Page 55 of A Taste Of Darkness

After I left Sterlie’s bedroom, I went straight into mine and called the only person I truly trusted. Sterlie’s sister.

Flora was sitting at her makeup vanity, getting ready. I suppose she and Auclaire were going out in a bit. Dinner, most likely.

“I’d be so conflicted if she did,” Flora said, to which my head cocked sideways but she didn’t pay attention to her phone screen. “I’d be upset because she killed my best friend, but I’d be so happy that she finally grew a backbone. Well…” Finally, Flora looked at me. “Sterlie can be quite intense, she just prefers not to show it, you know? So, I wouldn’t even be surprised if she killed you. No, wait, I would. She has a big mouth sometimes, but killing isn’t her thing. She did it once and we both know how long it took her to sleep through the night again.”

About six months. I only knew because Flora told me.

Just because I liked the girl didn’t mean I was stalking her, all right? I certainly wasn’t going to tell Flora she couldn’t talk to me about her own sister, so it wasn’t technically my fault that I knew so much about a woman I’d been crushing on ever since I first saw her.

Some part of me was sure Flora told me this much about Sterlie because she knew I liked her. Another part thought that me liking her sister should’ve made her more protective and guarded.

“She kissed me,” I told Flora, falling back against the headboard of my bed.

“She did?!” Flora’s lips tugged up into a smile. I kind of hated that she got more expressive ever since she started dating Auclaire, but as long as she was happy, I was happy. Not with the choice of her spouse, but I could happily ignore that asshat.

And now she was pregnant. From that asshat. Gross.

“Yeah, but she’s drunk.” I sighed heavily, still regretting that I pushed her away while I knew it was the best thing I could’ve done at that moment. The last thing I ever wanted to do was take advantage of anyone, that included kissing someone when they very obviously lacked their better judgment for that night.

And like I said, I thought of myself as someone worth more than a drunken hookup. My hands might’ve been covered in blood, and I certainly wasn’t going to get a ticket to heaven, but I still deserved some respect. I still deserved to be kissed not just because I was decent-looking and took care of her when she could barely do it herself.

I was only twenty-five, dammit. I should’ve been fucking women left to right, not caring about any of the shit that had been running through my mind. Yet every goddamn woman I touched, I couldn’t help but feel gross afterward.

There was only one woman out there who’d interested me. One woman whom I fantasized about, who could touch me and I didn’t jerk back. And she was only interested in me because she was drunk.

I was supposed to live my life like there was no tomorrow because there quite literally could be no tomorrow for me.

My hands weren’t gentle and innocent. I killed. I wasn’t your average guy from down the street, a friendly neighbor to hang around.

I didn’t grow up playing with my cousins like normal kids. We were handed guns with proto-bullets and were told not to aim for the head just yet.

I killed my first victim at the age of four and made life-or-death decisions as soon as I turned six. I commanded my own family around at a young age, and people out on the streets feared me. Sometimes, if I just glanced at someone, they ran away.

And still, I had dreams.

“To be fair,” Flora began, and I honestly couldn’t see how she was going to say anything positive right now. “I’ve never seen Sterlie kiss someone when she was drunk. So in my book, her kissing you was special either way.”

“It wasn’t right,” I said. “And if I let her do it, I would’ve used my power against someone vulnerable.”

“So she didn’t kiss you?” Flora looked at me with confusion in her eyes, her lips only half covered in red lipstick as she stopped to stare at me.

“No, she did, but I pushed her away.”

Her eyes widened drastically for a second before she regained control over her facial expressions and threw on a neutral one. She then went back to applying her lipstick like always. “I mean, I get it. Especially coming from you. But pushing her away was not the way to go. Rejection stings, and you know my sister a tiny bit by now. She’ll never make a move again.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Seriously, there weren’t many options. “Flora, Sterlie was quite literally standing naked before me five minutes prior to that kiss with no care in the world. She is drunk, kissed me, and she was about to grind up against me. If I didn’t push her away, what do you think she would’ve done next?”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have rejected her. As her sister, I’m glad you did. If only to remind her that it’s not okay to just go for it, even when she’s drunk. As your best friend, I’m glad to know that you respect women beyond the stuff I know of. It’s good to set boundaries. But what I am saying is that there was a simpler and less damaging way to let her down than pushing her away.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not excusing my sister’s behavior, just so you know. It was stupid of her to do and she has to learn how to handle rejection. As for you, your own mind was keeping you from using your reasonable brain cells because you knew that you wanted it to happen. As much as you keep saying there’s no way anything could ever happen between the two of you, I know you have some kind of hope that the world will somehow turn upside down and magically make everything fall into place for you. You saw the signs that she wanted to kiss you, and yet you didn’t even try to stop her before it was too late. Deep down, you wanted it to happen as much as she did.” Flora finished up her makeup, set down her brush, and looked at me. “Besides, there’s always some kind of truth in drunk actions, isn’t there? Or was it just words? Either way, it doesn’t matter. If you think about it, Sterlie probably meant to kiss you way earlier, she just didn’t have the balls to communicate it to you properly. The alcohol simply helped her let go of the ‘what if…’”

And that was why I never called Flora when something was wrong. She’d always feed into my delusions.

I mean, I loved that about her, but it wasn’t helpful when it came to her goddamn sister.

“Just try again tomorrow, see what happens,” she said. “Work your Milo-the-club-owner magic. Take her out on a date and then be all like”—her voice deepened as she tried to imitate mine—“‘Can I kiss you, pretty lady?’”

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