Page 43 of For Fillies and Monsters

It takes a monster to love a monster.

Realizing the power I now wield, the sudden hold I have over Stetson’s guarded heart, I do what monsters do best. I push back.

If she wants to make me jealous, if she wants to push me, I will embrace it.

Striding into the Mexican joint, I pull up a stool at the bar. I don’t drink much, but that’s not really why I’m here. The full—and fake—breasts of the woman next to me rest on the counter, their weight no doubt pulling at her back. Why would anyone want tits that big? They have to give her quite the backache.

She turns to face me, her brown hair pulled up into an up-do that looks closer to a nest than a hairstyle. I scan her body,more for her pleasure than mine. Dressed in tight black leather pants and a cheetah print top, she looks like the kind of woman who begs for attention. The pounds of makeup caking her face add to my list of reasonings. I lean toward her, flashing her a menacing smile that has her eyes dilating with desire.

I know I’m not bad-looking; the body count I’ve acquired over the years is proof enough for me. But I don’t think it would matter much to this woman—she looks desperate enough to take home a stool to hump tonight.

I don’t mind using people, never have. If it means helping me get the girl, I will burn this world to the ground. Or let the very desperate, very fake, veryheavily perfumedwoman lean all over me.

Only for a moment.

“Gonna buy me a drink?” she drawls, a forced twang mixing with her slur. I lean toward her, being sure to rub my chest over her arm and she gulps.

“My woman would be awfully jealous if I did.”

Her lips drop, an ugly pout claiming her face. “Fuck her,” she whines, and I fist my palm to keep from slapping her. No one talks about my filly that way. Shaking my head, I stand up.

That’s about enough of that. If I don’t still smell like a whore by the time I get back to the house, I’ll figure something else out. I rap my knuckles on the bar.

“I plan to.”

SEVENTEEN

STETSON

April 12th, 2024

Throwingup my middle fingers at the retreating cloud of dust that is Nathan’s pickup does little to tamper the sour taste in my mouth. I hate that guy—he’s the least fun person to spend time with, and I refuse to spend another second around him that I don’t have to—barrier be damned. I will find another way; I’d rather be shot in the head and survive than spend another second breathing the same air as someone as self-centered as that prick.

It didn’t work, anyway—all night, miles from Gus, and I still felt like his eyes burned into my skin. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see him lurking in the shadows, watching me.

Which is actually fucking delusional.

Gus wouldn’t be caught dead at the movies—sitting still around so many people would be his own personal hell, I’m sure of it. No, the truth is, no matter how far from him I might go, he will still be burning beneath my skin. And that is something I’ve got to figure out how to cure. Gus is too dangerous, too toxic, and too fucking off-limits.

But fuck, I want him.

I hear a low chuckle behind me, and I whirl around. Gus sits spread out in the rickety swing, his arms lazily draped over the back. The same swing that has sat on the deck since I broke it all those weeks ago. The same swing my mom sat with me on all those years ago.

My heart hammers at the sight of him, my resolve to get him out from under my skin quickly forgotten. His skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat in the waning evening light, his dark hair matted along the edges of his face, and his white shirt plastered over the valleys of his muscles. Black eyes glitter with irritation, pairing well with the dark stubble covering his jaw and over his lips, unshaven and unkept for several days. He looks like a shadow, a dark illusion—there, but not. He shifts his hips, his jeans hugging tightly against his muscular thighs, and grunts.

Why, in the actual hell, was that hot?

“How was your date?” It’s a growl, and instead of scaring me, it sends a spear of heat through my belly.

“You fixed the porch swing.” I hate that I sound so breathy, butfuck. He quite literally takes my breath away; not in a cute, romantic way, but in a terrifying, suffocating way.

Trust me, I would know.

“It was just a couple of hooks and a board.”

If only he knew it wasn’t just‘a couple hooks and a board’. It’s a handful of precious memories with a woman I have few fond memories of at all. It’s the place we sat and watched the Texas sunset fade into night, where we watched her poppy flowers blossom, where we shared secrets about where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be when I turned eighteen.

When it broke, left rotting on the porch, it felt like the physical depiction of my relationship with my mother,my relationship with myself—rejected, unworthy, forgettable. I could not face fixing it, because what if it was not fixable? Wouldn’t it be better to scrap the whole thing and start over with a shiny, newswing, new chain, new hooks and boards? It was trash—left over from a life I wish nothing more than to forget.

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