Page 1 of Toxic Kiss

chapter

one

FIVE YEARS AGO

“There’s no guide for how to suffer gracefully. Just scars where the rules used to be.” - Haven

CYRUS

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The bass is a fist to my sternum, and I let it bruise me. Fuck the world and everyone in it. My body moves before my brain catches up. Hips, shoulders, arms, all swaying in a sea of bodies that press and try to forget. Names blur. Faces smear into neon streaks like rain on a windshield. Nothing matters except the next hit, the next shot, the next thing that takes the edge off being awake and still alive.

A mist machine hisses, and cool water hits my face. I close my eyes and soak it up like the wet shirt clinging to my ribs. I laugh because the music, the liquor, and the blunt I’m smoking stitch me together in a way that almost…almost feels like surviving.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The DJ is killing it. I don’t even know this song, and yet I’m chanting along with a thousand strangers. Our lives forgotten as we dance in a private lie. The lie that we are okay.

Someone grabs my hand and pulls. My kidnapper has their hood up and shoulders hunched. It may be a friend or a stranger. I don’t fight. Tonight, anonymity is a mercy. I let myself be dragged toward the exit, and through air that smells like sweat, regret, and summer heat. The red EXIT sign cuts through the haze like it is trying to burn the fog from my mind. But I won’t let it. I smile without meaning to and suck the last hit of my blunt before tossing the butt down on the concrete for someone else to stomp out.

We pass under the glowing sign, and I’m hit with the humidity that adheres to me like a second skin. I hold the smoke in my lungs until we are outside and slowly blow a long, sensual stream up into the night sky to be claimed by…by…by…it doesn’t matter who, just that it joins the stars.

My head is light, and I look from left to right and smirk. People move like ghosts between the club and the curb. The hooded person in front of me slows, and I finally see her hair blowing out the side. It’s bright and impossibly red. Something dark slides down my spine.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I growl.

“Taking you home, that’s what,” she says.

I stop. The smile dies. Even with the chemicals trying to micromanage my pain, I know that voice. Know it the way you know a knife before it’s in your ribs and carving out your heart.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snap, and watch as she drags the hood back like a revelation in a movie. My heart triples in time. Her fucking green eyes lock on mine, and I swallow the lump in my throat.

Haven. My stepsister. My constant wrong note. From the second our lives collided, it’s been nothing but sabotage and a war between us. We’ve turned hating each other into a battlefield with no winner.

“Cy, I know you’re hurting,” she says. She always sounds like she’s reading from a manual meant for people who still care. “This…” She points at the club. “This isn’t how you fix it.”

Who the hell is she to tell me what fixes anything?

“You don’t have a clue,” I say. “You don’t have friends. You don’t know what it feels like to lose what I have.”

I pour the venom slowly, knowing that it’s bullshit, but not caring as long as it hurts. And as Haven’s face shadows with pain, I shudder and suck in air that tastes like sweet satisfaction.

She looks away.

“Wow. Just when I think you’ve reached the lowest you can, you somehow dig deeper.”

Maybe on another day, her green eyes would tug something loose in me. Some guilt, grief, perhaps a fractured tenderness. But I’ve been hollowed out for years, and the last few months…have felt like my body is free-falling over a cliff. When I’m not empty, I anesthetize the rest. It’s a conscious, precise kind of suicide-by-party.

“I speak the truth. Sorry if it’s too much for you.”

Haven was different before. She was popular and laughed a lot. Her smiles were like sunlight, and she could fill a room just by stepping into it. I hated it. So, I threw the first punch. Technically, I threw them all. But, it was easy especially when she is a walking calamity. I wanted to crush her like a bug under my boot and squash all that fucking happy right along with it.

She crosses her arms, and I do the same…my mockable pose of the night.

“You have two choices,” she says, and I smirk because, of course, she lays out choices like she’s handing out lollipops.

“You can come with me⁠—”