Page 33 of Fatally Yours
The bartender slid a drink across the counter and tipped his hat at me. I returned a false smile and looked at August and his drink, which was already gone. With another automatic sigh, I tipped my glass back, downed it, and motioned for another. My shoulders trembled when I swallowed it, but a dulled, distinctly metallic tang was better than having to think about how much I enjoyed participating in a murder.
He was a fair number of drinks in, and I stopped after two, wanting to keep my wits about me in case anyone questioned why we looked so dead. A comfortable buzz was running through my veins, surely amplified by my lack of life. Just another thing being dead did to you—helped you get drunk. And if I knew anything about August, it was that he got reckless when he was inebriated, and that was the last thing we needed.
Great.
Tapping my fingers silently along the counter, I set my head on my hand again. I hoped we could enjoy this moment as much and as fast as we could, but I had a feeling that was not how this night was going to go.
“You look miserable,” he said with a smirk.
“I’m not entirely,” I replied flatly. “Only a little.”
“It’ll get easier.” That comment made my empty stomach flip. That implied that we were going to do it again, and even though I knew that would happen, I still wasn’t excited about it, at least, not like he was. Maybe in the moment, I would slip into the icy hands of cruelty as I did previously, but as long as I was not drunk on death’s toxic ambrosia, I felt nothing but dread.
“This is not how I wanted my life to go.”
“Good thing this isn’t life anymore,” he remarked with a drunken grin, downing his sixth drink and setting the glass back on the counter. Now, I was going to have to deal with him being deadanddrunk, a combination I was not ready to face when we needed to finesse something from the public.
“I think I hate you sometimes.”
“No, you don’t,” he said flippantly.
“Sometimes I do.”
“You know, I couldn’t imagine you saying something like that before.”
“Well, things change when you die,” I said. “I guess that’s what made me enjoy acting like a deviant, and that’s also what makes me sometimes think I hate you.” His gaze grew cold as his mismatched eyes bored into mine.
“No, you donot.I won’t let you.” It was another command. I was sure of it. Not that he would convince me not to, but that he wouldmakeme not hate him—one way or the other. For a brief moment, I considered all the salacious ways he would do that before I came to my senses. With another sigh—purposeful this time—I folded my arms and set my head on the table, wishing for this night to fly by.
While I was resting, my eyes caught on a newspaper sitting on the bar beside me. There was an article talking about a child predator who skipped out on parole and was now hiding, adorned with a picture of a middle-aged man with dark, greasy hair, but I didn’t want to think about that. There was already enough misery in what remained of my life, so I pushed it away and put my head down.
The sound of uneven footsteps caught my ear through the low music. The buzz in my stomach turned to a flutter as I sat up, hoping it was just someone walking by and not someone trying to converse with us. Much to my dismay, the blonde woman I spotted earlier approached August with a sloppy expression. Her gait was unsteady as she propped herself against the counter beside August.MyAugust.
“Hey there,” the woman beamed. Her eyes connected with his as her face shaded. “Whoa, sick eyes.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, clearly not impressed. The woman set her polish-tipped hand on his shoulder, and I shot her a glare. The haze of death was creeping up on me again as a familiar feeling filled my head with nefarious thoughts. It was a genuine, burning hatred spawned right from the depths of hell. Maybe that was why it was so easy for him to kill me.
The ache in my empty vessel was gnawing at my vacant soul, almost ordering me to destroy this woman. Pain we could not feel in death was coming back tenfold in fiery, vengeful waves. The only thing keeping megrounded was that she was teetering on the edge of innocence, and I wasn’t keen on that, even if I did want to rip her hair from her scalp and watch her blood ooze down her blushing face for touching my man.
“You two seem like you’re having some issues,” the woman slurred. “How about you dump this bitch and spend some time with me?” I shot her a disgruntled glare and almost opened my mouth to speak until August stepped in with a similarly stony gaze.
“Fuck off, slut. I’ll make you see the devil,” he said blankly. I swore I felt my face flush. Even after everything, his blunt brutality continued to surprise and thrill me. The woman broke into a sly smile, seemingly relentless.
“So that’s what you’re into? I could try that,” she said. August observed her uneven gait and how she struggled to hold herself up. And then his eyes went to me. At that moment, my stomach dropped, and I knew something was going to happen. The last person who called me a bitch was currently sitting lifeless in a grave.
“I like a man who can take control and do what he wants,” she added. He gave me one last unreadable expression, then turned back to her.
“Do you? Maybe I’d be interested,” he said. “As long as you don’t mind mybitchcoming with us.” I flinched when he said it, but stayed silent. She broke into a gleeful smile.
“The more the merrier.” With that, August pulled out Devin’s wallet and slapped a few bills on the counter, earning a nod from the scraggly bartender. The woman led us out of the bar, stumbling the entire way.
By the time we reached the exit, she had almost fallen twice. August stepped in and opened the door for her, and she grinned at him, making my blood boil. I was confident he wouldn’t do anything obscene with her, but I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted him to not royally fuck this up.
Hell, I wasn’t sure I even trusted myself. Despite hating this woman’s guts, I couldn’t bring myself to kill her, even if the urge was lingering in the back of my head like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I thought I hated August for ending me, but this was real, genuine hatred brought on by the fires of death, only to be quenched by a flow of blood.
The warmth of the air kissed my skin as we stepped out into the night.The woman was a few messy steps ahead of us, and I took the opportunity to share another glance with August. I could tell by his sloppy smile that he was more inebriated than I wanted to admit, making my shoulders wilt.
This is not going to be good.
