Page 131 of Mayhem and Minnie

Since when?

She admitted she’s known of me for years, but she pined for me? Does that mean she’s been following me? Longing for me all this time?

And does that mean that our first meeting was not fortuitous, but rather a calculated one on her part? The idea of it doesn’t enrage me as it should. In fact, it makes me rather warm on the inside.

While I was stalking my victims, I was being stalked in return.

And I never even knew it.

That in itself should bother me. But it only makes me hold Minnie in a higher regard.

For all her bubbly personality and ignorance about the world, she’s quite the scheming little thing.

Fuck. That’s hot.

She can stalk me anytime she wants. But I can’t say that aloud as it would scandalize my mother more than she already is.

Pity. But I’ll make sure to tell her later.

“Marlowe! How could you?” my mother demands sharply, rising out of her chair and placing her hands on her hips.

Minnie crosses her arms across her chest and she tips her chin up at me in a explain yourself now gesture.

Is it wrong that her anger makes me hard?

I look between the two of them and realize I’m caught between two very scary females. And while Minnie’s anger is rather hot and I wouldn’t mind having some more of that, preferably when we’re alone, with a few less clothes, my mother is another issue altogether. She’ll grasp onto this idea and she will not let it go until she goes into her grave. Alas, I fear she might even go as far as to write on her gravestone—poor mother of a shameless cheater. Of course she wouldn’t want to let me live it down even after she’s no longer here.

The worst thing? I’m innocent.

But how the hell do I even begin to tell them that without explaining what I truly meant by my body count?

18

“First off,” I say as I look at Minnie. “We’re not in a relationship for me to cheat. And second, even if we were, which we are not”—I make sure to emphasize—“I never did anything wrong. Where the hell did you get that idea?”

“Marlowe!” my mother exclaims in outrage. “I thought I raised you better than this!”

I roll my eyes.

“I didn’t cheat, Mother,” I repeat, exasperated.

“That I believe,” she says. “It’s the fact that you live with this darling girl but you haven’t made it official yet. How ungentlemanly!”

I gawk at her.

Minnie does too.

“But he slept with all those women,” Minnie mumbles again. Confusion swathes her features as she looks thoroughly lost. “Women who were not me,” she whispers desolately.

My conscience roars to life unexpectedly.

I don’t like that look on her face. I don’t like that I put it there.

And it was only a harmless joke…

Yet the more I think about it, the more I realize it wasn’t a joke to Minnie. For some reason, she was truly hurt by it.

I scowl.

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