave her in the spot she’s still watching me from, going through my usual routine of constricting dread the entire walk back to what I know, and then I slip into my dark tent.
I’m on the schedule for tonight. Even though everyone just wants to see me in the Globe of Death now. So, I have to somehow push all this stuff to the back of my mind and dance the maggots away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
RAZOR
“What’s up?” I ask Duse.
Carrying the door past her just fucking staring at me in the kitchen, I get into the hallway and turn the corner to Bunny’s room with her eyes beaming into the back of my damn head.
“I need to tell you something,” Duse says right behind me.
“Okay?” Setting the door down against Bunny’s closet, I quickly scan the room, wondering if I should just go ahead and move in here or if I should be normal and talk to Bunny about that first.
I honestly just wanna do it. What’s she gonna do? Make me sleep across the room? Oh, no. Fuck, I’d hate that. I’d hate getting to prop myself up and watch her sleep.
Why is Duse staring at me?
Oh, shit, Duse. Right, she needed something.
She folds her arms up, sending a few braids back over her shoulder with a fierce whip of her head. “Bunny’s getting too curious, Raze. She seems mentally sound enough to start easing little things in.”
What the fuck?
“Why’re you saying this? What’d she do?”
Her chest stretches up with a heavy inhale, and she loads her hands into her back pockets. “She was in Hatchet’s tent. I caught her just in time before she ended up in the back with him, where your worst nightmare would’ve come true.”
