Page 91 of Fire for Effect

I leaned forward, putting my lips on the divot in the middle of her clavicle.

“I should get you more jewelry, if it helps me get some honesty out of you,” I chuckled against her skin, and she playfully slapped my chest.

The moon drifted high over the Catskill mountains. The peach sky of sunset was giving way to the black night stars. A part of me wanted to take her to bed, but I knew that wouldn’t work. She was a night owl, that came awake beneath the stars.

After everything that happened, we’d be in for a long night.

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo.”

“I didn’t know you had scars.”

In the end, which one of us was more in the dark?

Chapter 24

Jelly

Taz

I got dressed, and we went back to the small clearing of the trailer. I took a shower while he meandered about. He said he’d scrounge up food from the meager supplies I had in the kitchen, but I knew he’d find that my domestic skills were still just as awful as they had been the first time he commented on the contents of my fridge.

After rinsing off the day, and seeing the jewelry on my wrist, I tried to imagine what the hell got me to this place.

I had been rather stable for the last few months, living in Mourningkill, and going to Sunday Dinners at the farm. I spoke to people, and rode my bike, and sometimes got the random bounty to supplement what little income I got doing odd jobs around the town.

I stretched every dollar because I could, and I wasn’t ready to get consumed in another job. Not yet. Not when I could feel the electricity in the air that something was about to happen. It made me excited, uneasy and afraid.

After Kai, the bounty, Noam’s friend, and my father… what else could the world throw my way? Could I handle it?

I had been idle when I came out here to help Top and Charlotte, between pyrotechnic jobs where I ran fireworks shows for concerts and events. Then I settled here to take care of Kai after he took a bullet to the thigh, and just… stayed when he left.

I had been in suspended animation, waiting for Kai to return.

But now everything was moving so fast that I longed for the routine of boredom of the last few months.

The bracelet felt good against my skin. I had tried to slip it off, just to test if I could, but true to his word, it didn’t budge past my hand. I wondered why that didn’t make me feel constrained.

While I dried my hair, my phone buzzed on the sink counter. I looked down as the name “MOM” flashed on the screen, and I let it go to voicemail.

When I stepped out of the trailer, Kai had his back to me, one arm crossed in front of his chest, and the other up, holding a phone to his ear. He was silhouetted by the small bonfire he had started in front of him. Modest, by my standards. I liked my bonfires big, and able to be seen from miles around.

“Do not come out here. I’m dead fucking serious, Sierra. Don’t come here.”

Who the hell was Sierra?

I felt a pang of jealousy. A reminder of what it had been like with Heath, and how he paraded girls in front of me. A means to keep me in line, and make me insecure. But that wasn’t Kai.

Or was this an ex? The last woman he might have spurned when his interests turned to me?

“I haven’t even talked to her about it yet! No!”

I stopped at the open trailer door and listened.

“I’ll handle it, but I swear to God, do not come here. Do not… Don’t—”

By the sudden drop of his head, I realized that whoever this Sierra was had hung up on him.

He bowed his head, his phone dropping to his side. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand and groaned.

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