Page 5 of Psycho

There wasn’t a single imperfection that I could see.

This girl was the perfect depiction of innocence allure that I couldn’t get enough of.

My heart pounded in a fragmented rhythm, loud in my ears. My reaction—it wasn’t lust, or interest, or hell, even obsession.

It was instinct.

The instinct that it could be all those things for me… someday.

Something inside of me recognized that this girl, this interesting-looking girl who seemed to fucking call out to me on some deeper level that I didn’t understand, would someday be mine.

Mine.

She didn’t look at me.

I doubt she even knew I was there, and it took barely a second or two between when she turned and offered the view of her face to when she turned away from me, heading out the door. But it felt much longer.

It felt like everything was playing out in slow motion, and I could do nothing more than stand frozen as I watched her.

The bell dinged when she opened the door and left, leaving a roar in my ears that only I could hear.

Fuck.

I thought back to what the kid had called her.

Lainey.

Two simple syllables of a word that rang out in my ears that should have been meaningless.

It didn’t sound meaningless.

It sounded like….

It sounded like mine.

1

LAINEY

PRESENT DAY

I grabbedtwo beer bottles from behind the bar and passed one over to Kelsea.

She grabbed it without saying anything to me and turned away, getting back to the rough and wild men in the audience as they watched the fight, enraptured.

The sound of boos and cheers rang out as one fighter took another hit, and I closed my eyes, looking away from the ring.

I hated everything about this place.

I hated being here almost every weekend to help Dad, but I was still living at home and didn’t have a choice.

He wanted me here because I was free labor, and he thought I was the only one he could trust to handle the money.

He didn’t know I had been stealing money from the fights for over three years, since he first started forcing me to come and help him out.

Not enough that he would notice, but enough to give me a nice little nest egg hidden in the cardboard panel of my closet.

I had almost five grand saved up.

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