Page 60 of Relapse

“Yeah well,” she says lightly, climbing onto one of the stools, “I’m sure the cyanide one of your guys sold me outside my motel and whatever chemically aggressive mystery cocktails strangers kept handing me all night probably didn’t help either.”

I go completely still for half a second.

Then slowly look over at her.

“You were taking drinks from random people too?”

Blair blinks once.

“…In my defense, the vibes were excellent.”

I stare at her flatly.

She takes my coffee directly out of my hand.

“One girl had glitter freckles and pink cowboy boots,” she adds. “That’s basically a background check at a rave.”

“You are genuinely exhausting.”

She shrugs, and my jaw tightens harder the more I think about it.

Because all I can picture now is her already high out of her mind accepting random shit from strangers while wandering through a crowd packed full of people I don’t trust.

“And whoever sold you that cyanide is gonna regret it,” I mutter flatly.

Blair’s brows lift immediately.

“Oh no,” she says dryly, clutching my coffee dramatically. “Not the terrifying criminal overlord disciplining his employees for successfully distributing drugs. However will the organization recover?”

I stare at her.

She keeps going anyway.

“Should I hold a memorial service for the poor guy now or after you dramatically threaten him in a dark warehouse somewhere?”

“You think this is funny?”

“I think,” she says casually, “that watching you get all possessive and homicidal over your own product is a little hypocritical, yeah.”

I stare at her flatly across the kitchen island.

She just keeps sipping my coffee like she didn’t nearly scare ten years off my fucking life twelve hours ago.

Her split pink and purple hair hangs damp past her waist in messy waves, darker now from the shower. Freckles scatter across her cheeks and nose beneath the kitchen lights while one of my thick black towels stays wrapped tightly around her body.

And fuck.

The smell of my body wash clinging to her skin does deeply dangerous things to my nervous system.

Like she belongs here.

Like she should smell like my apartment and stand barefoot in my kitchen stealing my coffee while sunlight spills across her skin.

Bad thought.

Very bad fucking thought.

Blair catches me staring too long instantly.