Page 272 of Craving Venom

Tria flicks ash into a soda can and turns to me.

“You can’t go.”

“I am.”

She shakes her head. “No. You’re not going. It’s fucking insane, Faith. You’re not trained. You’re not safe. You’re not thinking straight.”

“I’m not backing down.”

“You could die.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t care?”

“Of course I care.”

“Then why?”

I pull my knees tighter to my chest. My skin sticks to itself, sticky with dried sweat, the bruises on my thighs blooming darker every time I move. I can still feel Zane on me. In me.

“Because I trust him.”

Saying that is the hardest thing I’ve done all night. Harder than taking him. Harder than not running. Harder than hearing him lie and letting him walk out anyway.

Because I didn’t just whisper some fragile hope into the dark. I confessed to trusting a man who, by all accounts, is a serial killer. A man with blood under his fingernails and a body count that starts in double digits and climbs from there. A man who’s turned death into performance art.

And still… I trust him.

It’s not just stupid. It’s not just dangerous.

It’s insane.

Because somewhere deep inside me, I’m not afraid of being next, I’m afraid of not being special enough to be spared.

It’s as if I’m having a wild, torrid affair with the Grim Reaper.

“Fuck.”

I smile, bitter and small. “Yeah.”

But the moment it leaves me, something else cracks.

I bite down on my lip hard, trying to stop it, but the shake in my chest gives it away. My shoulders pull in. My spine curls. The tears trail through dried sweat and the salty sting of everything I haven’t said out loud.

I don’t make a sound.

But Tria moves anyway.

She scoots in, wraps her arms around me from the side, tucks her chin onto my shoulder as if she’s holding glass and not a girl bleeding from the inside out.

I cry harder.

Because she doesn’t sayDon’t.

My hands fist into the blanket and I shake. “What the fuck is wrong with me.”

“Nothing.”

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